The Obligatory Twilight Post: Take 2

Twilight post, revamped/edited for the Reveille.

I always forget to repost my columns on my poor lil ole blog...

Sorry, fellas.

How Not to be Awkward on a First Date

How Not to be a Total Douche in Class

I've been busy

cornifying my blog and writing columns about bars and making this mock up of a dress:

The Latest.

First in a series on how not to act like an asshole.

Ain't Misbehavin

Ruh Roh...

I've been remiss in my reposting-my-columns-duties!

Do check out:

• My spin on new FTC guidelines that hold celebrities accountable for the products they endorse
• My advice to anti-choice crazies
• The nicest way I could think to say how much I absolutely hate the LSU registration system
  

So You Wanna Be on Top?

...then you better not be a plus-size model. Read about sizeism in the fashion industry here.

What the World Needs Now is WoW Rehab.

Latest column was picked up by UWire, the college version of the AP!!! :D

Imma Let You Finish, But I Can Has Cheezburger Is the Greatest Blog of All Time!

New column about Kanye's douchery.

Two Posts in One Day? FTW!

My shopping list makes me seem like a kindergarten teacher.

Poster board
Scissors?
Removable glue stick?
Apron
Ruler
Construction paper (shapes?)

Extra, extra!

Read all about my feelings on mermaids!

Reveille Column Numero Deux!

If you love trashy reality TV, you'll hate my second column:

Megan Wanted A Millionaire, But Found a Murderer

First Column!

Hit the stands yesterday -- not the correct "hammer" or byline, but it is at least the actual column that I wrote!

http://www.lsureveille.com/opinion/hammertime-objectification-should-be-absent-from-modern-porn-1.1822291

songs i can't listen to since my grandmother died:

i'll fly away
uncloudy day
i found a reason
casimir pulaski day

"tuesday night at the bible study
we lift our hands and pray over your body
but nothing ever happens

and in the morning when you finally go
and the nurse runs in with her head hung low
and the cardinal hits the window

in the morning in the winter shade
on the first of march, on the holiday
i thought i saw you breathing

oh the glory that the lord has made
and the complications when I see his face
in the morning in the window

oh the glory when he took our place
but he took my shoulders and he shook my face
and he takes and he takes and he takes"

bye, summer 09

"But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on

And here's where your mother sleeps
And here is the room where your brothers were born
Indentions in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore
And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies
All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes"

Excuses, excuses

Sorry, little blog, that you have been neglected. I've had a pretty tumultuous summer and will hopefully tend to you better once school starts.

Love,
Me

The Scariest Thing I've Ever Seen

Today, while doing my obligatory daily internet browsing, I came across this little gem -- a robot dressed as a bride, walking the runway at the Yumi Katsura show straight from Japan's Uncanny Valley.



There are so many terrifying, freaky things about this video. Let us count the ways:

• It's a robot.
• In a wedding dress.
• Her mouth is slightly agape, in an oh-so-creepy suggestive manner. Not to mention the disturbing correlation created by the wedding dress.
  
• "Billie Jean" is playing at the show -- I'm guessing they were doing some sort of tribute to Micheal Jackson, and shooting for the double entendre of "See, she's 'not my girl'? Cause SHE'S A FUCKING ROBOT!!!" But in conjunction with this footage, all I can think of is Thriller's horror movie video, and that makes me think that this robot is out to get me.
• The moment at roughly 40 seconds, when the robot stops, the lights go out, and she glows in the dark. Now I am absolutely positive she is going to start shooting lasers out of her eyes at any moment, as retribution for whomever put her in that ridiculous dress. (I'd start designing a laser-proof gown if I were you, Ms. Katsura.)
  
• That ridiculous, old fashioned dress combined with that humanoid robot has a very serious steampunk-come-to-life vibe, which is surprisingly not as cool as I'd thought it'd be in real life.
• The Stepford Wife shuffle.
• That bitch can blink, but the rest of her face is relatively frozen.

Sorry I haven't been around in, oh, a month or so. I'll try to better tend to my bloggerly duties from now on.

A Tug at the Uterus-Strings

I'm going to take a break from documenting our Arizona trip for a while to talk about something that's been on my mind a lot recently: babies.

Don't worry, I'm not preggo and have no plans to be (in fact, I have very well-executed plans NOT to be). But that's kind of the issue -- I have these crazy ideas in my head I've never had before. Ideas that whisper in a creepy, cooing voice, "Wouldn't it be neat to be pregnant? Wouldn't it be nice to have a baby of your very own?"

I've been having these conflicted, somewhat deranged thoughts for close to a year now. I think it probably started around the time I was in the hospital with a still-ambiguous mass on one of my ovaries. It was treated and [supposedly] resolved, but I am fairly confident that my hormones were thrown out of whack afterwards and still aren't back to normal (and may never be). So I'm chalking most of this baby fever up to a case of the crazies, courtesy of my messed-up hormones.

A few of my close friends from high school are expecting, and many, many more acquaintances (both older and younger than I am now) are already mothers. Those who have children are absolutely in love with them and swear on how being a mom beats everything else by a mile.

Again, I'm conflicted. I feel this overwhelming agreement, understanding, and kinship that oh, yes, a child is the most wonderful gift you could ever receive; but simultaneously: Hm, you must be a masochistic egomaniac, that is the only reason anyone would ever do such a stupid, stupid thing!

I often see tiny babies in the grocery store and my heart just melts and I crave one of my own, and my mind wanders to what it might be like. It's typically a girl that I think of, and she would of course be BEAUTIFUL -- she would have Andy's* dark complexion and freckles and my blue eyes, and she would be incredibly brilliant because, really, how could any child of ours not be? And I think about how sweet it would be to hold our baby and play with her and teach her things, and how I know she would just melt Andy's heart, too, and our parents would be so thrilled, so doting; maybe I could stay home with her and that could be my full-time job, just to love someone all day... It's all very appealing.

And then I think about potty-training, and 3 a.m. feedings, and how paranoid I would be that my child would grow up to be fat like me, and so then I would probably starve her or put her on some really extreme feeding program, like breastmilk untill she was six or something insane like that, and whether or not to let her watch TV because I think it's probably bad for early development to be exposed to that much consumerism but I also remember how much I loved Sesame Street and it seems cruel to make her into a weirdo who doesn't know what TV is when she gets to preschool, and OH SHIT I'll only have nasty, smelly boys anyway, because all Andy's family is boys and brothers and they all have boys upon boys and the man's chromosomes dominate the sex of the baby, right? so I'll be doomed to never have a little girl, and would I really love a child if it wasn't what I wanted? would I treat it differently? and whether or not to have natural childbirth, because -- in strictly philosophical terms -- I think everyone's issues probably stem from birth trauma, so how would I minimize that? and how can you avoid it? and why even have a kid if pushing it out's just going to fuck it up beyond repair anyway, not to mention everything else you'll ever do that will totally ruin it and make it a neurotic messed up adult?

Then I calm down and count my blessings that I am not a mother, and I do not have to worry about those things.

Yet.


*Perhaps one of the most disturbing facets of this daydream is Andy's automatic inclusion. When we first started dating, and mostly ever since, I professed that I didn't want kids and he agreed that he didn't either. The only thing stopping him from getting a vasectomy is the knowledge that, as many people do, he might change his mind about kids someday. So we were happy in our decision to be childless, and it was a non-issue in our relationship. But since this hormonal fantasizing has begun, Andy's been dragged into it against his will. He is now forced to imagine his life with a child, and it [understandbly] makes him very, very uncomfortable. I try to make it crystal clear to him that I am making no plans to have a baby and do not actually want one right now, but he is still generally nervous about the subject, given my past history of being impulsive, sneaky, and selfish.

The obvious reasons I see Andy as the father of my prospective children are: 1) because we plan to spend the rest of our lives together, and 2) I literally can't imagine my future without him. When I think of anything in the future -- buying a house, having a career, growing older -- I only think about it in terms of Andy being there, too, and how he would be involved and how it would affect him. That's just how my mind works now.

There Is No Arizona

Remember how I said my next post would be coming from sunny Arizona? Well, it's not, but I think it's probably better that way, because now I can chronicle the entire trip (yay! another super-long blog, right?)

Friday, May 29
Got up at 3 a.m. to catch a plane out of New Orleans by 6. I vaguely remember a layover in Houston, but other than that the hours of 4-9 are pretty foggy. We rented a car in Phoenix and immediately drove to the Arizona Science Museum. It was definitely geared more towards the younger crowd (think 12 and under), but it was still a fun time. They had a whole floor devoted to Lego sculptures -- who wouldn't love that?

After a few hours at the Science Museum, we were pretty pooped so we retired to our hotel for some rest, followed by a swim in the enormous pool. Still on Louisiana time, we woke up at roughly 5 a.m. Arizona time to this view from our window:

Saturday, May 30
We originally set out to see a show at the Great Arizona Puppet Theater, but once we got there we decided it looked like another "kid" thing, so we headed the three blocks over to the Phoenix Art Museum. It was pretty big, and full of very cool stuff. Our favorite was probably "You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies", a small room with mirrored walls, ceiling, and floor that was pitch black except for strings of colored LED lights hung from the ceiling. You couldn't tell where the walls or ceiling or floor started or ended, and it was really incredible and cool.

The museum also had a wing of fashion art that was one of the most badass things I've ever seen. Fortuny gowns, Pucci prints, original Balenciaga designs...I was pretty giddy, and Andy at least enjoyed seeing how silly I was acting.

After the art museum, we decided to see one last Phoenix attraction, the Mystery Castle. We originally weren't sure if it would be cool or not, but it was amazing. A man built the castle out of things he found (and sometimes stole) in the desert around Phoenix. It was just full of crazy things, like an organ salvaged from a saloon in Tombstone and a sofa designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Definitely one of my favorite places we went on the whole vacation, and I highly recommend it if you ever visit Phoenix.

That evening, we picked up Mr. Greg and Mrs. Marsha from the airport and came back to the hotel to rest.

Sunday, May 31
We got up early to make it to the Desert Botanical Garden outside Phoenix. It was full of different desert wildflowers and cacti -- lots of stuff I'd only seen in pictures. There was also an exhibit of colorful blown glass inspired by the Arizona desert that was pretty incredible. I got a little overheated and was ready to leave after an hour or so, but it was a really unique place to visit and I'm glad we went.

From there, we drove a few hours west to Sedona, which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Mrs. Marsha and Mr. Greg dropped Andy and me off at the Out of Africa Wildlife Park where we went on a "safari" and got to see all kinds of animals up close. They had a show called "Tiger Splash" where the staff essentially just played around in a pool with two big tigers in a swimming pool. On the safari, I got to feed a giraffe named Kebo, who wrapped his giant black tongue around my entire hand -- it was a little gross but very cool.

I think that's enough for today. I'll try to finish blogging about the trip in the next few days.

The Obligatory Twilight Post

If there's a fail safe way to drum up hits on your blog, it's to talk about Twilight, right?

I would like to preface all of this by mentioning my qualifications as an expert critic. I was awarded scholarships to some fancy pants arts schools; I've studied creative writing in college at both the University of Colorado and Louisiana State University; I have friends who are successful, published authors; my personal motto is "show, don't tell" -- I know what good literature is, okay? I promise. (See how I did that? Motto is show don't tell, but all I did right there was tell you a bunch of stuff? That's what we call irony).

Here is a picture of me with glasses on, looking full of wisdom:

If that doesn't convince you that I'm brilliant, I don't know what will.

And yet I am drawn to the Twilight series like Prince Charles to Camilla -- secretly, and with great shame. I first heard of the books roughly a year ago, when references to this Edward Cullen fellow began cropping up all over Facebook. Not since Harry Potter have I seen such an outpouring of appreciation for a book or series of books, and these crazy tweens claim to not only enjoy the books, but literally love Edward. As if he were a real boy.

Once I saw the teaser trailer for the movie, I decided it was time to see what all the fuss was about. As I've mentioned before, I have a lot of downtime at work, so that's generally when I get things like recreational reading done. I didn't want to look like the total loser that I am, perched at the front desk devouring the paperback edition of what I fully expected to be teenage trash, so I got the audiobooks and listened to them on my iPod. (More and more I am coming to believe that audiobooks are the best way to enjoy books. I love being read to). Ilyana Kadushin's breathy narration fit the silliness of the dialogue well; I think if I had read the books myself I would have put them down out of disgust, but it was highly entertaining to giggle at the out-loud version of so many "Oh, EDWAAAAAAARD"s and "Belllllalooove"s.

I would like to tell you that I read all 4 books out of morbid curiosity, or because I just wanted a good laugh. But that would not be true. I read all 4 books because I enjoyed them.

I'm still not sure exactly what attracts me to this series. I realize how badly written the books are. I detect hints of racism, and the (semi-spoiler alert!) "grown men-wolves imprinting on baby girls" thing is creepy, no matter how you justify it. I don't like the glamorization of abstinence, and I think Edward comes off as a controlling asshole.

But kids, I cannot tear myself away. I listened to the audiobooks in the car, at work, at home, and I even stayed up late when I was sleepy to listen to them -- if I'm tired, I don't stay up late for ANYTHING.

I went to see the movie by myself. Then I made my boyfriend go see it with me again. Then I rented it for 24 hours on my cable box and watched it 4 times in a row -- that's roughly 8 hours. A week later I bought the DVD, and I'm embarrassed to say that it STAYS in our DVD player, and I watch it whenever Andy isn't home, often just to have on in the background while I do other things. If my DVD player had a "repeat" setting, I can guarantee you I would have Twilight on a loop.

And the movie's not very good, either. I really liked Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen, but Twilight is a mess. And I KNOW HOW BAD IT IS. I can see that. (Except for Kristen Stewart, who is generally a terrific actress. Not to mention my giant, throbbing girl crush on her. She's just so cute and angsty!)

But I just can't tear myself away. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I think maybe I'm the extreme example of the "mom" type who reads it as escapism. Particularly since I've been in and out of college the past 4 years, I've been reading mostly highly literary fiction, and some feminist theory and philosophy. Twilight is very nearly the opposite of all those things. It's got clunky dialogue, a pinch of misogyny, and a few cliched symbols thrown in for good measure. It embodies everything I dislike.

With everything I've been dealing with the past year -- uncertainty about the welfare of my parents; terminally ill grandparents; trying to balance housekeeping, work, and bringing my gpa up (from a -.5, did you know that you can have a negative GPA? Well you can.) and not flunk out of school [again]; etc. -- my poor little brain probably just couldn't handle much more. It needed a vacation from amazing, brilliant literature. I needed to not be blown away by insightful portraits of realistic people and real life. I'd had enough real life for a while.

I needed Twilight. I needed symbols so obvious they smack you over the head, characters so cliche they make you gag, and unreasonable, frustrating plots. It just made things a little more bearable to forget for a while that my family might soon be homeless, my grandfather wasn't going to see me get married, and my house was a wreck. I just needed to escape.

And I guess I still do. I still watch the movie at least once a week, and I troll around the internet looking for news and gossip about New Moon. If there were other books, I'd be reading them. And I'm okay with that. There is room on my bookshelf for both Nabokov and Meyer. I am lame, lame, lame, and it beats the hell out of being wound up and stressed out.


Next blog will be coming to you from sunny Arizona! I'll try to post some pictures of me sweating and looking impatient and pissed off (because that's what vacations are for, right?)

Revved Up Like a Deuce

Hi again.

Figured it was time to update you, my precious little blog. So here's what's happened to me over the past week:

• Went to West Monroe and shot more footage of my grandmother
• Hung out with my awesome cousin and his awesome girlfriend, and saw Star Trek for the second time
  
• Traced my genealogy back to the 1500's
• Searched (fruitlessly) for my grandmother's adopted sister's grandchildren on Facebook (cause I'm creepy like that)
• Started a new diet and lost 2 lbs.
• Began editing the footage from Mama Ne's wedding as well as the first interview with her

It's been a banner week for "getting stuff done", methinks. The video editing is going to be a slow, painstaking process from what I can tell. Right now, I'm mostly just marking the footage for beginning and ending of interviews, then clipping out Mama Ne's answers from my questions.

From what I can tell, the narrative that I hope to achieve won't be visible until we're nearly through with filming. Obviously, the frame is my grandmother's life, but I want there to be another narrative thread (a more prominent one, actually) or at least a theme that ties it all together and makes it interesting to watch. Of course, her accounts of stories from her childhood/life before I was born are interesting to me, but I doubt they will interest many other people outside of my family (and even my family, from what I can tell, is not nearly as interested as I am in what her prom dress looked like, what songs were played at her first wedding, how she wore her hair in 1963, things like that).

Which leads us back to the overwhelming theme or story that I want to tell. I want there to be exposition, conflict, and resolution. Just not sure how to show those things. I'm better with writing; images and other people's words are a very new medium for me to manipulate.

Mama Ne mentioned in our first interview that a book of genealogy was written on her father's family. My dad just so happened to have a copy of the book, which I examined yesterday afternoon during my down time at work. That sort of thing is very interesting to me, because really, I'm an old lady at heart. I used genealogy.com's free family tree maker to create a pretty thorough family tree, if I do say so myself, dating all the way back to Thomas and Iwerner Bowers, my oldest relatives traced in the book my dad let me borrow.

Then, as I mentioned in my sexy bulleted list, I used the information from that book to search Facebook for my younger cousins whom I've never met, because their grandmother (Mama Ne's younger sister) was adopted. Not much luck. Thanks to the relative commonness of their names and Facebook's impeccable privacy settings, I wasn't able to find many promising leads. It was exciting to know the names of this family that I've never met, people who most likely don't know I exist, but it was equally disappointing to find that I really have no way of contacting them, and even if I did, they probably wouldn't care to know me.

As for the diet, I am HUNGRY. But it's not so bad. All the fruit and veggies my little tummy can handle. Additionally, it's one of those you-buy-our-food deals, and you're suppost to eat two of the prepackaged meals each day. I've only found one that I like, so we're going to need to order some more of that (Chicken Pasta Parmasean) asap, because we're already out and I've essentially only eaten fruit + liquid the past 2 days. Ah yes, the liquids! The diet also includes at least 2 shakes a day, blended from either a vanilla or chocolate mix. The shakes are pretty delicious, but sadly we're out of the vanilla blend, which is best for fruity shakes.

The only problem with this diet that we've noticed so far is that it's EXPENSIVE. Fruit and veggies (even canned and frozen ones) suck up $$ quickly when you're eating at least 5 servings a day, plus adding them in shakes. This is one of those times when I really wish I was a homeowner and could have a little pea patch of my own. Or better yet, a gazillionaire, and a pineapple plantation of my own.

Even though I have more to talk about, I get the feeling this blog post has gone on long enough. If you've made it all the way down here to the bottom without having an attack of ADD, congratulations! If I had prize-awarding capabilities, you would win something.

'Allo, poppets!

Welcome to le blog de Sara (that's SpanFrenglish for Sara's Blog)! I've been meaning to do this for a while, and now I have a couple different reasons to: I'll be writing for the LSU newspaper, The Reveille, and they "recommend" that I blog; and I'm starting on this giant project for my grandmother, and I want to keep family/friends updated. Other than that, I assume that people are rabidly interested in my life and dying to hear my mundane observations.

Now, I decided to throw my hat into the blog game roughly five minutes ago, but I'm hoping my super-smart-techy-teriffic-handsome boyfriend, Andy, might help me out a little with the design aspects. I knooooooooow he'd be so good at making this blog look neat *hint, hint* -- but we'll see, since a) He knows nothing about this yet, and b) He has a job and he tries to have a life outside of catering to my every whim (though he generally fails at that last part -- adorably). Anyway, all I'm saying is, don't get your hopes up about this becoming some visually beautiful piece of internet pie -- but do feel free to email Andy and beg him to make it so. :)

Some notes on the project for my grandmother: I'll be working on a "documentary," filled with 1st-person stories from her and her family about her life. We (Andy and I) just shot the first footage and interviews this weekend, and we'll be spending the rest of the summer (if not longer) getting interviews, doing detective work, and editing all these elements together to try to make an interesting, accurate, coherant narrative representation of her life story.

Here are some words that DON'T describe me: ambitious, follower-througher, motivated, time-manager. So this will essentially be the biggest, most serious thing I've ever done in my entire life, if it actually happens. Wish me luck, ya'll.

Aside from my project with my grandmother, I'll be probably be posting possible Reveille columns/ideas as well as day-to-day musings/observations...so hopefully this blog will be full of variety and novelty.

So, those are my great aspirations for this, my little baby blog. Now, sit back and watch as I do one of two things: fail miserably (what I do best), or succed WILDLY, like LOLcats or The Daily Kos.

Speaking of LOLcats, here's something precious to round out my first blog: