"Bittersweet" --- a Rondeau

"It must be nice," the serpent sighed
Unto the young and guiltless bride,
"That though your tender skin is bare
As is your mindscape, you don't care!
But don't you hate your lack of pride?

Insist that you be dignified!
For what's the use of truth untried?
So ripe and juicy, hanging there...
It must be nice."

This foul advice the snake supplied.
It made the maiden turn aside,
Away from His despairing stare,
To bittersweet, enticing fare,
And reaching for the pome, she cried,
"It must be nice."

Vampire tourism has gotten rather big out in Forks, judging by the souveniers my sister and mother brought back. A t-shirt saying "Twilight Lounge." A roadsign saying "Welcome to Forks. Population 3562 Vampires 8.5." A magnet shaped like a ruby red apple with the word Seattle emblazoned across it. Okay, perhaps that last one is actually just for Seattle and the connection is entirely coincidental. But you never know.

I tell you what, this Edward vs Jacob thing may be getting just a wee bit out of hand. You're either on Team Edward or Team Jacob. Daph came back from having visited La Push, and she called it "stinky werewolf land" on her Facebook. This, by itself, seems rather innocuous, but the rivalry is getting somewhat vicious. I can just see it. The movie theater has two separate lines so no one starts anything. Hisses and taunts fly through the air. Team Edward throws an apple. Stuff gets started.

Sure, this all sounds insane. But when it happens, remember that I foretold it.

Frustrated Rage

Rage metaphysical, rage undeniable,
Rage wracking reason through,
Rage within and rage without,
Anger, ire, neon blue.

Psyche solid, psyche silk,
Psyche slipping the mental scene,
Psyche stagnant, psyche sick,
Slick psychosis, putrid green.

Useless hues, useless dudes,
Useless yammering fellow,
Useless, unyeilding. Useless, yuck,
Yelling yawp, I vomit yellow.

Cannot crawl and cannot climb,
Cannot counter, cannot flee,
Cannot call a cad a creeper,
Cannot reconcile "he" with "me."

Rage, unravel, rend and rue.
Yellow-green-insanity-blue.

You ever have one of those totally blank moments?

I'm having one right now.

I need to post something. Anything, really. I'm only at 11 and I need 20 at least before the end of this semester. I can't just leave it when I've got a wee bit of writer's block.

So! What to talk about? Hmmmmmm...

I suppose I'll talk about "Twilight." My mother and my sister are flying out today. Guess where they're going? You'll never guess. Well, I'll give you a clue. They are flying to Seattle, Washington. Take that, add it to the Meyers vampire novel, and what do you get?

My sister and mom are visiting Forks. The little nothing town in which "Twilight" is set. I refrain from passing judgement. I will say that I am jealous because I have always wanted to see the Pacific Northwest. Oregon, mostly, though I could never tell you just why. I suppose the Redwoods are a key factor. That, or the Native Americans from that area. I love the trickster Raven. And Coyote, though he's from a different area of North America. And Loki, though he's not from America at all. And Anansi... well, you get the drift. I love trickster characters.

Which is probably why I love Bruno Walton.

If you've never read the Bruno and Boots books, I would definitely suggest you do it before you get too old to appreciate the humor.

Perhaps I Should Get More Sleep...

I walked past the rehearsals of "Antigone" yesterday. They are going to put that on in Pegasus Theatre (I'm not sure if they spell it with the "re" or the "er" ending, but does it really matter? We all just call it Pegasus.) I know a few of the people in it, working on it, doing the lighting and so on. I almost wanted to go in and snoop, but I let them do their thing uninterrupted.

I tell you what, I was on the crew for the opera UCO put on a while back, "Perichole," and seeing some of those people (my sister'll know eXACTly who I mean) brought me right back to the fun-filled days of hefting potted plants and maneuvering the houses. Oh God the houses, remember that? Well, sorry, more than likely you don't, because only the crew called them that. They were the big set pieces that looked on one side like the outside of buildings, and on the other side like the inner walls of a dungeon. We had to make a very quick set change, we only had a few minutes, where we had to turn the houses completely around and get them into position before the curtains opened. It was delicate. It was tricky. It was aggravating. And then it was beautiful, genius, like clockwork.

The people that work at Mitchell Hall are brilliant. The set designs are just unbelievable. You should have seen what they did for "Metamorphosis" a few semesters ago, when I was taking my Scene Shop class. Good Lord. They built a pool. On stage. Under a gigantic chandelier. Which we put together. Tiny little bits of wire threaded through thousands of tiny little holes in the metal rings which held all the little glass diamond chandelier bits. We spent two hours in shop. Two hours, nonstop. And I got maybe fifty little wires put in. Maybe.

And then they took it apart. Sigh.

Oooooh, bevor ich gehe! Es war sehr interessant! Gestern, vor meiner Screenwriting Kurse, ein Mann sprach im Flur mit einem Handy, und er hat DEUTSCH gesprochen! Ich liebe das! GUT Deutsch. SCHNELL Deutsch. Sehr ausgezeichnet. Sagen Sie ihm nichts! :D

A Weary Scholar's Pantoum

Such typing - typing! - all day long...
Sore dactyls worn down to the nub...
Technology's incessant song!
It can't be helped, and there's the rub...

Sore dactyls worn down to the nub...
Alas, alack, it is my fate...
It can't be helped, and there's the rub...
A poem's due, it can't be late...

Alas, alack, it is my fate...
I'm stuck in here until I'm done...
A poem's due, it can't be late...
I wish to God I had a gun...

I'm stuck in here until I'm done...
Technology's incessant song!
I wish to God I had a gun...
Such typing - typing! - all day long...

Logically Speaking...

A bunch of random thoughts (which happen to travel in a bit of a train...)

If anyone should wear pants, it should be women, and if anyone should wear skirts, it should be men. Think about it. Who has less to squish into pants, hmmm? Men seem rather masochistic to me.

It's just not fair that men can go shirtless and women can't. The same rules should apply for both, considering that nipples abound either way and women can be just as attracted to men's chests as vice versa.

Why do the rules of virginity apply more to girls than boys? This society expects the girls to remain pure until marriage but guys are somehow less guy if they don't give it up in their teens. To keep both of these rules would mean that the guys would have to only have sex with already married women, or divorcees, or widows. And wouldn't that be a cultural taboo as well?

I'm sorry, Twilight fans. Vampires drink blood. This is their sustenance. Blood comes from mammals, usually. A deer, though not a human, is most definitely not a vegetable. Thus, Edward's vegetarian comment? No.

Also, vampires can't be good at heart. They're undead. Soul, gone. This is fairly much universally agreed upon, even by the vampires.

Werewolves can be good at heart as humans, but as wolves they're just surviving.

The movie "Madagascar" is idiotic. The lion is the villain because he wants to eat meat. He's a lion. That's what they do. And how is eating a fish any less villainous? Oh my god he's gonna eat the zebra... Oh, no, okay, we're good, he's just eating stupid fish. Who cares about the fish?

I feel bad for fish. Especially salmon. They wear themselves out just trying to get to the place they can procreate, and then all they do is eject stuff into the water. No fun at all, is it?

Thank God I'm not a porcupine. Do you know about their mating dance? It's effed up.

Val Kilmer's Bruce Wayne spent his Batman life "helping strangers [he] never met." Isn't that the definition of stranger? Someone you haven't met? Come on, man.

The scene in "Top Secret" in the bookshop is fantastic, and more people ought to see it.

Spoof movies generally suck. "Top Secret" is fun. "Loaded Weapon" is fun. "Airplane" is fun. But all the others I can think of are lame. There was ONE good joke in "Epic Movie" and ONE good scene in "Superhero Movie" and let's not get to the "Scary Movie" franchise.

And I think that's enough random thoughts for now.

Villainous Villanelles

Dr. Rice had us try and write one in class today. We got fairly far. We'd come up with our two lines that repeat incessantly, and we'd gotten half of the poem written down before class was over and we had to stop. Each line of each stanza is in iambic pentameter, which is the simplest thing about it. The rhyme scheme is almost impossible to explain in AB format. I'll do it like this...

toe
tree
grow

foe
me
toe

blow
knee
grow

know
glee
toe

show
sea
grow

no
fee
toe
grow

Notice how darn often the words toe and grow are used. Those are the exact same lines every time. If I'd written the whole thing out, let's just make something insane up right now and say the lines are "Today I found a bunion on my toe" and "I watched the stupid thing just grow and grow."

That means that every stanza will say one or both of those lines. Goodness.

The good thing is, the poem my group was constructing was actually kind of cute. We used "down" and "frown" as our two that kept repeating, and for the middle lines that all rhyme we used "elle". It was working, I tell you.

You just try and write a good Villanelle. It's not easy.

An Unsolicited Rant

I hate shoes.


I know this is an insane topic. I should be spending my time talking about art, literature, schoolwork in a pinch... But no. Today I shall be cursing the need for footwear.

It would not be half as bad if stores sold cute shoes in my size. But no, cute tops out at nine or ten at best. This week, I have discovered, purely from necessity, that I can manage to wear a ten. It is illegal, understandably so, to wear open-toed shoes at the library where I work. I love my job, and most definitely do not want to create problems. Unfortunately, open-toed were all I had. My choice was either go home for the day and lose two hours (which I most definitely could not do, as I already lost the hours of this upcoming Sunday and Monday because of the holiday, and that is 25% of my entire paycheck) or I could, during my break, run downtown and buy a pair of shoes. The shoes cost me $12. I only earned $18 for the two hours I would have otherwise lost. Worth it? Yes, I'd say so, for I had to work yesterday as well (again, with closed-toed shoes) and that earned me $40 or so. Had I not purchased those shoes I would have lost $50 dollars, which is one seventh of my rent, and quite necessary to earn.

The shoes are black velvet, with pinstripes, and a bow on the toe. They have a solid heel, about two inches tall. They are, most importantly, closed-toed. The problem with them is this: the back isn't open. I would be fine with these if my heel were free, and could give my toes some respite. But alas, I felt akin to Roald Dahl's witches. Quite frankly, pointy shoes that crush the toes... ooh, ich ärgere mich darüber! Und, leid leid leid, ich habe mich mit diesen Schuhen verletzt. Yes, 'tis too true. Toes were turning pink... going numb... just general badness. It's my own damn fault for not buying a pair of shoes that actually fit. And yet, on break, I had fifteen minutes. I went to three stores in ten minutes. No one had shoes big enough. The first two stores did not even have closed-toed shoes. Darn summer fashions. I found myself in a big ol' fix. The good thing? I worked yesterday with none of the problems that so plagued me Friday. I do not have such an affinity for shoes that I will care about sparing it any wear and tear. I bent the backs underneath my heel and worked. The heel was free, dammit, whether or not the designer had intended it so.

Would that I could go around barefoot! I most definitely prefer the freedom of bare feet. I like the feeling I get when walking across grass or cool tile. I like how I feel graceful. I loved performing for FUBAR, because they required an absence of shoes and my movements felt smooth and elegant. Without footwear, I move more openly; I don't worry about tripping over my own feet.

The most important thing: when my feet are bare, my soul feels free.

My Brain Runneth Over

I just came from Stage Management.

There, does that explain the title I typed? What kind of joke is that? Is that a pun? Either way, it's rather lame, but I'm leaving it. Like I said... My brain runneth over.

Seriously. The new information being uploaded has broken the surface tension in my mind's mental capacity and has resulted in one heck of a headache. Even thinking about it now, I'm groaning (inwardly, of course, as I'm surrounded by a bunch of college students in the Library lab, and I'm sure they'd rather not hear wailing moans as they IM their BFFs).

So, to distract myself from the pain, nausea, and general unease that comes with being scared out of one's pants, I shall talk instead about the ten minute play that I am to turn in to my Playwriting class.

As of right now, this very moment, I have just over eight pages. This is close, but no cigar. I'd take the cigar, too, if I won it. I'd give it to my dad. What would my daddy say? I'll tell you what my daddy'd say. He'd thank his girl for the cigar, is what my daddy'd say. But, to return to reality and get away from any and all "Little Mermaid" references, I do not know if these eight pages are sufficient to allow me to earn an A in this course. Perhaps, at least, it will show promise. Of course, you realize that "to show promise" is not quite a compliment. Loosely translated, it means "Well, this is crap, but you could maybe write something good someday."

I think perhaps I got a wee bit philosophical. There is not very much movement, as the whole ten minute play is set in a jail cell in what used to be Poland. I only have three characters, one of whom is practically unimportant. Necessary for reality's sake, but I think perhaps I could leave that guard out of the play (although I never say if the guard is a guy or a girl, so in theory a girl could play this part. She'd have to be one tough woman, though, if she's going to guard a jail cell. A Spartan, Amazon, Drill Sergeant Duck kind of woman. And if you don't know who Drill Sergeant Duck is, well, let's just say my sister will never poke fun at you for watching children's programming. That show is adorable, thank you very much. Bill in his little bow tie... Anyway!

I don't know a word of Polish. Wait, no, I take that back. The word małpa (the ł makes a wuh sound) means monkey or ape. Which is funny because now I know how to say monkey in five languages. Scimmia Affe Monkey Singe Małpa. Why do I need to know this stuff? Sigh. But the fact is, I couldn't make a sentence in Polish. I can barely pronounce małpa, thanks to the ever so wonderful International Phonetic Alphabet. So I took the same sounds as we have in the English language (we have quite a darn few, many more than we have symbols for) and simply switched them around a little. Now I have a fictional language that sounds very foreign and hopefully rather Polish. The heavy use of the letter ž makes that more likely. I love the letter ž. It's so exotic. It is the sound "zh," the voiced "sh," the sound we have in words like treasure and garage. I believe they're spelled [trɛžər] and [gərɔž] in the IPA. I could be wrong now... but I don't think so! Sorry, another reference. Anybody else like that show? I used to, before Sharona left, but Natalie's just not as fun and not as good for Monk. No offense to those who think the Natalie character's just awesome. (My goodness I spelled it "offence." I do that sometimes, too, I'll spell things the British way, like manoeuvre, isn't that great?! Okay, I'm done now.) In either case, I have my characters speak back and forth a little in a language that is most definitely not English. It's most definitely not a language. I hope I'm not inadvertently cussing in Polish or something... But if I am, who's really going to know? The Polish, yes, but I doubt they'll see my play performed.

I just realized that I've been typing for the last hour. I don't think I'm supposed to devote that much time to this particular endeavor. Part of it was looking up the IPA symbols, which took a little while to copy and paste. I think the only notation on pronunciation I'll need to make is something about the "zh" sound, because the rest of it is very phonetic. But I should stop now, and so I will. This was a nice diversion and I have entirely forgotten about all the stuff I have to do to get ready for "Three Sisters"... Believe you me, when October comes, THAT'S what you'll be hearing about. Chekhov this and Costumes that. I get to be the Associate Stage Manager Costume Liaison... I could honestly hurl... I don't know nothin' 'bout makin' costumes, Miss Scarlett! Okay, that was lame. I know it was. And now I go - but first we play! Okay, okay, that was less lame. I love Danny Kaye. And so we drink! Noooo! The pellet with the poison's in the chalice from the palace! That's a line from another Danny Kaye movie, in case you didn't know. But they connect, which is fun.

Wait... Wait... I cannot leave just yet... For my friend Juliet (that's really her name, don't go thinkin' I'm makin' things up just because I mentioned her and Romeo a post ago) has just come in, and is reading my script. You shall be informed momentarily...

She has read it. I believe she liked it. I'm not sure... She smiled a few times, chuckled once, and then got quite serious as the play went on. It does get kind of dark, so maybe that's the reaction I'm shooting for. She brought up a few good ideas, which I will incorporate, and then Tuesday I might read this thing with the class. I'll have to ask whether anyone can try to do a European/Polish/German type accent, because without that, two of my three characters won't be quite right. It is now 9 pm, and I have been in this lab since 7 typing on this blog. The last thirty minutes were reading and discussing my script, but still, I stop now. For real this time.