Adventure and Discovery

I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester, which has been one of the greatest decisions of my life.  Especially on "long weekends" like the one we just had.  See, my normal weekend is already four days long so I didn't think the long weekend would affect me (effect me?), but with BYU's obsession with mucking about with the calendar suddenly my long weekend turned into a week off!  And over the course of this week off I have done some awesome things.

I sat down and tried to actually plan my life.  I sort of didn't quite plan it as thoroughly as I hoped to, but I've made a good start I think.  I discovered that this is the best possible semester I could have ever have chosen to miss the last two and a half weeks of school.  Truly, it's like it is meant to be.  I went to the library and checked out most of the books I need to read in the next three weeks.  It's a hefty re-useable shopping bag full and I'm pretty excited.

Awesome!  A picture of the exact re-usable bag  that is currently sitting on my backseat stuffed full of YA fiction!

I rediscovered Mumford and Sons and Queen and The Civil Wars, having neglected them for about 9 months.

I played Trivial Pursuit with a lot of people I love and discovered that I'm still really bad at Trivial Pursuit.  Not only that, but as soon as you ask me a question to which I do not know the answer I suddenly become incapable of formulating an answer that is even an appropriate guess.  I believe this phenomenon is responsible for all of those "Americans are such idiots" videos Leno likes to show.

I actually visited some of the people that you see randomly and say "we should totally hang out some time!" and then you completely forget about them.  When I ran into Denise in the JFSB and we said that I said "No, but really.  We're picking a day.  Right now!" and we did and I went and it was awesome.  I went over to their house for dinner on Sunday and I finally met her and Tyson's little boy Will .  He is one of the happiest, calmest, adorable-est babies I've ever met and I can't wait to play with him again.  I played games with the Remys for several hours and had an absolutely lovely time.  Next time I'll have to invite them over to my apartment for dinner.  Whether or not they can come with the baby, at least I can invite them.  I think they'd enjoy games with my roommates.

are we seeing how cute these people are??

On Monday I forced myself out of my comfort zone to go on a snowy adventure with Griffin, Mike, Jessie, and Griffin's cousin Taylor.  Before I went I was not quite to the point of nauseating nervousness, but just shy.  But, as it turned out, I had a really great time.   I mean really.  Such a good time that two days later I'm still thinking about it.

Tuesday I read a book.  I read the entire book.  Then I felt restless and unproductive for having spent the day reading, even though it was homework.  I went into my bedroom, closed the door, and had a killer ipod dance party.  I reveled in the fact that my knee only hurt a teeny bit.  Then I sat on my floor and started drawing illustrations for a children's book that I have decided to make.  Then I watched New Girl with my roommates.  Then I came into my bedroom and started teaching myself to knit while watching Tangled.  I felt better about my productivity, even though I only created one line of stitches.  I'll figure out how to add another line of them!

except I was knitting with much prettier charcoal grey yarn...

And today I read another book.  All of it.  And halfway through I looked at myself reading my book and I suddenly realized that I didn't feel that anxiety of wasting time that I have felt any time I sit and read anymore.  Devoting a second day to reading broke that wall that has slowly built up over the last few years that cut my psyche off from the immense, calming joy that reading has always brought it.  I found that joy again today.  I felt the old familiar annoyance when I had to put my book away and go to work.  Luckily, today I finally got to see our new shop and find out how awesome it is!  We have windows now, and the space is so much lighter and nicer, with the potential to be even more awesome as Caleb continues to finish it.  And Caleb takes such good care of me! He has set up two full tables that are just for me and he says he wants to get me another one so I have "enough space"! He worked all weekend putting up about eight 100-watt lights to make sure I have plenty of light.  He just got me a sonic cleaner and an oven.  He is, without a doubt, the best boss I've ever worked for.  I love my job so much!  And then as I was driving home I realized that working down in Payson will give me the perfect excuse to drive.  See, I love to drive, but I don't really ever have anywhere to go and can't really justify just driving around for no reason when I have to pay for gas.  But now I get to drive 30 minutes to and from work so I don't even have to feel guilty about it.  Awesome!

image searched "driving" and found this.  Why does this picture even exist?

Then I got home and decided completely whimsically and on the spur of the moment to buy my friend's Kindle for no other reason than that she wanted to sell it to me and I want it.  But I'm pretty excited about it.  And my roommates were discussing Lent when I came in, and what they were planning on giving up for their Lenten fasts.  And I have decided that I am going to try to give up something.  I'm going to give up all meanness in my life.  I've been feeling strangely disturbed recently by all the unkindness I've seen around and I think this is the perfect time for me to try and get rid of some that may be of my own creation.

Then end result of all of this is that right now, as I lie here in bed and write this before going to sleep, I feel a great, comforting sense of optimism about my life.  I don't know what it shall be, but I am sure, in this moment, that it will be lovely and that I will be in control of it.  I don't feel that soothing assurance often, so I am luxuriating in it for now.  I am learning how to knit, I'm creating a children's book, I have an awesome job, and I have the benefit of so many wonderful people in my life.  I am grateful.

there is no possible better way to end this post than with a picture of Wil Wheaton.
Fact.

It Aint Fair...

I should 100% be going to sleep right now, but instead I'm writing this post.  Once again I am faced with a topic far too vast to be addressed in a small, insignificant blog, but again I feel impelled to put my thoughts into words for my own sake if for nothing else.

I would not have thought that my young adult fiction class would be the class to provoke most of my "deep thinking" for the semester.  "Deep thinking" is the name I gave just this instant to what I consider to be the very best part of my academic career--the thinking I do beyond, above, around, and through my assignments.  It's when I take ideas and carry them through and really explore them.  Usually it has nothing to do with actual class work or credit.  And I repeat, I did not expect my YA fiction class to be the one to spark it.

But I have been lucky.  My professor has assigned us, thus far at least, some truly superb books.  This week's was Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.  I read it today.  I think I read it once before years and years ago, but apparently it was one of a very small list of books that I don't remember very well at all.  So today was an essentially fresh and new reading.

Somehow, inhumanity and cruel treatment of others has become a theme in my life the last couple of weeks.  Last week I read the Hitler Youth book, about which I posted.  Then the Holocaust and WWII seemed to keep coming up in various disparate points in my life.  Then there is this book, which fits right in to the theme.  And now, after two weeks of stories about people hating, hurting, and dehumanizing other people, I am starting to chafe and feel raw.

The fact is, when I read these stories about Nazis beating and murdering Jews without remorse, or white men slapping and kicking black children who happened to look at them wrong, the fact is that I am flooded with righteous wrath.  I want to take the fear those poor people experienced and I want to take it right into the hearts of their tormentors.  I want them to know exactly what they put their poor victims through.  I want to cause them the same pain they cause to others because I feel like that is the only way they could ever understand what they'd done.  And it is the only way to make things right and even and square...

Even as I'm writing this I'm brimming with emotion--utter fury that a human being could treat another in such a way, wringing sympathy for those who suffered such vindictive treatment, and embarrassment that I should presume to pity these people as though I can even begin to comprehend their experiences.  I mean, I can read this book, or To Kill A Mockingbird or Hitler's Youth, or any other book, but I can never really fathom what it was like to live in the same world as the actual people.  So who am I to be angry on their behalf or sorry for them?  Who am I to read their stories and then write a blog post as though I have something important to say?

But I must.  Because as I was sitting here on my bed, wondering how things like Slavery and the Holocaust could exist, I suddenly had a bright shining realization that had the gleam of truth about it.

To understand I will take you on somewhat of a tangent.  I'm sure you all remember the movie Taken.  The Liam Neeson movie that came out a year or two ago that everyone just loved.  In it an ex-CIA operative has retired to be closer to his daughter.  She goes on a holiday to Europe and is kidnapped by sex-traders.  Her father then goes on a bloody rampage through Europe to rescue her, killing brutally, mercilessly, and without the slightest remorse anyone who happens to stand too close to him.  Everyone loved this movie because we all loved seeing Liam Neeson circumvent laws that so often seem more a hindrance than a help, and get bloody, efficient results.  I walked out of that movie deeply disturbed as I realized that I had just watched literally hundreds of people die and I had relished it.  I can't tell you how many people responded "yeah, but they were horrible people!  They deserved it!"  Be that as it may, I couldn't help but feel that a movie like Taken played to an unhealthy place in human nature which ought not be cultivated.

Because the fact is, the moment you start rationalizing cruelty by any sort of reasoning, you are on the dangerous slope.  One of the great tragedies of something like the Holocaust or of Slavery is the scarring left in its wake--the mental and emotional backlash.  You take a group of people and categorically demean them to a point where their lives hold no value...what could you possibly expect would happen to those people once they're finally released from your power?  The hatred of the Jews for the Nazis or the blacks for the whites is a horrible thing.  Their lives and their children's lives for generations are warped and mutated by a hatred that is just as blind as the hatred that they experienced.

What I'm trying to say so unsuccessfully is that these terrible points in history often lead to reciprocation.  That righteous anger I feel, that desire to hurt the tormentors as their victims were hurt, those same feelings are felt by others and we try to punish the tyrants somehow.  They need to suffer because they made others suffer!

But what does that make us?  What does that make the victims?  Suddenly the roles are reversed.  And just because you were once a victim doesn't mean that you cannot become a bully.

The epiphany that I had as I was sitting here on my bed was this:

If you cannot possibly find any way to value yourself besides setting yourself up over another person  by stripping them of their humanity...how low...how little must you value yourself?  And how immensely must you loathe yourself?

That was my epiphany.  And along with it came the realization why righteous wrath simply will not work.  Why you cannot punish away that kind of bad behavior.  If you hate yourself that much--that the only thing that can make you feel good is to compare yourself to something you consider less than human--no amount of punishment or pain will fix that.  Indeed, it will but add fuel to the fire.

What can fix that?  The horribly beautiful or beautifully horrible truth is that love is the only thing that can fix that.  Love and forgiveness and acceptance.  If you hate me and I hate you back, that does nothing but create an endless cycle of hate.  But if you hate me and I love you and forgive you back...even if you hate me till the end of time, by removing my own hatred I have managed to decrease the net hatred in the world even just by a little.

My righteous wrath isn't gone.  In fact when I think about forgiving someone in a situation like that a large part of me revolts.  Where is the justice in that?  How can I possibly suggest that such a thing is even possible?  Honestly, it may not be possible for many people.  Maybe their suffering passed the point of no return beyond which they cannot come back without some recompense being paid.  And maybe that's good.  But just try to imaging for a moment a world where everyone loved others--and more importantly, everyone felt well and truly loved.  Imagine a world where everyone knew who he or she was, the value they had, and that they were loved by those around them.

Can you imagine a Holocaust in that world?  Because I cannot.

Forgiveness and love are the way to that world.  Not hatred or vindictive punishment or retribution.

Swing Heil

In the memorandum, Himmler also warned the police about young people who ignored German culture and preferred jazz music and swing dance.  These resisters were called the Swing Youth, due to their taste in music.  According to Himmler, the teenagers said, "Swing Heil," instead of "Heil Hitler."  He noted that the boys wore their hair long and the girls wore makeup and painted their fingernails.

Today I read Susan Campbell Bartoletti's Hitler Youth: Growing Up In Hitler's Shadow.  It was a fascinating read.  I hesitate to try and write a post about it because I don't think I could do justice to the topic without much more time and research, but at the same time I felt an overwhelming wish to voice some of my small thoughts.  Frankly, most of my mind is focused on the war more than the actual book.  That being said, I must briefly mention that, as a person generally uninterested in non-fiction, I was very impressed.  Ms Bartoletti created an incredibly well-crafted book that presented difficult information in a very engaging manner.

Hitler's plan for training the youth of Germany is a fascinating and terrifying thing.  As I read this story of indoctrination and peer pressure I just kept looking at the world in which I live.  The climate of fear and reactionism that allowed Hitler to successively strip Germans of their freedoms with no opposition (indeed, each new breach of their freedom was often celebrated as a victory) seems so like the one in which we live today.  SOPA created an international outcry that roused people from their somnolent apathy and their outrage has, at least for now, been acknowledged.  But where was that same outrage when Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act which, among I don't even know what else, allows the government to detain Americans "suspected of terrorist activity"?  This law was signed off by the president this month and is now in effect (insofar as I am aware...).  Setting aside the issue of detaining anyone without basic rights because I can only address so much here, the fact is that under a new and frighteningly broad definition of "terrorist activity" our government can now detain us, it's own citizens, indefinitely and without trial.  It may seem reactionary and extreme to imply this comparison, but I can't help but worry...is "The War on Terror" a good enough reason for us to sit quietly while our civil liberties, such an enduring hallmark of this nation (even as its reputation has suffered ever more tarnishing from the hands of outsiders and insiders alike), are chipped away one by one?

Ironically, I found a bitter sort of comfort even as I mused on these frightening ideas.  Bartoletti begins her book with a quote from Hitler himself

I begin with the young.  We older ones are used up...But my magnificent youngsters!  Are there finer ones anywhere in the world?  Look at all these men and boys!  What material!  With them I can make a new world.

Hitler understood the importance of the rising generation in the success of his war machine.  Bartoletti's book describes the activities the Hitler Jungen (HJ) orchestrated to get all the children involved.  She describes hiking and camping and summer camps.  She talks about the patriotic propaganda that played to the fervor of young minds.  Hitler had an immense gift for speaking, and with his nation's youth he used it to terrible effect.  Bartoletti includes several first-hand accounts of boys and girls in their teens who heard him speak.  They talk about how inspiring he was and how his words went right to their souls and captured their hearts and minds.  My bitter comfort as I read these accounts was a knowledge that the youth of my generation are immune to such insidious tactics.  The fact is, mine is a generation defined by apathy.

I cannot be proud of this safeguard. After all, apathy is just as dangerous as misguided fanaticism.  It was the apathy of others that allowed families to be dragged from their homes and put into concentration camps.  With enough apathy, fear, and carefully placed manipulation bad men can create a world all of their own making.  The fact is everyone wants their world to be ok.  They don't want there to be problems and trouble and issues.  It is frightening to think that something is wrong because that means that it must somehow be fixed.  Bartoletti interviewed actual members of the HJ and they talked to her about their inability to face what they had done.  So many of them simply could not accept that the man they had believed in with religious fervor was a madman and a murderer--not even when they saw the evidence with their own eyes.  People don't want to believe that the world is gone awry and that they have been a part of it, no matter how inadvertently.

But most of all this book overwhelmed me with the horror of violence and war.  Hitler took an entire generation and raised them up to be perfect soldiers.  Boys and men capable of the most horrifying atrocities towards their fellow men with little or no immediate remorse.  As I read Bartoletti's accounts of "mercy killings" and then the Holocaust I kept trying to understand how such programs could exist...and keep existing.  It wasn't just the insanity of Hitler; somehow hundreds of other people were pulled into complicity with it.  He was just one man.  Somehow he took living, feeling human beings and turned them into something less, something that was capable of looking others in the eye and inflicting every imaginable kind of torture on them.  How did he do that?

And yet this is not an isolated example.  To our shame, the history of human cruelty is as long as the history of human existence.  The worst part of this is the fact that it continues to exist today.  The fact that after witnessing something so appalling as World War II there still exists places like Guantanamo Bay.  That there are still terrorists and extremists and people filled with hate (or even more terrifying--people filled with militant zeal).  That people are still capable of taking another human being's life in his or her hands and snuffing it out because someone told them to...or because they told themselves to.  How?  How are we still doing this to one another?

I wish I had answers to any of these questions or solutions to even just one of these problems.  How does one abolish apathy while staving off misguided zealotry?  How does one subdue the demon within Man that strips from him his Humanity?  How do people conquer their wills and learn to interact with each other civilly and reasonably?  I don't know.  All I know is that even without solutions we have to keep trying.  Bartoletti told the story of various young men and women who rose up in rebellion under Hitler's regime.  In every instance they were quickly found and executed, their voices silenced, leaving what appeared to be little or no change in their wake.  It was difficult to hear their stories without bitterness as I wondered what it was for.  But I had to remind myself that the simple fact that I could read their stories all these years later means that they had some effect.  I cannot find the words to explain what their sacrifice means to me, a privileged and ignorant girl some 70 years later.  All I can say is that I am so grateful that they made it.  And perhaps, with that example to inspire me, if one day I find myself called on to sacrifice something of my own to protest against injustice, hatred, violence, or cruelty I will be able to make the right decision.  Even if I don't think it will make a difference.

Twilight: slasher fiction for the emotionally starved...

So my friend Danielle and I have this thing where we go and watch whatever Twilight movie happens to be out and we laugh hysterically.  It worked well for Twilight and New Moon.  She was out of the country for Eclipse so I missed that one, but I hear she went and saw it down in Brazil and laughed enough for both of us.  She has recently moved out to New York to be fabulous, but she's back in town for a few days visiting for Christmas so we figured we'd better get us to a late showing of Breaking Dawn 1.0

if your goal is mocking this seems promising, right?

What. The. Hell.

What the hell is that movie?  I'm sorry to be vulgar, but that is really all I can say, over and over.

So, for people like me who had no idea what was going on, here's a rundown.  I actually was just going through doing a play by play but it was taking way too long.  Especially when I realized that this movie is really just four things: wedding, honeymoon, express pregnancy, and delivery.  That's all you need to know.  They get married, they go on a honeymoon, she gets pregnant with the demon baby of death, and then she gives birth to said baby.  And somehow they stretch that into a movie just 3 minutes shy of 2 hours.

But that makes it sound sort of normal.  Oh no.  My first serious "this is wacked out!" alarm went off when she wakes up from her wedding night.  She's all gooey eyed remembering how beautiful it all was and then Edward walks in and asks her how bad she's hurt.  Then he pulls up her sleeves and you see his little fingerprints all over her arms and shoulders.   Suddenly you get a whole new perspective on abusive relationships as you listen to him abjectly apologize for hurting her, swear he never meant to and he'll never do it again, and listen to her get angry with him for...not for hurting her, but for refusing to hurt her even more.  What the what?  He sticks to it for a couple days and all the booty shorts and little negligees in the world won't sway him...until she wakes up from a dream crying cause he just doesn't want her...BLECH!

But that was nothing compared to Gollum!Bella of creeptastic pregnancy emaciation.  The emotional manipulation that happened between her and Jacob.  The bizarre militancy of Rosalee standing guard over PregnantGollum!Bella.  The sippy cup'o'blood to keep sweet li'l baby happy.  The abrupt change in Edward from baby loathing to baby worship.  All of it leading up to a scene that I don't think I'll ever be able to erase from my memory...the Vampire C-Section of Horror.  This is what happens, absolutely no exaggeration.  Bella, Edward, Alice, Rose, and Jacob are having tender bonding times when Bella drops her Cup'o'Blood as Edward hands it to her.  She dives after it and breaks her own back.  She falls, breaking her knees, and is about to splat her little head on the tiles till Edward dashes forward to catch her.  This sends her into labor, but Carlisle is out catching a bite, so it's up to Rose, Alice, Edward, and Jacob to deliver the little one.  Bella is lying there on the delivery table, back still broken, and the rest stand around at a loss till Edward says the baby is suffocating and Bella screams to get him out.  Jacob stands in as the husband, holding her hand and shouting at her to hang in there as Edward snatches up a scalpel and slices open her stomach.  Unfortunately, her uterus has become vampirized and scalpels are useless against it...so Edward rips it open with his teeth!  He comes up with his face covered in in his wife's blood and starts cooing over his new little girl!  Everyone just stands there!  No one thinks "Oh hey!  This woman has just had her stomach and uterus ripped open and may be hemorrhaging out, plus her back is broken.  This may be a good time to vampirize her completely...you know...while she's still alive."  Oh no.  No one even thinks "Oh hey, daddy might want to wipe some of the blood off his face."  They just stare at the baby, watch it take a bit out of it's mother, and coo over how cute it is.  Until Bella stops breathing that is.  Edward finally realizes his wife is in bad shape and hands the baby off to Rose.  He takes out a syringe of "vampire venom" and jams it into her heart.  When that doesn't appear to work he just starts sinking his teeth into her at random, a visual accompanied by a truly cringe-inducing squelching sound.  Nothing seems to be working, and he cries and Jacob cries and Bella looks like dead Gollum.  Oh.  But inside she's becoming a vampire and screaming her head off.  But you can't tell.  She just looks dead and sad.

I would post a picture...but you can't find any

 pictures of a scene that horrifying!  What does

that tell you?

You know what?  Forget the fact that Jacob then imprints on a baby girl.  Forget everything else about this movie--the bad acting, the horrible special effects, even the other questionable plot points.  What the HELL was that scene?  How do people go and watch that and still think that this is a great, beautiful, powerful love story?  What was that!?  I can't ask enough because I can't get an answer.  I walked out of the theatre so disturbed and so confused and so completely creeped out that all I could say was "why did we see that movie again?" over and over and over.

Chess, Mind games, and Infidelity

I'm in one of those hopelessly romantic moods lately.  They come upon me every now and then--wistful romantic yearnings for the passion that my life so distinctly lacks.  Silly moods.

So inspired, I was on the brink of watching Hugh Jackman in Someone Like You.  He has that great scene where he says everything you ever wished a guy would say to you while looking like...Hugh Jackman.  Plus he's delightfully cocky and annoying throughout the rest of the film.  But I decided to give Netflix one last try before committing... (though it has really disappointed me lately with its "Suggestions for you" ideas)

possibly the most adorable picture of
Hugh Jackman ever taken.  Possibly.

I already had Netflix open from where I was searching, quite fruitlessly, earlier today for something good to watch.  By pure luck, when I opened the tab, there was a movie I swear wasn't there before.  I'd never heard of it before, but it had Kevin Kline who I adore.  It was called Queen to Play, and appeared to be in French.  Kevin Kline speaking French?  I am intrigued...tell me more...

yet another entry into the grand tradition
of really wretched movie posters...

Brief synopsis: a French housewife (Helene) is living a drab life working two cleaning jobs, one at a hotel for a demanding boss, the other for a reclusive widowed professor (Kroger played, of course, by Kevin Kline).  She has an average husband (not amazing, but not a jerk) and a typical teenage daughter.  One day at the hotel she sees a couple on the balcony playing an impressively romantic game of chess.  She becomes intrigued with the game, quickly progressing into full on obsession after she buys an electronic set supposedly for her husband.  But the real turning point in her life is when she boldly asks the professor to teach her how to play.  The rest of the movie details the way her new-found passion changes her life.  Her relationships with her husband and daughter are effected, not to mention her job, and most of all, her relationship with herself.

Certainly the movie is crafted as one of those "self-discovery" movies where a repressed woman learns to love and believe in herself.  Sure.  It served that function perfectly satisfactorily.  This is my beef with those movies though; typically for the woman to "find" herself, she has to have some sort of affair with some random man.  What kind of self discovery is that?  The discovery that you lack integrity?  That is a shitty discovery (pardon my vulgarity, but it is the appropriate word) and if that was what you were out to discover, you should have stayed repressed.  Thus, I generally loathe those movies.  (This is where I go on a rant about the movies Serendipity and The Wedding Planner and any other movies based on the idea of infidelity and the fact that when you really really love someone it's ok to cheat on the person you're married to and also happen to only kind of love.  Hmph!)

Alas, this movie pretty much falls into the same family.

but...

About halfway through the movie I almost turned it off.  There was a definite sexual tension developing between Helene and Kroger.  Thus far Kroger has been a disinterested teacher, impressed against his will by her dedication and talent.  But one day they get caught up playing and discover that the day has passed them by and it is well past Helene's usual time of departure.  No big deal...except instead of going home Helene decides to stay and they have a drink.  They sit...they talk...they stop talking...and still she stays, just staring levelly at him.  Eventually you see him start getting ideas.  You really can't blame him.  She just keeps staring at him.  Just as he's about to say something, however, she gets up.  A moment later she is standing in front of a picture of his wife and he joins her.  He reaches up and touches a strand of hair and asks if she changed it.  Yes she has...and she'd better go home now.  Yes, yes she probably should...

That is usually the point where I start getting annoyed and turn the movie off.  I really don't tolerate unfaithfulness.  But I found myself in an interesting predicament.  Not only did I want to see how it all ended, but I really wasn't sure how it would.  So I kept watching.

Just so you know, the only person Helene has sex with during the movie is her husband (and lest you worry, you don't see much...the movie is rated PG).  That being said, I still would definitely say Helene cheats on her husband.  But I was fascinated with the nature of her infidelity--she has an affair of the mind, rather than one of the body.

The idea of cheating is definitely overt.  Her husband gets suspicious and follows her at one point, expecting to see her and Kroger in the midst of an embrace and is bewildered to see them sit down at the chess board.  He confronts her later and declares he'd almost rather she was having an affair.  It is clear that what is being seduced is not her flesh, but her mind.  The two of them, Kroger and Helene, are both excited by the stimulation the other gives to their mind.  Kroger several times refers to the rest of the world as idiots, pointedly excluding her from this condemnation.  Helene tries to share the game with her husband but he simply can't understand it, so as she says to Kroger, she doesn't know who else but him to play with.  And she must play.

This mental attraction is the temptation for Helene.  Her husband clearly offers her no such stimulation.  Thus, the sexual tension between her and Kroger really only serves to reinforce the connection which already has developed between their minds.  This is really brought home first in Helene's chess tournament.  Neither Kroger nor her husband come (her husband actually waits anxiously outside, terrified that she'll make a fool of herself or that his presence will "throw her off"), but it is Kroger she searches for, and then Kroger she sees in her mind's eye as she plays.  The viewer sees him at home, seemingly playing the game with her, and she sees him across the table from her giving her advice.  Truly, these two have become one.  She never even misses her husband.

In the end they do consummate their relationship.  But in following with it's very nature, it is not a physical union, but a mental one. Of course.  At the end of the movie she is at Kroger's house for the last time, telling him about her plans to go and compete at a tournament in Paris.  He is sitting in a chair and she is sitting on the arm.  Their talk turns to principles he's taught her, and then they play a "blind game", that is they play without a board or pieces, simply imagining the game and speaking their moves.  It was, without a doubt, one of the most intimate scenes I've ever seen in my life.  When the scene abruptly cuts to a shot of her kissing him and walking away, it seems natural that the sexual tension between them is now relaxed.  They've already come together, so their physical relationship, again secondary to the mental, would be much easier.

no pictures of their kiss, so I figured I'd go back to
Hugh Jackman...cause everyone likes seeing him kiss

As I said, I was fascinated with this depiction of infidelity.  Why?  Because it is a kind you rarely hear about but one which is just as dangerous.  And if, somehow, I were ever to be unfaithful, it would be like this.  The fact is, when you get married your spouse becomes your partner not just physically (and by that I mean with money, division of labor, and any other physical needs besides just sex), but mentally and emotionally as well.  Really, all of these different elements work together.  I was talking to a married friend the other day about the way physical intimacy reinforced her emotional intimacy with her husband in a way that conversation never could.  But it goes in reverse.  If all you have is a physical relationship and no emotional or mental investment then you will find yourself with no relationship at all.

Clearly, then, it is vital to remember that not only must you keep your physical lusts in check, but also your mental ones.  However.  Even more important, I would say, is this: every bit as appealing as sex is mental stimulation, possibly even more so.  Thus, it is far better, I think, to find someone with whom you can share that intellectual bond to begin with rather than fight the seduction of an extramarital bond with someone else afterward.

Really that is one of my greatest fear as I look for a husband.  I'm terrified that one day, five, ten, or twenty years from now, I'll realize that I'm terribly terribly bored.  In fact, I have to stop myself getting interested in guys who are clearly far more work than anyone should ever wish for themselves just because I think they have the potential to hold my attention long term as I try to deal with them.  That is not a healthy attitude and I'm trying to stop it.

And with that I shall leave you.  Again, I've not really come to any conclusions, just meandered about pondering aloud on things.  The joy of a blog I guess.  As for the movie, I must confess that upon infidelity though it was based, I somehow ended up liking it.  I would suggest it to anyone who enjoys foreign films.  If you are one of those people, go look it up on Netflix...

More Pad Thai and Dog Hair...

...but not together.

Not that it is particularly helpful, but in my ongoing quest for the best Thai food in Provo, I decided to try a Thai restaurant down here in Phoenix.  I'm down visiting my dad, and my step-mom is out of town, so it's been dinner out every night.  I figured, why waste a great opportunity for Thai food, right?  So I looked up the best Thai restaurants in Chandler (the suburb where my dad actually lives) and found The Mint Thai Cafe (be warned, the site plays a little blurb of music when you click on it).  It was not the number one rated Thai restaurant, that one was too far away.  But it was a pretty well rated one.  Plus, my dad said he'd been there before and thought it was good.  So away we went.

It was...fine.  I mean, the food was good.  I got my traditional Pad Thai and dad got something called "Siamese Twins" (I find the hyper Asian stereotyped names these places come up with to be vaguely insulting...to pretty much everyone involved) that involved bamboo shoots and coconut and green beans.  I advised him to get this dish  based on the existence of green beans which, as everyone knows, are the world's greatest vegetable.  I couldn't try much of his because it was spicy and I'm a complete pansy when it comes to hot food.  But what I tasted in my one bite before my tongue started writhing was very good.  Mark up another win for green beans.

My Pad Thai was also pretty good.  The flavor of the sauce was quite nice, though I find I prefer my Pad Thai a little juicier than most people make it.  These guys went quite dry, even more than usual.  But there was plenty of chicken and even egg, which I do appreciate since it adds a bit of variety to a dish that can get a little monotonous.  When I asked for my side of lime the woman brought me a dish of lemon slices.  Apparently the only lime they had wasn't looking too fresh and she didn't want to give it to me.  I appreciate that I guess.  The waitress herself was a little eccentric, but pretty good I think.  All in all, I found The Mint Thai Cafe to be satisfactory.  Decent food, decent service, decent prices.  Probably, if I ever get Thai food down here again I'll try a different place.  But if you ever need a place to have dinner and you're craving Thai, you could do much worse than eat there.

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this is what I found when I did an image search for dog hair...
not really want I wanted, but too dang cute to pass up

Visiting my dad is quite an endeavor.  You see, my dad and my step-mom own five dogs (plus my cat, which he's now trying to tell me belongs to my step-brother...pshaw...).  Cristy has a thing for Corgis, so they have four of them, plus an older, giant German Shepherd.  All of the dogs are pretty good tempered and since they're corgis it's not as if they can really jump up on your nice clean shirt.  However, all five of them are indoor dogs, all with permission to exist on the furniture.  This all means that at any given moment, pretty much every surface in the house has dog hair on it.  I find the ubiquity of dog hair in this place to be...somewhat trying.  I don't want to go to church and spend the first 20 minutes trying to pick all the hair off my skirt.  

I have found my intense dislike of doghair generally translates into a dislike of the dogs which produce it.  Any time my dad's dogs try to insinuate themselves into my affections I push them callously away.  See, that's one thing I don't like about dogs.  They try too hard to get you to love them.  Everyone knows you shouldn't be desperate for friends...  Cats, on the other hand, do a very good job of exuding the "Yes, I know you're responsible for my daily food and water, but don't let that fool you into thinking I wouldn't eat you if you died..." (this is a fact.  house cats will eat the body of their deceased owner if they run out of food...).  The point is that dogs, unlike cats, are just desperate for you to love them.  Hence, the moment I sit down on the couch at least one of the dogs will jump up next to me and lay his head in my lap and look up at me appealingly as if to ask me "Now really...how can you say no to real, legitimate puppy eyes???"  

I have managed to rebuff these efforts now for several years, but this year I find myself faltering a little.  One of the dogs is quite old and goes by the name of Jax.  He doesn't force himself on me, he just comes and quietly sits nearby just in case I should decided to pat his head.  He has taken, on this visit, to sleeping in my bedroom, not on the bed, just in a corner.  To be honest, I feel like I'm being courted by someone who is keenly aware of the sort of courtship I would not be able to resist.  I feel weak that I'm succumbing to his charms.  But at the same time...it's just a dog.  Everyone loves dogs (or at least cats or birds...whatever you have as a pet).  It does not reflect poorly on me because I happen to also like dogs.  After all, I love my kitty unabashedly.  So I guess I'll grudgingly accept Jax as my friend...

SPATULAs, Pad Thai, and Adverbials

So, I suppose I should write an update on ye olde SPATULA.  I know you all can't actually see them, but I want you to know that there are actually two posts lurking about in my Blogger Closet that were meant to be SPATULA updates.  I just never finished them.  I do that a lot.  I think there are some 20 ish posts I have here published on my blog, but there are about 45 total posts in the closet.  I should go through and clean that place out.  It's getting musty and I'm pretty sure there are spiders...

hands down...most awesome spatula on earth.

Anyway.  SPATULA.  So, Dr. Parry was fabulous and worked so well with me the entire time we were getting my project proposal ready.  He never shook his head and said "What was I thinking?  Clearly you're not cut out to do projects with the adults..." and for that I was grateful.  In the end I did manage to get my proposal finished and submitted on time.   I settled on the immensely clever and creative title of " Not the Hero We Deserved, But the Hero We Needed." Because when in doubt, just rip off a quote from your source material.  Except that I really like that speech Inspector Gordon gives there at the end of that movie.  As for the project itself, I'm supposed to be doing research right now.  The thing is, they don't actually tell us if we've gotten the grant till February.  Not that I really need the money to do this project, really.  Which is why I'm supposed to be doing research right now regardless.  I guess if I ever really need to write a paper for one of my classes I'll really get into that research.  Dr. Parry said if I find anything interesting he'd love to talk about it with me.  Bless him.  

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So I've decided that I'm embarking on a quest.  I want to find the best Thai food in the Provo/Salt Lake area.  Which is to say, I want to find the best Pad Thai in the area.  I always get the Pad Thai, which seems like the best way to evaluate the relative quality of each different place I go.  On that note, today after class I decided to go and try the Thai place I looked at every day on my way to Vivint.  It's called Spicy Thai and it's on University Ave. next door to Magleby's Fresh (whatever the heck that is...they advertise their breadsticks, which was odd enough I almost went in after my meal and requested to try them).  I'm sorry to say that I was not hugely impressed.  I got the impression that it was one of those "Dudes in the office need lunch" kind of places, specializing in fast, not horrible, "Thai" food (quotes being important indicators of the quality of the food).  

My plate did not look this good...

In following with a place that caters to people on timed lunch breaks, the food came very fast.  I'm all for eating expeditiously, but when my food gets to me too fast I'm likely to assume that it was just siting there somewhat like a hamburger from McDonald's, soaking up the rays of a luscious heat lamp.  I took that picture straight off their menu, but I'm afraid that my meal didn't look even that good.  And the food itself was...fine.  Bland and fine.  I am oddly picky about the texture of my noodles, and theirs were quite good, fully cooked, but firm rather than mushy.  But the sauce tasted like the same sauce I could buy at Target.  Nothing special at all.  I traditionally get a dish of lime to squeeze over my Pad Thai, but once I got my food I never really saw my waitress till I was nearly done, so no lime for me.  Which is a pity, because that little zing would have been really helpful.  I splurged and got a brownie and ice cream for dessert.  It was chewy and sort of fudgey, but the taste was odd.  It tasted like they used butter flavored Crisco actually.  Not my favorite.  Either use butter or use Crisco people.  Don't try to use both.  The price for the Pad Thai was pretty reasonable, however the brownie was not.  Overall rating would be 2.5 stars (who decided stars was a good way to rate restaurants?  makes no sense to me...).  Probably not a place I'll be going back to.

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This semester marks my first steps on the road to editorship.  I am taking Elang 223, Intro to Linguistics with Professor Oaks.  I love Prof. Oaks.  He is hilarious.  Today in class he said "Verbs are the dungeon masters of the sentence."  The other day he was talking about back formations, which is when people assume that someone who "edits" must be an "editor".  The word didn't exist till people just started saying it.  Tangentially, this is the basis of my favorite joke in Clue, when Col. Mustard asks Wadsworth what he does and Wadsworth says "I'm the butler...I buttle."  Anyway.  Prof. Oaks is telling us about back formations and he mentions that there is currently one coming into existence right now.  "Ush" as a back formed verb from "usher" is starting to be more and more common in popular usage.  As he is telling us to pay attention and listen for "ush" he suddenly exclaims "See?!  There are so many reasons not to give up on life!" 

Anyway, the point was not, actually, to talk about how ridiculous my professor is, but rather to explain that I think I am really going to love my editing minor.  I have loved everything in this class.  Today we talked about some of the basic parts of speech.  This is the stuff I thought I'd hate.  I always loathed grammar when I was in high school.  But that is one thing I can say unequivocally in favor of my two years in Russian class.  I took from that class a new-found love of grammar.  It's like a logic puzzle, trying to trace out the parts of speech.  In Russian it's all about word endings, but in English it's about syntax.  I'm signed up for two more linguistics classes next semester and I'm very excited for them.  One of them is a straight up grammar class, and the other is...oh gosh, I don't remember how he explained it to me, but I know that it was what he suggested when I asked him if there was a class just about morphology.  

And lastly I will leave you with this gem.  A great song and a great video.  Please enjoy!