scotland

every day for the past two weeks, i've woken up with a word in my head. one single word.

scotland.

i don't know why. it's odd. is it supposed to mean something? have i been dreaming about scotland? if i have, i can't remember. i know i've dreamt of paris once recently, where i was sent a child's drawing of god from the heavens. it was scary.

so, aside from the glory that was water for elephants: the movie adaptation, life as been as normal--or however normal it gets for me, anyway--as ever. i also saw insidious this weekend, which was TERRIFYING (says someone who rarely gets scared of scary films. that and dead silence, i think, are the scariest scary movies i've seen). today i went to church and then, since we had nothing better to do, went to gamestop and petco with my neighbors/sisters gina and alaina, and had a great time talkin' it up with someone named judah who had dreads over xbox live.

i have also finished a book since i talked about wanting to read more and am almost done with a second one! i'll finish it tonight or tomorrow at the latest, for sure. i also have to read 1984 for sociology, which is a book that i've been meaning to read since maybe last summer, so i'm glad i finally had an excuse to buy it and add to the mounds of unread books lying all over my room!

i've also been listening to a TON of beirut lately, because, although i have a HARDCORE case of wanderlust, i haven't been anywhere and am much too broke to even plan on going anywhere. and his music takes me to a different place, a different time period, even. i dedicated one of my 30/30 poems to him. i'm still working on that last line of it, though. meh. 30/30 was killing me a couple days back but i'm doing better now. i also have a short story idea i want to work on once i get my laptop back to functioning normally (it kind of killed itself last week before the copa del ray final, OY VEY! i have to reinstall windows and i might lost all my files. and it will be a BITCH to gather all those pictues and mp3s all over again. THAT WAS MONTHS OF HARD WORK!! MONTHS!!)

also, i've been looking at cheap universities in the city recently because i am still uneasy about the idea of spending another year or two here in the 'burbs for community college. I JUST WANT TO GO SOMEWHERE, EVEN IF THAT SOMEWHERE IS A HALF-HOUR TRAIN RIDE FROM HERE!

oh, and may i post the start of a summer to-do list? well, i'm going to.

SUMMER TO-DO LIST 2K11
- write as much as i possibly can
- go somewhere new and hopefully far away, or better yet a different country, or better still, europe
- read at least a book a week
- write/shoot/direct a short film
- visit natalie in georgia?
- hang out with my high school friends as much as possible before we part ways
- constantly go to the city and discover a new place each time
- take a summer class and make new friends
- get a (summer) job and make new friends
- write letters to the teachers who have actually taught me something
- clean/redecorate my room, finally
- become nocturnal and soak up the summer nights while they last
- do a hell of a lot of swimming since i didn't get to this last summer (i didn't have a swimsuit, but now i do!)

OKAY, THAT IS ENOUGH FOR TODAY. this is getting out-of-handly long. so have a good week, faithful and few readers (mine is two and a half days long! ha! hooray for ACTs and senior ditch day!), i'll catch up with you later :) AND HAPPY EASTER!!!! HE IS RISEN INDEED!!

(my favorite beirut song for you to enjoy)

water for elephants movie review?

so i went to see water for elephants today with my friend j.lee! i think i've mentioned it before, but i read the book a couple months ago and thought it was fantastic, and i had been checking in on the fan website every couple days and watched the spot on HBO and was generally really excited about the whole thing. i love reese witherspoon and rpattz too, despite twilight. remember me was just too good. so off i went to the theater, got a good seat and no popcorn since it's way too pricey nowadays, and got myself all settled in for tornado of emotions the book gave me to happen in just about two hours.

****WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS****

i didn't really like how they didn't talk about jacob's time in the nursing home, well, AT ALL. no rosemary or fight at the lunch table or anything. it just started off with older jacob at the circus, in the rain (?!) and telling his story. i loved how charlie had the old photograph of marlena and august in his office. and i thought hal holbrook was a great older jacob, despite how small his part actually was. i also loved how instead of jacob stating he was polish or having that prayer scene on his first night on the train like in the book, it showed that he spoke polish at home. in the book i kind of forgot that jacob understood polish and i didn't remember him speaking more than a sentence or two, so when, in the book, he found out that rosie only understood polish, i was a little surprised.

i think the act of combining uncle al and august into one character worked perfectly in the movie. i was a little uneasy on the idea at first but they handled it well. i thought christoph waltz was absolutely perfect as august although i could hear his accent quite a few times throughout the film. can't say the same for rpattz, though, who seems to have perfected his american accent due to all the american movie roles he's gotten lately. he narrated the movie and i thought he did a good job of that.

speaking of rob pattinson, i loved loved LOVED his portrayal of jacob. let me make something clear: I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE CHARACTER OF JACOB. he is one of my favorite fictitious characters ever. and i thought rpattz pulled him off real well. a round of applause, please. he did me proud. reese witherspoon was also a very good marlena, although i still kind of think someone younger would have been able to do just as well with the part. speaking of marlena, what was with this orphan thing in the movie?! i thought her backstory in the book was just fine, and it didn't need to be so overdramatic like they made it in the movie. *huff*

so basically, i thought everyone cast fit their roles perfectly. brilliant casting. brilliant cinematography, too, might i add, and the scenery was gorgeous. with the music and the clothes and everything, you really felt like you were in 1931. although i did catch two slip-ups: raising the tent near the beginning of the movie, they showed the american flag with all 50 stars on it. i'm pretty sure alaska and hawaii were not states in 1931...and during the parade through town with rosie closer to the end, you saw one of those trains on an elevated platform zoom by in the background. other than that, it was flawless. i especially liked the speakeasy scene.

tai the elephant was absolutely adorable as rosie. when you saw her sneak off to get some lemonade, i could tell that she had officially won over the hearts of everyone in the packed theater i was in. she and rob had some great chemistry on set, although as far as reese and himself, i would have liked a little more. it seemed a bit flat to me, but...

OH. THEY NEVER SAID ONCE IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE THAT AUGUST WAS SCHIZOPHRENIC. I JUST REALIZED AND THAT REALLY PEEVES ME. speaking of peeves in the movie, let's talk about walter. he was probably my favorite character in the book and you barely saw him in the movie. i was pretty upset over that. also, he wasn't a ginger. i thought that because he was redheaded and kind of hotheaded it was a nice character trait, but he had dark hair instead. meh. i also didn't much like the sequence of events where the shit hit the fan. everything from marlena's first slapping august to august pinning her to the ground when the menagerie broke loose bothered me. a lot of it was out of order and my friend who i went with who hadn't read the book was confused by some of the things that had happened. also, would jacob really just hop off the train without rosie, even if it was to save his own ass? absolutely not. it was revealed both in the book and movie that jacob was staying to protect both marlena and rosie. if he and marlena hadn't been found in their hotel room, would they have gone back to try and save rosie? absolutely not. they were already talking about ringling by then.

some other parts of the movie i enjoyed: when august's character is revealed for the first time at the poker table. i thought it was a great introduction to his character. i also loved when jacob decided to put down silver star, even if it meant getting redlighted. both in the book and movie, i love that scene. you are shown just the kind of man jacob really is. i also loved the big top sequence where you see clips of all the acts--i've never been to a circus but have always wanted to go, so as one who can only imagine, it was breathtaking. as i mentioned before, i loved the speakeasy scene and when rosie steals a little lemonade. and despite my annoyances at some of the changes the movie made to the book, overall, i really loved it. i'm sure i'll think of more things that bothered me later on, but for now, initially, arriving home immediately after seeing the film, i really liked it. it's nothing compared to the book, let me tell you, but as a standalone movie, it's brilliant. let's hope it wins lots of awards and that others love it as much as i did! :)

i think i saw you in my sleep, darling

i feel like time is moving all too fast and way too slow at the same time

the weekend needs to hurry up and end but i want all of this to last as long as possible

30/30 is getting harder, i'm running out of ideas

suggest cities or concepts for me to write about?

and here is my playlist for the week/month/everything happening right now

still working on that reading thing...

every time i want to write something in here i can't think of anything exciting that's happened. still no progress in boy-land. not many exciting friend adventures (aside from seeing your highness with gracie lou over the weekend ;D). school is annoying for the most part and all i really want is a) more time to read, b) a community of writers to critique with, c) normal sleeping patterns (slept for 4 hours last night, took a 4 hour nap today, and probably repeating that tonight...), and d) FRIDAY. my photo class is finally going on the beloved downtown chicago field trip which i haven't been on since sophomore year and i adore my classmates and being downtown, so the combination of the two is promising. although it's supposed to rain/be/windy/crappy. which is not the ideal weather for a photographer, but maybe i'll get some nice shots of puddles. who knows?

also someone please tell me a city that is the real life version of coeur d'coeurs (pushing daisies) so i can plan on living out the rest of my days there when i am not traveling the world. which i still have yet to do. i swear to god, i am literally sick with wanderlust. my heart aches.

oh, and i finished reading the gospel of matthew the other day. i'm doing some good progress on bible-reading nowadays, so that's something to be proud of. still trying to figure out what to read next, i'm thinking maybe job...

one last thing. this has been bothering me for a while, i feel like i'm falling back to my old self. not that i'm much different now than i was a couple years ago, but i'm going back to the same pessimistic mindset and habits of hiding from everyone by cooping myself up inside my house and basically turning into a hermit. i've been watching shows that i watched in 7th grade and acting the same way, and it's not that 7th-grade-val was so horrible, it's just that i thought i had kind of...grown out of her. when i got my haircut, i did it because i needed a change and i wanted to feel new, but i don't feel better, in fact, i feel worse. i'm caving in on myself and i don't really have anyone to go to anymore to talk about it because i've shut almost everyone i care about out of my life by now. it's not that i've stopped talking to them or anything, it's that i stopped talking about myself to them. i don't want to let them in, i don't want them to know, or care, or basically anything and i can't tell if that's me being my horrible self or some sort of subconscious way of dealing with knowing i'm going to lose friendships over the next year because of college. i feel like i'm stepping back in time instead of going forward, and when i was younger i thought there was no problem with that, with being nostalgic or trying to remember good things instead of making more good things happen. but nowadays that's not how i am at all! or at least, recently, it was. i've considered myself an optimist up until now! i've been happy for the most part for almost a year, with very few exceptions. and i feel like i'm losing myself again and going back to this place i don't want to be in and even here on blogger i don't want to talk about that because it's something i'd rather forget. i've only talked to two other people about it and they have been near-strangers (and now they definitely are). it's not something i can talk about, or want to talk about, and even if i did, i wouldn't have anyone to talk with. i guess i'm just feeling lonely, but in a more complex way than i've felt before. i just want it to change.

song of the day:

I NEED TO READ MORE

my goodreads has SO MANY books on my to-read list and even though it only says i'm reading two books right now I AM ACTUALLY READING LIKE FIVE BOOKS AT ONCE. BAHHHH. i have so much free time after school now because i took a study hall this semester and instead of reading books that i said i'd read years ago, i'm sitting around watching sailor moon and tumbling. i need to set aside a certain time for every day that i read, because there are so many books that i'm dying to devour and i'm wasting precious time with it! and uh, i said i would do the 50 book challenge in your pants and i'm only, what, 5 books in? and the year is already 1/4 over with. that's great...

speaking of challenges, i'm also doing the 30/30 challenge for national poetry month! all my poems are posted on my deviantart, and i made it a little easier for myself by setting a theme. instead of searching for something to write about and failing miserably like i do every year, i've decided that every poem will be titled and somehow correlated with a city. so far, so good! i'm actually quite proud of all the poems i've written so far, but they'll probably get suckier and suckier as the month goes on, considering i'm still pretty likely to run out of ideas...

OH, AND QUICK QUESTION: does anyone know what city either a) gets the most/best sleep or b) has the most nightmares? i wrote a poem about sleep/nightmares the other day and i couldn't find anything because google was being dumb (google is my overlord. i love you, google. do not punish me). and so instead i named it after tokyo, because they apparently get the WORST sleep. huh.

ah, one last thing before signing out. has anyone seen this post about the hunger games "script"? if that is really lionsgate, THEY ARE A BUNCH OF ASSHOLES. i mean, it's bad enough that they aren't casting racially correct actors for the characters (THE BOOK SAYS KATNISS'S SKIN IS OLIVE-COLORED, I DON'T CARE THAT JENNIFER LAWRENCE IS A GOOD ACTRESS, SHE IS WHITE, KATNISS IS NOT, AND and let's not even get in to how they didn't cast hunter parrish as peeta). that alone made the movie's lack of appeal all the more apparent, but THIS, this fucking thing, is absolutely INFURIATING. i hope the head of lionsgate sees this and either fires this person or confirms that they do not, indeed, work for lionsgate (can't believe everything you see on the internet) because my GOD, WHAT A BUNCH OF ASSHATS. i don't want to see the movie at all anymore. and i was really hoping it would be great, because suzanne collins's writing is choppy and suckish. ugh, i am just fed up with this. and all this movie-business-deciding-that-every-character-has-to-be-white-and-not-any-trace-of-color-at-all-y. YEESH.

okay, wait, so maybe i do have stuff to talk about. first of all, water for elephants. finished the book a little while ago. it was great. i wrote a quick review of it over at goodreads. it's been a while since i was so thoroughly engrossed in a story like that one. i'm reading a draft of the script right now and i hope the final draft is a bit better, the draft isn't terrible but there are definitely some things i would change. (movie people, what's up with "uncle august"? ew. that sounds terrible). but i've seen two trailers so far and i saw the spot on HBO last night and i'm keeping up to date with the film fansite and it looks promising. i'm actually really excited to see it, especially with the story fresh in my mind and the fact that i LOVE movies that take place during different time periods. i think rpattz will make a fantastic jacob, although i'm still a little uneasy over reese witherspoon as marlena. christoph waltz will be a TERIFFIC august, though, without a doubt. and i hope the guy they cast as walter is good, because walter was my favorite character.

um, oh yeah, and i totally miss pushing daisies and am rewatching the series LIKE A BOSS.

also, sorry for not posting for the last week or so. i haven't really had much to say, life is going well but nothing exciting enough to talk about has happened. although, monday, i am probably finally meeting that one guy i keep talking about! (knock on wood). i'll definitely tell you guys how THAT goes...and tomorrow i'm going to see a swedish hip-hop band john green recommended a couple months ago on twitter. they're so good. i'm pumped. hoping to see other nerdfighters there, but who cares, it's sure to be fun! i'll post about it this weekend, for sure.

and so, to wrap this up, finally, here is another song of the day which is a particularly good AND relevant one, if you ask me: