Moot Point

I am trying to get into a creative writing course. This involves having an actual portfolio, with pieces of fiction. I had forgotten why I stopped writing fiction. The words “You are a hack, you can’t write” pretty much run through my head the whole time. I feel like everything I write is so presumptuous and pretentious and that anyone who reads it will see through me and laugh that I thought I could get into a university writing course with this tripe.

But do or die, right?

To end on a positive note: one of my favourite things is when you show someone one your favourite movies, a movie you’ve watched a thousand times and know all the dialogue to, which you can’t believe they’ve never seen. As each punchline approaches, you watch expectantly, hoping they’ll laugh at all the right funny parts because at this point watching the movie is for you is all about familiarity, so the fun of the experience is enjoying them enjoying it.

Yesterday it took me eight hours to do laundry and I technically didn’t finish. In this time I took it upon myself to download an O.C. I’d only seen part of, where Seth and Anna break up.

In it, Summer says something like “I like comics. Sort of. Betty and Veronica were very influential for me.” And Anna says something about how surprised she is.

I thought I was sooo clever.

Update: I almost forgot! Speaking of The O.C, this O.C.-themed band is so cute. Link from complete square.

In no particular order, things that are bad today:

• There is fruit-scented deodorant. I don’t understand this fruit-flavoured cosmetics thing. Lip gloss makes sense, becuase you’re putting it on your lips, with which your tongue can’t help but come in contact, so you want them to taste good. Even bubble-bath, to a point. But what woman in her right mind wants her armpits to smell like watermelon?
• There is Nair for Men. Maybe it’s always been there, on the shelf above the regular Nair and all those waxing kits. (I don’t usually shop for depilatories, but I was considering trying waxing. I hate shaving, but I have sensitive skin and a wussy constitution. I am still undecided.)
• Creepy middle-aged guy at Starbucks staring at me. He was the same middle-aged guy who kept smiling at me when I looked up from my book last time I was in that Starbucks.
• No one commenting on my blog all day! (Not like that many people comment usually, and mostly it’s the same four people all the time, but still.)
• The Daily Show was apparently a rerun. Or they were just using the exact same Ed Helms goes to Vegas bit again.
• I saw a mouse in my common room. A MOUSE. Small and brown. In my COMMON ROOM. Just running along the wall, bold as brass. MOUSE.
• I am all by myself and have no one to comfort me from the mouse-seeing trauma.

1: Anna and Summer are Betty and Veronica. Seth is like an appealing (cute, funny) version of Archie. (Note how much less geeky Seth has gotten. You never hear about Magic the Gathering anymore). I got the same feeling watching Seth choose Summer over Anna as I did watching Archie choose Ronnie over Betty. I felt bad for Betty, but I knew that Archie was a unit and would always lust after the forbidden fruit that was Veronica.

2: Sickness is descending, like the Bell Jar. I do not have time for this right now, make it go away, sickness gods.

3: I fell walking up the stairs on the path outside my house on the way to lunch today. There were like five people standing there – including a girl with a really cute skirt-boots outfit – saying “Oh my God are you okay?” And me being like, yeah and running away before I had to look at them wonder how a 21 year old girl with 3/4 of a university education trips over her own feet.
I landed mostly on my knees and left middle fingernail (ow). Skinned knees are hot, right?

4: Upon inspection, they’re not even that skinned.
Which is a disappointment.
I’m really fond of minor injuries. In September, I had this amazing purple and yellow bruise on my upper arm – I can’t remember how I got it, I’m clumsy and bruise easily – and I decided bruises were going to be the new tattoos. It’s like a tattoo in that it’s damage to your body and that it looks cool, but it’s not all permanent like a tattoo.
I was picturing hipsters punching themselves in the arms (or getting their friends to do so) in order to have the coolest bruise. It would be a pretty badass trend. Unfortunately, I don’t tend to bruise in obvious places like my upper arm all that often and I’m apparently not badass enough to punch myself in the arm.

I think I am getting sick. I am a big baby when I’m sick. Just so you know.

(I also, apparently write morose posts about Nazi Germany. It was the first post probably this month that didn’t involve Beyoncé or The O.C., so count yourselves lucky!)

Seriously, illness and studying. And menstruation. That is all I have to look forward to until Wednesday.

(Except, of course, for The O.C.’s Bachelor Party Spectacular! tomorrow. With the new Beastie Boys song (yay)! And Seth kissing a bimbo in the preview (boo)! Just when I’d gotten to like Summer.)

…I think my blog is lapsing into self-parody.

I had to take a lot of breaks reading Frauen for my history exam.

Frauen is about women’s experiences in Third Reich Germany. This American journalist went to Germany in the late eighties and interviewed dozens of women.

I’d expected it to be more interesting than my average class reading, but I hadn’t expected it to be so affecting. These were ordinary women, some who were involved in the regime – one was a concentration camp guard, one a party member, one an anti-aircraft gunner – some who opposed it – a woman doctor who refused to report those with congenital illnesses, to keep them from being euthanized. They were just people, full of contradictions. It was the first time I’ve ever been able to say, “Yeah, I see how the people let it happen.” The things these women went through – losing family, losing their homes in bombs, rape by the victorious Russian soldiers. The way they turned a blind eye. The way they justified what they’d been a party to.

How everyone just let it happen. Whether they could have stopped it even if they’d known what would happen. Whether it could happen here.

Anyway, I’d be reading Frau Doktor Blersch tell the story of how she had her fifth child after her husband (an army doctor) had died of typhoid at the front because he hadn’t had enough vaccine for everyone, so he skipped innoculating himself, and then the Nazis sent her a Mother’s Cross (a medal that women got after having a lot of children). She sent it back, which was pretty ballsy at that point. I’d put the book down for a minute, take a deep breath.

I kept thinking, would I have been strong enough.

Links first:

Funny: “The gay trill of an angry gull.”

Killer: Loretta Lynn + Jack White = Magic.

Insightful: Sarah B. on love. I don’t think that “punch in the throat” is necessarily the best image (I guess it’s different for everyone), but you still know know what she means.

In other news, this is how I feel about writing cover letters; I seriously suck at it so much and I feel dirty after. (There is a sex joke in there, but I am too demure to make it.)

Who wants to give me a job? My skills include talking about menstruation, listening to pretentious music, reading weblogs, smiling, being obsessed with Beyoncé, keeping my hair shiny, having well-moisturized lips, expounding on studio-era Hollywood, thinking about boys, and procrastination.

OH. EM. GEE. I just watched a teeny-tiny version of the new Beyoncé video (here). I can’t wait to see the whole thing. I love the red lip gloss and the fur and the curled hair and the silhouettes and Usher in that silly hat. And the (admittedly cut to cover up for B’s limited dancing abilities) bit with the giant champagne glass. So hot. I can’t wait to see the full-size version on TV. (I watched MuchMusic intermittently for a couple days but I never saw it and all that happened was I got that Blink 182 Halloween on Christmas song in my head.) Confession: I downloaded RealPlayer for the express purpose of seeing this video.

I am resolutely heterosexual, but if Beyoncé were willing (in some alternate reality where she would let me touch the hem of her (sparkly) garment) I would absolutely have sex with her. I have never felt this way about a female celebrity before, though in high school I felt with strong conviction that if a young Gene Kelly somehow time-travelled to the future and proposed to me, I would marry him, no questions asked.

It’s too bad I can’t get a job where I watch Beyoncé videos all day.

Hey, remember when I used to be marginally less shallow and posted about things that were going on in my life and name-dropped all the cool, intelligent things I was into, or at least not just about The O.C. and hip-hop and R&B? Yeah, I don’t know what happened there either. I promise I still listen to music that’s not lame. Went to a 4½ hour opera on Tuesday. Reading Tender Is the Night. So much incest. You’d much rather hear about my underinformed, half-ironic “fixation”* with Beyoncé, I promise.

*Not my word, whatever.

Normally, the highlight of my weekend would have been Kill Bill 2, but normally, I don’t come in 5th out of 34 people at Laserquest.

(On Kill Bill, I’m apparently the only one who didn’t like it better than the first one. I didn’t like it worse, and I liked it a lot. But not better.)

(On Laserquest – I did not know I could have so much fun with my brother’s friends. We had thematically consistent names. The first round we were philosophers; the second round we were communists. The number of times Marx shot Trotsky was historically inaccurately hilarious.)

Actually, the highlight may be my new blue pants. No, definitely Laserquest.

At dinner tonight, with Dan, Dan’s fiancée Adriana, and Tim (with whom I broke up fairly recently, but we’re okay enough that I’ve been giving him girl advice), Dan and Tim realized that they’d been given mismatched chopsticks so they had two pairs, but split up between the two of them but each of them had one from each pair.

Dan: …but you’ve already had it in your mouth and I swore I’d never go near that again.

(There is a pause, as the joke is more droll than laugh-out-loud funny.)

Me: …Me too.

A few years ago, I only would have thought that.