where you can find me now

i don't know if anyone ever has or will visit this very old and defunct blog of mine, but i figured now i've moved to wordpress i would post a link to my new home:

blameful.wordpress.com

how you like me now?

Harry Potter and the Juvenile Delinquent

I wonder if Kara is going to be one of the zillions of people reading the new Harry Potter book.

let me explain. Kara (whose name is definitely not Kara, btw) was my favorite girl at my old work. She was 15 or 16 when i knew her, which was around 6 years ago, so she's now in her early 20s. I worked at a group home for troubled teen girls, she was one.

So, if you think about the kinds of teenagers who end up in group homes for being particularly precocious in the drinking/drugging/fighting categories the picture that comes to your head probably isn't that of an avid Harry Potter fan. This particular girl, however, was both everything you always pictured and everything you never did. She was foul mouthed. I was one of her favorite staff, and she called me a "cunt lapper" on a daily basis. What made that particularly amusing to me was that unbeknownst to her I was indeed a lesbian. She came from a bad family, grew up in a bad neighborhood, she smoked cigarettes and pot regularly (even with the weekly drug testing she had to endure after home visits), she drank, she got into fights, and her relationship with most of the staff was very poor due to her constant verbal abuse.

She also read everything she could get her hands on, just like i used to do. She read fast, and would do so for hours on end. The year I knew her she was placed in an advanced math class, the only class she was allowed to take with "normal" children, because her ability in math was so advanced. Halfway through the year the "priviledge" of attending a math class with non-delinquents was taken away because she stabbed another kid in the hand with a pencil. After that it was back to learning her multiplication tables all over again with the other juvenile delinquents for the 3rd year in a row.

She talked with me about going to college once or twice, casually. The fact that her current circumstances seemed very unlikely to lead her to any institution of higher learning apparently hadn't occurred to her.

With all the hysteria over this last book in the series i keep finding myself picturing her in the "quiet room" lying on her side reading "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". I find it hard to picture her lining up at midnight in front of her nearest Barnes and Noble, but wherever she is I hope she gets a copy (smuggled into her prison cell, perhaps) and I hope she enjoys escaping into the world of wizardry one last time, before it's all over.

too old to die young...

When Shorty was home over break I said, jokingly, "I'm too old to die young!" I suppose at 29 I'm technically still young enough to die young- but I started to wonder what the cutoff is. Even if you're in you're early 3os I think you may just squeak by, especially if you die of a drug overdose after a life of debauchery or whatever. But by the time you hit your late thirties I'm not so sure. I mean, 40 is young to die but you're hardly "young". So definitely if you die at 40 you're out of luck in the dying young department. I would say 34 or 35 has to be the absolute oldest you can be and still be considered to have died young. Although it's possible your profession might influence it. A politician dying at 40 is pretty young, but and actress or model dying at 40 certainly isn't...

good thing i hate poetry as an art form

all my previous poetic ability has deserted me- good thing i hate poetry so much or I'd be screwed. however, as i have mentioned many times before, poetry has got nothing on any other form of written word.

i'd write sci fi but i'm waaaay too bummed that vonnegut is gone. wtf, dude? i mean, sure, the guy was older than death, but still.

i think i have that seasonal depression thing, actually. if things happen on schedule my ability to write should return in the next month or so, along with my cheery optimism and zest for life.

till then, gentle reader, i'm just making myself write about nothing so as i don't abandon the ol' blog completely.

TMNT

So, over the past 6 months (or however long I've been gone) I've spent much of my time thinking about the teenage mutant ninja turtles (not really. it's a joke, see?)

The turtles were my little brother's favorite tv show back when he was still little, which meant I saw a lot of their cartoons as well. Recently he and I went and saw the new movie while he was home for spring break. The outcome of this was that we got into an argument over which turtles were more popular.

Shorty's favorite turtle is Raphael. I said that Raphael was everyone's favorite. He was the main character in the most recent movie and in the live action movie back in the day too. He's the darker more intense turtle. The bad boy. The one everyone is supposed to relate too, right?

My favorite turtle is Michelangelo. According to Shorty, everyone likes Michelangelo (the crazy party guy turtle) and Leonardo (the leader). I disagree. Michalangelo is a goofball. The audience laughs at him as often as it laughs with him. Clearly the mainstream choices are Leonardo (the hero) and Raphael (the antihero).

We both agree that Donatello (the smart one who likes science and technology) is for fruits.

am i back?

OK, I admit it wasn't just that my computer died and it was months before I got another hand-me-down laptop. I could have updated from the library or at least when I was visiting the parents and had their computers easily available. (It was mostly that I had a crappy winter and didn't feel like writing anything).

I am, however, still alive, and I'm gonna try again for a comeback.

the end of the world

sometimes i think it would be cool to be a member of the last generation of the human race. you know, the generation destroyed by nuclear war or climate change or giant asteroids hitting earth or whatever.

i mean, sure, it would be awful. but wouldn't it also be almost like being a god? because in a way you would know everything there was to know. all of history and everything that humanity ever accomplished, with no fear of being supplanted by future human generations since there wouldn't be any.

i mean, the world's got to end eventually. and since it does wouldn't it be better to be in on the ending than to be a part of some wishy washy middle generation in between apehood and THE END?

Arnold Schwartzeneger was a stunningly bad actor

No, seriously. I'm stuck home with a cold watching tv this saturday and "Batman & Robin" is my only alternative to golf, football, cooking shows, or a symphony orchestra. And I'm sorry but Ah-nold is so horribly laughably bad as Mr Freeze that he can't deliver a single line believably. This is all the more tragic because of my love for "Batman Returns" (and not just because Michelle Pfieffer was so hot as catwoman). This movie, on the other hand, is terrible.

At least we know he won't be doing any lying as a politician, seeing as his inability to act would make the slightest untruth totally and completely transparent. Right?