Drowning Lessons

His hands wrap themselves tightly around my neck, bruises blossoming beneath his grasp. His hands are starving for me, starving like hungry pythons slithering aptly around the body of a small goat, fangs bared.

It’s the water, I know, I know how it gets him off.

But it’s so fucking cold going in, my face submerged in the icy pool, dunked like the baptism I never had as an infant. It’s fucking cold, yeah, but mostly it’s dark and lonely when the water fills my vision.

One. Two. Three times.

Sure my hair is plastered to my face and neck, all that curling and rouging for nothing. But I can feel the ecstasy he does as the water fills my lungs, consumes me.

My brain short circuts. My oxygen supply is done. It’s just him forgetting to let me up for air.

But it’s okay, I know, fighting back the panic, the very urge to fight. This is us. This is our relationship. We’re having a good time. This is us having a good time.

Yeah, this is what we all do for love.

Blorg

Blorg: an online blog and blurb hybrid (a term invented by Melogno, my favorite Physics teacher, and cultivated and defined by yours truly).

LoL

What would you call a blog that isn't online? Is it even possible? Would it be like a sporadic, free periodical that focussed on what books or films the sole creator was "into" right then, hobbies, and emotional ranting,? If the internet somehow suddenly ceased to exist, could blogs carry on?

These are the kinds of questions that keep me up at night.


...

So tomorrow I present on DEATH (the afterlife). I'm pretty stoked (such a beachbum word, I apologize, though not enough to actually remove it) about the whole talking for two hours thing. In all my life I've never been asked to provide accounts of my research on the macabre for more than a moment or two (if at all) and I've certainly never been allowed accompanying activities and art projects. This just might make my life.

That would be kind of sad, though.

Anywho... not much to say, except that I felt like blogging. And that I began my day with making fun of T. A. Edison and then later used him as a rather good example for allowing his nuttier ideas to influence his more serious work and vice versa. Poor Thomas Alva.

Oh! I've decided to command people's attention tomorrow with food rather than my voice, while it is sultry and alluring, I understand that it likens to the buzzing sound of a small insect's wings after short periods of time (or so believe the majority of the occupants of my small chunk of world). ;p

I'd like to conclude this blorg with a quote that really stands out to me, not only as a scholar, but as a human being.

"MERGH?!?"

-- Thomas Alva Edison

Deaf

Did Somebody Say Rainbow Cupcakes???

How does one accomplish such a foreboding task? Well, it's not easy...

First you make white cake mix in a BIG bowl. (Follow their instructions, not mine. And make sure you get a thin batter, preferably one without pudding mix inside, because it's a real pain in the neck to pour-- it gets to be more like scraping, eventually. I learned that the hard way...)



Then you divide (and conquer) the batter into six bowls, then add some color. (Three to four drops of liquid food coloring really worked well for me, for purple and orange I added about three drops of each sub-pigment to achieve the vibrancy featured below.)



Okay, here's the hard part-- you have to put like a tiny scoop (maybe less than half a teaspoon) into each cupcake cup... it will eventually (after twenty to twenty five minutes) look like this D:

The rest is easy peasy, just Bake*Frost*Serve*!

Yup... this is how I spend my evenings. I'm a Wilde thing. ;p

The Promenade Ball

Wow! It has been SUCH a long time since last I've blogged. My apologies.

So I've been super busy lately, senior year is coming to a close, I've just ordered the proof copy for my research book, Above and Beyond, I lost my dream chart and-- oh yeah-- prom was this Friday!

So that's me (it's the only prom picture of me that I actually like at the moment) looking super hot with the spectacular curls that my cousin so generously created. That's my date back there, a Sir Joseph Thorne (a decedent of Tristran and Evaine, no doubt)... we sort of... took each other... I'm not really sure how that worked, but we went together and it was fabulous.

Prom was at the Richard Nixon Library, and the theme was Victorian which suited me just fine (so, so Oscar). We danced and drank cucumber water and talked about the seven husbands I plan on one day having... It was brilliant.

Do you like my seat belt sash?

What to Do...?

What do you do when you find porn on someones computer? The computer that they share with their family? Right out where everyone can see it on the topsites list?

I was faced with this dilemma very recently. And, being a good Samaritan, I figured, you know, I guess people are people. I'll just delete this from the top sites tab and hope it goes away forever... so I did.

Yeah, well, it turns out it wasn't just one little excursion, it was a load of unmentionable sites so massive in number that the computer froze from me clicking the [x] button so fast until I just sighed, scrubbed my hands like I was prepping for surgery, and gave up.

I wasn't in the best mood today anyway, and now I've come to a conclusion. People aren't people. Women are people. Men are animals.

Animals with no shame, no consideration, and little worth as anything more than components of reproduction. Gentlemen are gone from this Earth, if they ever existed, and the porn industry is probably making bank on this fact, damn them.

Reunion

So I've been trying to get a hold of an old friend lately. I thought his phone had been disconnected or switched, because he never answered my texts, and then I saw that he wasn't answering my Facebook messages, either, so I was pretty upset about that...

You see, I don't know how to treat males. They're pretty foreign to me, and it seems like I'm always going after the gay ones and treating the ones I'm not going after like they're gay. As a female companion I have only two modes: potential girlfriend (as I have yet to become a real one) and "Gerl-Frennnnn!" This makes straight males uncomfortable and, more often than not, completely annoyed. In fact, there have only been three (straight) male mammals in the history of the universe capable of interacting with me sans side-effects, only two of them are human.

Because of my social idiocy, it's very difficult for me separate friend and love interest (just like in a soap opera!) and so it goes without saying that I crushed hard on 1/3 of the aforementioned male mammals. Hint: It wasn't the dog. LoL

Since I'm the Queen of Awkward and he's prettymuch the ruler of the Land of Nice and Forgiving, everything was cool, until we lost touch. I guess I didn't mind too much, because it was really simple to try and forget him as a whole, wrong, but easier on me, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, once I started thinking about him, the dam broke and I missed him terribly. D:

But it's cool. He called me back today and we had a fabulous chat about I-Poly, the awesome Physics teacher, Gaiman... :)

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is, but it's probably something like "Don't blog without caffeine pumping your system or else everything you say will sound irrelevant and mushy."

Anyway, found this fantastic blog on Gaiman's Journal (Blog, lol) from this awesome chick who-- I kid you not-- skates in professional roller derby, used to be in a band, and works in or owns a coffee shop in which she created-- get this-- a Gaiman-named cup of coffee!!!

She is my new superhero, I love her, and will proceed to take up skating in her name.

<3

Oh, I decided that, in order to save money, once I love to New York I'll simply live off of coffee and word count. And I finished my book. More news at eleven.

What Do You Call a Psychic Midget on the Lam?

So I've been finishing up the book... well, okay, I've been pulling out my hair in frustration, sleeping at odd hours, watching Stardust, dodging extravagant BlockBuster fees (They're going out of business anyway), and talking to myself in a British accent (I'm doing it now) WHILE I write, write, write my book away. I've got about 40% of a chapter to go, plus the conclusion, which may or may not be about half done, and then it's editing, proofreading, formatting, and publishing for me.

Okay, I cannot stop thinking to myself in an English accent. It's a Gaiman overload, it happens more often that you'd think... which is quite sad.

Anyway, I've just polished off a whole pot of coffee and a section on cold reading, which is pretty interesting, if I do say so myself... (The cold reading; the coffee was just pretty good.) Now I've just got to talk about the real mediums in this world, even though I'll sound positively mad.

Really sorry I've not blogged in a while, been kind of busy; this weekend's been the first time that I've actually slept more than four hours in the past... Oh, I don't know, two weeks! (!!!! D:)
So that was nice. Somehow, I've actually managed to sleep, leave the house, and get work done. Spectacular. Although, one of the side-effects is that I can't seem to talk about anything but school and death, which have become synonymous lately so conversation seems, to me at least, monotonous, although I think mom's drawing me out of it slowly.

Also, I've just realized that if this [writing] is going to be my actual life, then I am going to be very busy and very pleased (as long as there's no equivelent of school, i.e. something that gets in my way). Mmm... decided that I'm going to NYU; debt be damned, I'm going to write and I need all the opportunity and instruction I can get!

Night.

PS. Oh! The title, right.
Answer: A small medium at large.

Bee Sketched

Hey Non Existent Readers!

Sorry that I haven't posted in a while, I was entertaining some friends I met last summer in Connecticut over my fabulous Spring Break... I was going to post some pictures of the three of us hanging out at the Getty and my interview with Melissa for my senior project (I'm doing my project on the After Life and she's been reincarnated) but my phone seems to be having issues with that. My dear phone, won in a wilde came of poker one night in Paris (in a review writing contest for the Los Angeles Skirball Center in 2008) seems to be going senile. Not only did it fail to download every single one of my photos (including some that I genuinely needed for school) it also deleted said photos and spent the last couple of days quite confused- it seemed to believe that it had a pair of headphones hanging out of it's side when it, in fact, did not... this created several problems for yours truly.

Anyway, I hope that its recent software update and a few days of solid rest will do my little phone some good, as I have no wish to replace it anytime in the foreseeable future.

In other news, I've created a second blog- Bee Sketched- which is basically pictures of pictures in my sketch book.

As far as this blog goes, I hope to publish a new short story- something I find fairly fantastical and definitely Gaiman inspired- by the end of this week. Also, I was very upset to discover (right after reading Startdust and then scanning Smoke and Mirrors in its entirety) that Neil Gaiman's books and stories never end happily... further studies will be conducted by Tulane's top scientists very soon.

Well, have a magnificent evening, and should you spot a falling star on the horizon... pray it fell on the right side of the wall and fly immediately to its rescue.

Yours,

-Bee

P.S. I was most pleased to discover that Gaiman, my favorite living author, has his own blog. Check it out. My favorite post so far is How To Mortify Your Daughter.

I-Poly Grading Sytem

It seems complicated at first, but here's what the I-Poly grading system really means.

NC- 50 % or less
NinCompoop

CR- 60%+
CRappy job, you turd.

AP- 70%+
APply yourself and maybe you'll pass life

P- 80% +
PretahNaahce! (Where we set the bar, Borat.)

AE- 90%+
Albert effing Einstein

E*- 90%+ Jesus Juice
Oh, you Elusive, Eloquent, Extraordinary Elite.

*Not a real grade, but an existential imagining created to knit the brows of students and cause them to sleep less, eat tiny bits of food at a time, lose tempers, and become ideal soldier's in all academic fields. Except Spanish.

Why it Would Suck to be a Princess or the Ridiculous Idealization of Female Monarchs in Modern Times

I guess bloggers are supposed to discuss their lives at some point, maybe chat about their weekend, so here's mine. I finally watched the Man in the Iron Mask circa 1939, was accepted into NYU, and wrote an essay about princesses. Here it is.

Why it Would Suck to be a Princess or the Ridiculous Idealization of Female Monarchs in Modern Times:

Everyone says that all little girls want to be princesses. They make movies about it, Shirley Temple assures Ms. Minchin that every little girl is a princess, Disney pictures raise hopes that any girl might be a princess in disguise. Every girl wants to be a princess, big, fancy dresses, beautiful headwear, handsome princes on gallant steeds, waiting to swoop you up and take you back to their lavish palaces.
But here’s the thing, all of that is utter crap.
In the end, a princess is just a politician who can’t escape her title. Sure, you’re rich and famous, but people hold you to a higher standard; from the middle ages to the 18th century, people of a nation believed that monarchs were sent by God himself. Not only did this mean that you could basically do whatever you wanted, but you had to be perfect in doing it, lest you collapse the very faith of your people, because God does not screw up.
Being perfect is a lot of work. It’s a kind of stress that teenagers can relate to quite well. You not only have to live up to your father, but to his father and his father before him and so on. Everyone knows your family history and an entire country is constantly watching your every move. People depend on you to rule their lands, to keep their taxes just right, even to keep them physically well. (During times of plague, one much favored cure was to be touched by royalty.) And if the pressure of lording over millions of people didn’t kill you, then the millions of people might, if you screwed up. Poor Marie Antoinette was brought into a failing country, married an impotent king, was immediately hated by the people of France, nick-named Madame Deficit for living a little beyond her means, accused of cheating and even committing incest, and then , quite literally, lost her head.
As for finding true love in the form of a handsome prince- today one half of all marriages end in divorce- people seem to have trouble in pursuit of true love. Given the increasingly tiny percentage of royalty worldwide, the chance that true love would be found in that small pool of options would be severely slim. No, princesses were married off for political reasons, to strengthen ties between two countries, to seal a pact. To be married to a prince meant to be sent away from one’s family, to a foreign county to please a soon-to-be king who you’d probably have never met. Sure, he might be sweet and handsome and heroic like Prince Phillip or Prince Erik from the movies (Sleeping Beauty and the Little Mermaid), but he might also be old and ill-tempered. (Consider that most young monarchs were spoiled, indolent little cretins who got everything they wanted exactly when they wanted it who grew up to be indulgent, in France’s case, syphilitic assholes.) Sure, you might land yourself a king like John II, the Good, Charles V, the Wise, or maybe Phillip V, Le Long (the tall), but you might just as easily end up with Louis V, the lazy, Louis X, the Quarreler, or even Charles VI, the Mad. A princess was expected to be beautiful, mild-mannered, and subservient, but- above all- a good princess was required to produce an heir (preferably male).
If you found your new hubby to be a royal pain in the ass, divorce was not an option. At least not until very recently, and it’s still frowned upon (because he divorced Princess Diana, Prince Charles will never ascend to the throne). Worse, if the king to a disliking to you, he might cope by taking a few mistresses (Monica Lewinsky would have hardly caused a sandal in 17th century France or England, where kings bore illegitimate children like they doled out additional and often unfair taxes.) If you somehow became a giant thorn in the kings side, he could easily order you exiled (as king Xerxes did to the beautiful and bold Queen Vasthi in the book of Esther) or he could simply have you beheaded with one simple, royal decree, like king Henry VIII did with just a few of his six wives.
All in all, being royalty is not all that great. Even the fictional Princess Leia, elected rather than born into her title, had her entire planet destroyed by her biological father and was deceived into lip-locking her own twin brother. (And that, my friends, creates a disturbance in the force.) In most cases, to be a princess is to be rich and famous, to be held to a higher standard than most human beings by the man, but subservient to the few. To be a princess is to be under the thumb of a country and its king at all times, and to still be beautiful and delicate, to bear as many children as possible and be happy about it. So every time I go to Disneyland or the fair and see a little girl or even young woman with a conic, veiled hat or a shining tiara, a sparkling crown, I point and laugh, because the idealization of monarchy is a thing spawned from ignorance, ridiculous and hilarious in nature.

A Look at Senioritus and the Only Known Cure

There is a time during the last months of primary (also known as required) education. It takes place when the leaves are growing anew, shaking off the frozen February dew, when flowers bud and struggle from the bonds of Winter's icy breath.

It is during this time that young scholars everywhere, specifically those in their final year of high school, are prone to a peculiar and medically inexplicable disease. Their eyes begin to blur over at large amounts of academic text, they ruffle their figurative feathers and squirm in the constricting confines of the classroom, and their attentions wander from chalkboards (which exist only in small quantities, having been largely replaced in the late 1990's by the more convenient and sanitary white boards) and progress onto windows, beyond which lie beautiful and wondrous greenery, tempting students beyond imagination. Physicians and school teachers alike cannot completely comprehend how the virus spreads, but spread it does. It takes but a single light-headed, unfocused, window-gazing student at but a single desk and, in but a few hours, the remainder of the class is infected. Within days less and less homework is being turned in, students begin to arrive late, students can no longer be counted upon to answer question in class, and- ultimately- grades begin to slip.

For centuries, Senioritus has baffled and befuddled doctors and scholars alike, great minds have toyed with the idea of the ancient virus, unable to wrap their heads around it. Etymologists theorize that it's the work of a small, orange bug that spreads the virus as a result of a penchant for ripe blood, biologists believe that the temporary affliction is merely an effect of the brain transitioning from youth to legal adulthood, while others maintain that it has to do with the approaching summer and ultimate freedom, now closer to a student's grasp than ever before. Nevertheless, Senioritus is a very real problem within American high schools, as any principal, teacher, or teacher's assistant will tell you.

In recent years, the victims of the plague themselves have developed (within secretive groups) a new, not yet FDA, school, or parent-approved cure, tentatively entitled "Senior Ditch Day." Though the treatment's title is somewhat misleading, as there are no plots or ditches being dug so far as researchers can detect, it seems to be effective in eliminating Senioritus almost completely from the teenage body. SDD, or "The Games," as the new cure's being refereed to in order to mislead authority figures who may find Senior Ditch Day "immoral" or "against the rules," (more news on what, exactly, the rules are at eleven)seems to consist of the members of an entire twelfth grade class, from the Yearbook's chief editor to the president of ASB, simply not showing up to school. These few hours of extra sleep coupled with the resulting giddiness of participating in a pre-planned, class-organized "sick" day seem to provide most seniors immune systems with the boost they require to kick even the worst case of Senioritus completely.

Some classes are attempting the avant-garde in planning "fun" events away from schools in order to promote a sense of unity and support for participators in the relatively new treatment. For instance, Pomona's own International Polytechnic High School put a bright twist on what some parents and most school boards have deemed an "irksome" and "quite possibly dangerous to the academic instructor's delicate psyche" cure for the horrid pandemic, by creating a one-day healing program for victims of the blight through physical therapy where students who refused to attend school this Wednesday (much to the shock of several uninformed teachers, though not including a certain mathematics instructor who offered, when he caught wind of students subjecting themselves to the unapproved cure, an extra credit "simple as pi" math quiz in hopes of luring frightened students away from any hasty treatment options.)and instead visited a nearby ice-skating rink in which they giggled at worried texts received from underclassman, complained loudly but nonetheless enjoyed themselves when falling on the harder-than-concrete-cold-as-a-witch's-you-know-what ice, and outright laughed when informed that parents had, in fact, been notified of their wave of absences.

"My mom already knows I'm here... What are they gonna do?" Chuckled one unidentified senior, who was met with a chorus of agreeances and she skated away, starting what would soon become a fully-fledged ice-skating train.

"This is just what I needed, especially after focusing so much on my senior project." Added another anonymous twelfth-grader, nodding in time to the hip music blaring from the rink's above speakers.

Though few results can be compiled by medical examiners so soon after the risky treatment has been administered, informed teachers have reported that they will be on the lookout for signs that the much-feared Senioritus has abated in the student body- that is, until next year...

Tacoma

Hi nonexistent readers that I chat with weekly, usually on Sundays so that I might recap my week, despite the fact that I might as well be using my time for something else, like writing my book or reading about Oscar Wilde, or making a documentary, how are you?

What's that? Oh, that lovely image to your right? Well, fictional friends, that's a snapshot of the University of Puget Sound, in sunny Tacoma, Washington (SARCASM BUTTON). Why is it there? Demand my imagined followers, confused and slightly upset. Fear not, pretend people, my picture placement is not without cause.

March 19, 2010: I received a text message from a friend of mine, Christina, riddled with excited all-caps declarations of gaining admission and financial aid into the University of Puget Sound. Though I, too, applied for admission, my application seemed to have been lost in the mail... twice. Excited for Christina and curious, I texted my Nina, wondering...

Me: Did I get mail?

My Nina: You got a letter from some college...

March 19, 2010: 8:14 P.M.: I break down and call my nina, heart pounding. Here is a transcript of the conversation.

Me: Nina! Where's the letter from?

Nina: P-Peu-Peeee-Poooooooo

Me: PUGET SOUND???

Nina: Sure.

Me: READ IT.

ME: Please.

Nina: Are you sure?

Me: READ.

Nina: *Opens Letter* Okay, Bianca Caraza, I regret to inform you that...

Me: *sharp intake of breath, followed by one heart-felt* Oh, no...

Nina: Just kidding, stupid! We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Puget Sound division.

Apparently, Puget Sound has seen fit to allow me into their fine school as well as reward me with full financial aid... so yay!

Thanks for reading, invisible people! <3>

Why the World Should Be Pagan- My Fail for Today

3/17/2010

Earlier this school year my friends and I started my school's first Writers Association: The Wilde and Wordy. (I wrote out the mission statement, gathered members, advertised, and received school permission, my friends agreed to show up. Sometimes they fail.) Now, we don't really do much at the Wilde and Wordy, usually I ask if any one's worked on something. Everyone replies that no, they have not. Next I ask if anyone has a new idea. If yes, someone will launch into an explanation of how they are going to transform their latest dream into one massive, multi-layered novel- if no, then we eat our lunches and chat about silly things that make the freshman blush.



But today was going to be different. As least, I made the mistake of believing that today was going to be different. I told myself that i was finally going to crack down and- just this once- we were going to get the students to produce something.



So I walk in, and half the seniors of the class (AKA my buds) are gone to retake this math test that we all failed. Somehow, new people have wandered in to take their place, and I was really appreciative of this fact. Now, I won't name names, but someone else wanders in, following a few other, more likable students, like a large cockroach might follow some tasty crumbs. This someone happens to dislike me greatly, and this someone decided to stay for the duration of the club... needless to say, things did not go well.



But I guess that's old news.



(Even though she interrupted my favorite St. Patrick's Day speech on Why the World Should Be Pagan. [If you were wondering, it's because 1) since pagans believed in finding god through sex, everyone would be really happy and guilt-free all the time, and stress and stress-related issues would prettmuch disappear. 2) Because we'd all be pagan, we'd all basically hold the same beliefs, so we'd war would be eliminated. 3) Pagans worship nature, so pollution would go bye-bye])



Anyway, I talked to an old friend of mine who I missed terribly! (ODIE <3) and I guess things will clear up, you know?

Oh, and my school's better than your school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-UOrIt0vqQ

Poem

C-C-C-Courage

Last night, actually, it was around midnight, so maybe it's be closer to this morning... anyway, around 12 I discovered something about myself; I am really stupid when it comes to my writing. Stupid, or brave.

So last night (it was last night at that point) I was writing my senior project independent task book (Above and Beyond, All About Death) and when I got so tired that my eyes started to cross... well, I'd like to tell you that I logged off the computer and went straight to the shower, but really, I read this awesome story on FictionPress called My Toaster Thinks I'm Crazy first. So after I finished reading about the Shakespeare-obsessed Abruzzi brothers' (Mecrutio, Benvolio, and Romeo's) antics, I hopped in the shower, and then went for my PJ's in my room. (Oh, two things I forgot to mention, my mom had already been asleep for like two hours [Her: Don't stay up too late. Me: I'm going to be right now.] and my door was closed as well as locked, I'm paranoid, okay?)

Now as I'm towel-drying my hair, and I hear people moving stuff around, heavy footsteps, that kind of thing. It always sounds like it's coming from my kitchen, but I live on the second story of an apartment building, so it's really my neighbors moving about their houses. Now biggie. BUT, as I'm pulling on my socks, something raps hard on the door... as if someone or something was trying to get in.

Yeah, holy crap, right?

My cat and I both stare at the door, terrified. Okay, I try to calm myself, if it's robbers, then won't they just be sorely disappointed. My cat, typewriter, and stuffed Nala are already in here with me. They can't get in, right? I'll just call the police... And then I remember that my phone's charging in the other room. My phone, my beautiful phone that I won in a review-writing contest in sophomore year, the phone that still gives me pleasure to tell people about.

The footsteps and movement are audible again and my cat hides under my bed. You know what? They can keep my phone, my contract's expiring March 1st anyway...

And then I remember my laptop. Now, I'm not that materialistic of a person, but if there's one thing I hold dear, it's my laptop. Why? Because it holds everything I've ever written, every character and plot, every work in progress, every typo I've ever made is on that laptop. And no goddamned robber is going to steal my plot holes, not if i have anything to say about it.

Now, being a girl raised by a single mother, I'm not very interested in sports. If you know me personally, you'll know that I'm not very strong, and if you had to bet on whether or not I owned any sports equipment, you'd probably go with not. So I guess I don't have to tell you that I don't own a baseball bat, every American's favorite means of protection from intruders (with the exclusion of the great state of Texas who tend to favor firearms). What I did have, however, was a strange childhood. And when I was ten, my cousin and I went through a sort of Rambo stage together, and the result was a forgotten pile of toy guns and one green and orange wooden rifle from Knott's Berry Farm hidden behind my dresser. I wasn't expecting to fool anyone with the rifle, even in the darkness the fact that it was a toy would be painfully obvious to all but a blind thief. The toy was, however, on the hefty, solid side, and I figured I could knock somebody out with its butt.

Thinking only of all the writing that could be lost to me, I opened the door, wielding the gun over my head, ready to strike. (It occurs to me now that I should have been worried about the academic projects saved to the hard drive, seeing as I'd been working on one chapter for the better part of six hours that same day. That might even be a good excuse for me to be killed over, but alas, I was thinking of the short story I'd written on Tuesday that no one had seen yet.)

As you might've already guessed, there were no robbers. The sounds in my kitchen had, in fact, been my neighbors. My entire home was utterly empty. The loud push on my door? The books at the very top of the hallway bookcase had fallen over and into my door, producing the sound.

So yeah, I felt like a total idiot for thinking that robbers had somehow crept into my house, (I check every lock and window like an OCD case every night) but at least I learned something about myself. I learned that I am, despite all previous notions, a dedicated writer. And yeah, maybe I don't spend my every waking second committing to my work, editing and plotting, but I'd face off a robber with only weak arms and a toy rifle for my manuscript, who else can say the same?

(Oh, and the toy rifle? It now occupies the space next to my bed, just in case I need to take care of any real burglars one day.)

The Dream Team?

So I just realized that I'm supposed to be writing weekly for this school citizenship grade... Oopsie!

I've kind of been a little wary about blogging on me-related topics, such as my life and/or friends, because it just makes the whole blog thing that much more personal, thus making the fact that no one bothers to read it thrice as sad. Hence the whole review thing of the past two weeks.

However, this week I really do have some news for allllll of my adorable non-existent readers out there, pertaining to one of my very best friends, Christina. So it's been Christina's dream for the past almost-year to attend this awesome school, Franklin, that specifies in political communication and other subjects very like that which I, myself, find utterly dull, but dear Christina finds endlessly interesting. What's the huge deal about Franklin? It's in SWITZERLAND! (Cue Moulin Rouge flashbacks of Toulouse yelling, "It'th thet in Thwitherland! Exotic Thwitherland!")

Oh, also, she's totally been accepted.

Haha, yeah, she's been accepted into her dream school! I'm so very proud of her! (I'm not even a little surprised, no sir, had complete faith in her the entire time :D)

Anyway, I guess this really heaps on the pressure for me to get into Harvard, now we've both gotta be dream school acceptees!

The Wolfman

Are movie reviews all I'm good at? I don't know, but... The Wolfman, the movie for which I've been waiting a good four years, due to it's massive preproduction time and it's release date being moved up a grand total of three times, the intendedly epic remake of the 1941 Universal Pictures Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi CLASSIC Horror film- was lamesauce.

Why? The ones and twos of my more or less faithful reader(s) may demand in lamentful cries. I will tell you.

Despite the fact that the setting and costumes of the picture relfect the Victorian period, the aging griminess of the time, the clever implementation of a historically existent character, Detective Aberline of the infamous Jack the Ripper case, and the fleshing out of the originally smaller scale picture and characters of the 1941 classic, The Wolfman fails at one particulary important aspect of all memorable films- plot. Joe Johnson, director of the attrocity, seems to be more interested in getting an early nineteen hundreds quality to the film, never holding a scene for longer than a minute, causing a "Flicker Effect," that leaves the audience with a feeling of extreme disorientation as well as a severe headache.

Though the original characters of the film, the Talbot family and the female lead, Gwen Whelan, have been given deeper, admittedly interesting back stories, the film failed to fully delve into anyone or thing in perticular, transforming any potentially i then their prior nteresting character developments into aggresively pointless white noise. The film, which falls officially under the category of Horror, succeeds only at being horrible, the only thing frightening about it being Anthony Hopkins less-than-admirable performance as Sir John Talbot. Every twist and turn featured is spoiled by an extreme lack of suspense, so that the audience doesn't so much gasp at a surprise as nod to themselves with pursed lips, wishing the characters secrets hadn't been so painfully obvious.

The silver lining of this dark cloud? Benecio Del Toro's disgustingly spectacular transformations. Each full moon pays homage to previous beastly classics such as American Werewolf in London, limbs cracking , realization creeping across the wolfman's face so very slowly that the audience is forced to wince and look away. Unfortunately, these few scenes aren't enough to save The Wolfman from thrashing itself to tiny, bite-sized pieces.

The Word of the Day

Debauchery.

As in, Colin Firth and Ben Barnes’ Dorian Gray, probably only loosely based Oscar Wilde’s singular fabulous novel, taught me the definition of the word debauchery. And I don’t mean that in the way it may sound. LoL, this blog is so wrong.

Okay, restart. Since my life is so utterly dull and I’ve nothing to talk about… I’ve found my new favorite movie and I know its positively atrocious since it’s not really a true adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and maybe Ben Barnes isn’t the best actor to ever hit town, and, okay, maybe I am just watching it for the complete and total hot factor of *Prince Caspian* seducing everyone and anyone he comes into contact with throughout the film… but what the heck, it’s review time.

Dorian Gray has shortened the title of the original novel, added plot and characters, and changed a few things around. And while the novel (read by yours truly eons ago- freshman year) left everything to the imagination, Wilde’s wild and much frowned upon in its time plot was left mostly to subtext; the movie seems to have come at things a little differently. Dorian Gray has ripped what was better left unsaid one hundred years ago out of the book’s many pages and thrown it onto the big screen, illuminating the faces of the audience (I can only assume) with images of pure impurity.

Ben Barnes’ portrayal of the title character, the eternally young Gray, is truly exemplary. One can see his transformation from man to monster as he begins the film as an innocent, beautiful youth and slips into the cold, calculating role of a heartless immortal with apparent ease. The corruption and decay in Gray’s character is no longer merely visible in his infamous portrait, but in his callous eyes, eyes that seem to have seen far too much for one so young, so beautiful, and so heart-breakingly innocent.

Driving Ms. Crazy

So today...

I DROVE. In the car. On the Road. Like twenty non-consecutive frikkin miles.

I can drive in the street, little petals 'neath my feet.

I can drive all down the road, jeez this little poem is such a load.

I wish there weren't so many trucks.

But it's cool cuz I drove through Startbucks.

Wow, that was lame. But I'm excited so whatever.

This rolling blog I wish to sever.

:D I even parked the car in the garage!

(I'm so tense I could use a massage...)

Crumble Dream; Crumbling

[Had this dream a few days ago. Want to turn it into a song. Don’t know who he is, but I could wager a guess…]

He reaches into his shirt pocket and fished out a carton- pretty fresh with just one or two sticks missing. He leans into the box and takes one out with his teeth, other hand already searching his pockets for a light.

“Here,” I hand him my own lighter and he grunts his thanks, cupping the tip and flame as they kiss and consume.

He takes a deep, long drag and his shoulders slump forward and his entire body relaxes. When he finally glances back at me, it seems as if he’s just realized that I’m here. Almost as an afterthought, he offers me the carton half-heartedly, as if he can already hear the words of rejection forming on my tongue. I swallow them down and start over with a shrug.

“Sure, thanks.” I choose my first carefully, and put it to my lips. Amused, he lights it for me and when I can’t hold my breath any longer, I breathe in.

The flame, the tobacco, the cigarette all crumble between my lips.

Permitted

So today I took my permit test at the DMV.

I was so nervous looking down at the unnaturally long page, printed out with question after question. How much must your child weigh before it's allowed in the front seat? You're at a T-intersection on a through street and another car meets you, who goes first?What is the California speed limit for alleys?

The obvious answers- when it's fat enough to stay put in a collision, whoever got there first, and it depends on the alley- were either considered incorrect when it came time to grade my test or were sound absent completely.

As I stood watching the nice DMV worker scratch all up and down my test, I suddenly found myself quite frightened of not passing the test. Suddenly, I wanted to have the privilege of driving, and I was certain that I'd already failed. It was my own fault, I decided, for reading only half the DMV Driving Book.

The woman handed me back my test with a giant MINUS EIGHT across the front and I stared.

"Does this mean I passed?"

"Yup," she responded with a smile, "Congratulations."

As she printed out my permit i could think but one thing; California really needs to raise their standards.

Reset

So Melissa told me to write a blog... and I remembered that I do, in fact, have a blogger account (only for checking up on Daniel Waters and the zombie community he's built up, as I swore off blogging precisely a million years ago).

Imagine my surprise when I realized that I've blogged up in here, too!

I don't have much to report for today, except that I've scanned the previous blogs and suggest that no one ever, ever read them. I suggest this with the dire severity of one who simply cannot figure out how to delete the excessively wordy bits off of my virtual "Dashboard."

Oh, I'm reading the An Ideal Husband; I read The Importance of Being Earnest over the weekend and it was trey magnifique. I've decided that whether or not Oscar and I are one in the same, (due to a happy coincidence of reincarnation) I will always stand for what he believed in: eccentricity, wit, and- above all things- love.

Enough of the cheese-whiz,

-Bee