Hey Bulldog!

First, I wanted to thank everyone for their comments on my last post. They truly helped. You all are so awesome, I can't even attempt to put it in words. Thanks for your support, help, and advice. I appreciate it so much.

Anyway, I had a great night. One of my close friends had a birthday party, and she originally invited about 14 people, but only 6 could come, so it ended up being all of my closest friends and our best guy friend, just like last year. It was the perfect number of people and we had a lot of fun. No tension whatsoever; just a lot of laughing and cake. Just like old times. What a great end to a break.

I'm not really sure what has been causing the tension the past few months, but tonight it all melted away. I guess some of us are taking our personal struggles out on each other. One friend has fallen into a deep depression, which I guess is causing her moodiness. It's difficult trying to deal with her sometimes, because she takes her anger on us even if we did nothing to her. Two other friends are too preoccupied with a fandom to bother living in the real world. They could discuss this manga they obsess over for hours a day. It gets a bit irritating. I don't know, but I still love all of my friends and even if we irritate each other, I think we all recognize how important we are to each other.

Something one of my more honest friends has told me the past few days is interesting. Today, I was talking about how I'm very interested in hippie culture right now and how I find acid (LSD) to be intriguing. I didn't mean intriguing as in I would consider taking it, but I think it's kind of fascinating. My friends obviously thought that this was not something healthy to find intriguing, and this one friend said she wouldn't be surprised to see me taking acid. Surprised, I asked "do I seem like someone who would become a druggie?" Apparently, I do.

This is actually quite shocking to me. I've always been curious to see what kind of person I am in the eyes of others, especially people who know me well. I know that my friends find some of my interests to be a bit bizarre, but to think of me as someone who would take acid? I don't really know what to make of that.

Another thing I've been told is that apparently I'm quite an indifferent person. I give a vibe of "I don't give a shit" about everything. This completely threw me off because I've always thought myself as someone who overreacts to everything. I guess, in a way, maybe I have become someone who doesn't care about things that are unimportant anymore. My whole life I have been someone who took things too seriously, who worried incessantly and all that nonsense. I suppose now I care about few things, because I'm trying to lower my stress level in any way I can. I know what severe stress is, to the point where I developed a stammer as a result that I haven't entirely lost. Being indifferent to most things is my way of avoiding unnecessary stress.

I really don't think I'm indifferent, though. I think my friends are completely wrong. I may give a front of not caring about anything, but I actually do. I care very deeply. I feel things very complexly. Sometimes I have so much emotion, I have no idea what to do with it all. I don't know how to entrust people with my emotions, though, which prevents me from showing how much I care about everything. I can't tell people about what I feel and how I feel, because I'm afraid they'll shut me down or look at me so differently that I'll feel uncomfortable around them. That's why I blog, and (very, very, rarely) write poetry. I'm not a verbal person, even though I wish I was sometimes. I'd rather write something out and have my friends read it and process it in their own way than express something in words out loud. But that also could be because I jumble up my words when I speak and end up sounding like a fool.

There's a deeper look into my thoughts for you all. I'm not sure how you'll take it, but I'm working on being more honest, both with myself and with others.

I hate small towns.

Today's rant will be about small towns. Yay, small towns!

Actually, no. Curse small towns. Small towns are the reason I finally got my car registered today, but have nowhere to go. Small towns are the reason I spend a ton of money at the bookstore because I don't know what else there is to do nearby. Small towns are the reason I have to drive half an hour to get to a theatre that plays movies worth seeing.

I'm in one of those moods tonight where I'm desperate to go out somewhere simply for the sake of going out. I'm on break from school this week, and it's been pretty uneventful so far. I want to see a movie, but all the major movies playing right now are hopelessly lame. Seriously, The Vow? Sounds like a cheap Nicholas Sparks remake.

I could be doing homework right now, but I'm trying to enjoy at least part of my break. It doesn't seem to be working, though, because I know I should be doing something more important, like the 1000 projects I was assigned to do over this one-week period. It's close to making me cry.

Guys, I'm so frustrated with my life. I'm so unbearably angry at being assigned at least one project in each of my classes. I'd rather be at school with the average night's homework than all of this awful work I'm expected to have finished by the end of this week. My mind is so exhausted from all of this continuous work. I don't know what a break is, because I'm never given one. I have literally prayed for the flu or mono or something that could give me some form of relaxation, even if distorted. I know that's an awful thing to admit, but that's how tired I am.

I feel embarrassed with myself, how much I've been alone recently. My friends and I have almost stopped hanging out outside of school because we're so tired of being around each other. I think we're afraid that if we hang out with each other, the constant reminder that we have schoolwork to do will come back to haunt us and we'll return to our tense and stressed selves. But I miss them. I mean, I enjoy being alone a lot, but sometimes my brain tells me that this is not normal; that I shouldn't be content with being alone and I should feel guilty. That's how I feel right now. I feel guilty for not being normal enough to go out with friends and do nonsense when I really just feel like watching a movie right now.

I know my depressing posts are depressing anyone who bothers to read my blog anymore. I suppose I'm just searching for someone to listen to me and say: "Hey, you know what? I care. You're wonderful." I don't know if honest and caring people exist like that anymore, though. Don't worry, I'm not expecting that from any of you. I'm really not. I guess sometimes my blog's kind of therapeutic for me. I write because it makes me feel better.

Sorry, blogfriends. I know I'm irritating.

5 actresses who would be better off...not existing?

There are some actresses that, in my opinion, ruin the art of modern acting. These "actresses" are shallow, talentless bigots who think they're more important than they really are because they starred in a few cheesy rom-coms (which are shallow to begin with) that only people as stupid as they are actually enjoyed.

Two of the major qualities that earn my respect for an actress is the choices she makes in what she performs in, and how she performs in them. Choosing stupid films that don't involve any character emotional development, a good plot, or talented writing, in my opinion, show a lot about an actress and the person she is outside of the film. Obviously, acting is important too. If an actress is entirely expressionless, I can't imagine how she could be considered talented. Then there's the excessively emotional actress who seems to think if she shows enough emotion, she'll be considered a worthy actress. Finally, there's just the girl that can't act. You remember the lead actress in the middle school production of Romeo and Juliet? The one that couldn't get anything right? Yeah, Hollywood has that too, apparently.

1. Megan Fox-Good Lord, if ever there was a more overrated woman in the world. This girl took her Transformers fame and multiplied it by 100 to achieve the size of her ego. The only reason she's even honored for that film is because of her looks she worked with talented actors and decent writing. Her acting in itself is awful. If you ever need further proof, watch Jennifer's Body. She runs on looks alone and judging by all that plastic surgery, that's run out too.

2. Kate Hudson-I'll admit, I'm a bit unfairly biased against this woman, considering she got knocked up by my favorite front man in the world (Matt Bellamy). Either way, she really doesn't have anything worthy of remembering in 50 years. She's starred in a number of rom-coms, all entirely forgettable (Bride Wars, Something Borrowed). She is not distinctive as an actress in any way. She chooses safety films (chick flicks) that don't require a great deal of talent but will provide her with a substantial income for a year or so, then repeats the cycle. She thinks that she can live off of the fact that her mom, Goldie Hawn, was a decent comedy actress of her time. She's not her mother, but a heavily watered down version of Goldie.

Oh hey guys look at my long Goldie Hawn blonde hair maybe if it's shiny enough people won't notice how utterly indistinctive and air-headed I actually am! 

3. Lea Michele-I have no respect at all for this woman. She seems to be one of the most shallow actresses of this generation. Her two major acting endeavors, Glee and New Year's Eve, I'm convinced were mostly because of her voice (which isn't eyebrow-raising, I'd say). Any emotion she attempts to show, seems forced and entirely lacking. I feel like I can read her emotional depth within 5 minutes of a Glee episode, not to mention that it seems she's doing some soul-selling just to get her name out there. When I think of a shallow actress of today, there's a reason she's the first one I think of.

4. Post-Friends Jennifer Aniston-This one might cause some protest. I'll have you know, I adore Friends and think Jennifer Aniston was perfect for her role as Rachel in the show. After the show, however, it all started to tumble downhill. Jennifer decided the only way to preserve her fame was to star in some awful chick flicks (The Break-Up, anyone?) that were so bad they left me embarrassed and horrified. I don't know if it's the enormous Hollywood fame that's gotten to her, but I don't see why she thinks that starring in as many bad movies as possible will preserve her career. She didn't do well in them at all. I have two theories: either she shone as a member of a talented group in Friends, but isn't good enough to perform equally as well as a lead in anything else, or she simply doesn't care anymore. After all, Friends has secured her for a lifetime, both in Hollywood recognition and income. She was great in Marley and Me (and pretty good in Horrible Bosses), though, which leaves me convinced she's aware her movies suck now but is too lazy to do anything better.

5. Kristen Stewart-Do I even have to elaborate? Not really, but I will anyway. She gives emotional depth to a sheet of paper. I don't know what Hollywood sees in her. Besides the Twilight series, I've seen her in The Runaways (and other films that she starred in as a young teenager), which some people claim shows a new side of her as an actress, but I disagree. She shows slight improvement in the film than in Twilight, but is still emotionally indifferent throughout. Even when she smiles, the smile doesn't go to her eyes. I remain entirely unconvinced that she is capable of showing any emotional complexity as an actress, which obviously is essential for performance in true Hollywood art. When I found out last week that she was starring in On the Road, I almost screamed. The book is so complex and profound that it requires true talented actors, and I know she won't be able to live up to those expectations in her role. Possibly one of the most overrated actresses in movie-makers eyes.

I could slap her in the face with a fish and nothing would happen.

Hollywood frustrates me.

100 Books to Read.

According to the BBC, the average person has only read 6 of these 100 must-read books. I've bolded the ones I've read, and italicized the ones that I've partially read or never finished.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland -Lewis Carol

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

 75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So, that makes it a total of 26 books read, and 9 partially read. Not too bad, eh? One of my goals in life is to  have read all the books on this list. I'm basically about 1/4 through it, so hopefully within a few years I'll have finished it!

Oh, by the way, I passed my 100th post without realizing it. Haha, no point in celebrating now. Celebrations will come for 200th then!

How many of the books have you read?

I really want a ukelele.

Last night I had a dream that (young, hot) John Lennon was my boyfriend. It was bizarre. John's not even my favorite Beatle. George is. And then, at the end of my dream, John died and I was devastated. It was weird experiencing this deep grief for some guy that I apparently loved in my dream. These kinds of dreams have been happening a lot lately. I keep falling in love with famous people in my dreams, but it's never fulfilling. They either die or I wake up before something good happens. I wonder what it means. It's almost like a constant reminder that I'm forever alone! :D

Guys, I'm so scared. I'm scared that I won't make any friends in college next year. I've had the same group of friends for 3 years. Any new friends I've made are because all of us are in the same classes. I don't know how to make friends outside of that anymore. I don't know how to make small talk, which is apparently an essential part of forming new friendships.

I lost a lot of friends I had at my church last winter because I was in a rut. I expected they would understand and be waiting for me when I returned to normal in the spring because that's what true friends do (which I thought they were). They didn't. Their lives went on. They grew closer and left me behind. I gave up on those church friends, and gave up on having friends at that place at all anymore. Losing friends you were previously close with has an enormous impact on you, though. Every time you go back and see them, it terrorizes you. You go home feeling worse than ever.
I just want to leave, forget they ever existed, and never see them again.

On top of that, my group of friends that I love dearly is going through a rough time. We've all been more tense and irritable, and not a day goes by in school that at least one mini-argument doesn't occur within the group. One day it's me and one friend. Another day it's another friend and her closest friend. It's scaring me, because we've never had such conflict. We're all so stressed though with all this overwhelming schoolwork, and maybe even tired of seeing each other all the time. Seeing each other every single day for the majority of the past 3 years gets annoying.

I'm hoping things will get better, but it all comes back to my fear of next year. My childhood and younger teen years, I suffered from two parasitic friendships that changed me. I lost any other friends I'd had for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. Up until sophomore year, I'd never had a great group of friends. Now, with everything that's happening and college looming in the near future, I'm wondering if I'll ever find the true friends everyone claims to have, or if I'm just destined to end up alone. But being alone is my greatest fear. You have no idea how much it terrifies me.

I'm starting to think there's something wrong with me. I either choose friends that take advantage of me, or I'm not good enough for them because they drop me entirely. I don't know why.

Don't mind me. I'm off to listen to Paul McCartney's new album...well, just because.

I'm also watching the Grammy's. Foster the People was amazing. As were the Beach Boys. And Macca. Oh  they made my night.

This band. Ugh. I've dreamt about them too.

Taylor Swift's performance sucks. Hey Taylor, I'ma let you finish but Paul McCartney had one of the best Grammy performances of ALL TIME. :D

I was so tempted...

Out of sheer boredom and for the noble pursuit of procrastination, I decided to look up how much a domain name costs. I'm not planning on getting my own domain name and not interested in taking out the ".blogspot" part of my domain name; I was just curious. I had expected the choice of .com, .org, maybe .net. I got this:

.xxx! .XXX! I'd heard they finally made it an actual TLD (what does that even stand for?) specifically for those kinds of sites, but to have that as an option?! I'll shamefully admit, I considered it for one second, just for the hilarity. Could you imagine the wonderful irony? 

As if I had $80 to spare...

Laugh all you want at my immaturity. We all have a bit of a 15 year old boy in us. Well, maybe not.

Your eyes of judgement. I CAN FEEL THEM.

:)

Hi. It's Wednesday.

Coldplay has a new video! It's called "Charlie Brown," which makes me very excited because that's my current favorite of 'Mylo Xyloto'. Here it is:

I'm so satisfied with the video. It's exactly how I pictured it.

I've been missing a lot of school this year. Call it "senioritis" or whatever, but I think it's out of boredom (not to mention tiredness). I've become so unbelievably bored with everyday school life. It's the same routine every day. I can't possibly stress how boring it is. Every morning I wake up exhausted, go to school and sit in the same classes, take minimal notes, attempt to distract myself by googling random things, and still end up bored and exhausted.

I see no purpose in going to school. My learning these days is minimal. I can go through the entire day and not learn a single thing, mostly because I'm just too lazy to pay attention. I don't see anything we're taught as helpful, because I never end up reviewing the notes I take. I take some notes to pass the time. They don't help me. They're too broad for the very specific tests we're given. Knowing that hydrochloric acid is a strong acid and sodium hydroxide is a strong base is not going to help me on my Acids and Bases test. Only rereading the 30 page textbook chapter is going to help me.

Everything we're learning this year is so thoroughly uninteresting. It all bores me to death. The only class I find moderately intriguing is English, but the books are all kind of lame. I'm not one to label books "lame," but there really can't be anything worse than Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome.

You see, all of the classes I'm in are preparing for a college-level exam at the end of the year. I don't have a reason to care anymore. I got into college. If I keep my grades up to a decent level (and they are), I shouldn't get any admission reconsideration. What's the point then? Last year, I had something to prove. I had to prove to myself, to my peers, and to colleges that I could do well, and I did. I have a deep-set fear of personal mediocrity, and I overcame that in terms of academics.

(I hope you don't think I'm arrogant based on the above paragraph. I'm really not. For the longest time, I really believed I was just a stupid girl that got decent grades because she worked hard. I don't have any achievements to shove into people's faces or any extremely honorable accomplishments. I just recognize the fact that I worked hard. Does that make sense?)

I'm just into things now that are ultimately more satisfying than classes that really don't mean anything other than potential college credit. I put aside my interests for several years so that I could do well in school. That's grown old. I'm tired of being stressed. I want to finally reserve some time for myself and things that I enjoy.

Which is why I did no homework today, despite the fact that I have several projects I could (and should be) working on.

The logical side of my brain finds it essential to suggest that you ignore all of the above paragraphs in favor of a much shorter explanation for my lack of academic motivation and poor attendance record: I'm lazy.

My love for Pixar.

Pixar is the love of my life. It is the joy of the radiant sun that shines in the morning. It is the melodic laughter of a child. It is the combination of everything that is beautiful and adorable.

(Okay, creepy introduction paragraph over. I really seem to have a fondness for anaphora. Maybe because my name's in the term.)

I have an inexplicable, almost bizarre, love for Pixar. I've seen all of the major films and most of the shorts. I watch them consistently. I quote them at random. I annoy my friends about them.

For some reason, some people consider Pixar to be almost exclusively for children. I can't understand why. I grew up with Pixar and as they continue to release brilliant films, I don't find myself outgrowing them at all. They still make me as happy as I was when I watched them as a kid. Whereas my perspective has changed on some of the Disney films (I adore Peter Pan, but the constant references to killing in it is crazy!), my perspective on Pixar films hasn't. On the contrary, the things I discover in Pixar as a teenager make me love it even more than when I was a child. Some of the quotes I didn't recognize or understand as a child are my favorites now.

Finding Nemo: (conversation between two sharks when Marlin and Dory arrive)
Chum: Humans-think they own everything.
Anchor: Probably American.

Both of those quotes I wouldn't imagine understanding as a child, but I love them now. What hasn't changed, though, is how happy they make me. With Pixar films, when you watch the films, you get into their world and you become friends with the characters. They leave you happy and enchanted, thinking "well hey, life's not so bad. Actually, it's pretty fantastic!"

Finding Nemo is my favorite, closely followed by Ratatouille. Personal story time: when I was in 5th grade, my mom came down with a life-threatening chronic illness. It was a scary time, but I would watch Finding Nemo on my bed multiple times per week. It always made me feel better, no matter how bad things were going. Watching that movie and "Beyond the Sea" playing in the credits at the end, to me, solved everything. If Nemo and Marlin could overcome so many terrible things, why couldn't I? So yeah, there's a little sweet story for you.

The Pixar shorts are also adorable. They're like condensed versions of Pixar films, but are just as likeable. The fact that Pixar can tell as great of a story in 5 minutes as they can in 2 hours is true skill. Here's my favorite:

Moral of the story: Pixar is amazing. It works for all ages. It has great stories for little kids, and it has an added layer of depth and beauty for adults. It's perfect.