Now is it 'testes' or 'testicles'?

Last night I received an acceptance letter from the cinema program of my number one choice for college. I was pretty excited; smiled a lot, blushed. But what this post is really about is what my mother said.

No one has ever said anything more inspiring and beautiful, and I can hardly do it justice with my awful memory, but here goes...

"Jen, I am so proud of you. I envy you. I wish I could be just like you."

I asked her why, because that didn't make any sense to me. She said...

"Because you only do what you WANT to do. You've never done anything you thought would be a waste of your time, only what you've felt was worthy of it, and still you always seem to be able to get what you want. Because you stick to your guns, and you wait for inspiration, and when it comes you explode with genius and creativity. Because I can't believe how easily you've slipped into your identity in these past years, or that you're going to be leaving me soon."

I couldn't speak, I was so afraid I would burst into tears. I love my mother so much and her words were the highest compliment I could ever hope to receive. And the fact that my mother said it with tears in her eyes made it mean so much more.

Heath Ledger died a week ago and there's still this emptiness inside me that I can't understand.

I shouldn't care. This thing that happened shouldn't affect me so much. It shouldn't touch me at all. I only knew him through what he chose to give himself to the public in his performances and interviews. I haven't really been able to concentrate on anything else except him. The fact that he is no longer on this Earth hurts me for reasons I can't hope to comprehend or explain. I only know that I'm hurting. Grieving.

There was something in the way he acted that made you feel that whatever he was doing or saying was being dug up from somewhere deep and honest inside of him and that it was something he'd never shown to anyone before. He was a master with his emotions onscreen and I can only hope to believe that this was the case within his real life. Whether it was suicide, an accidental overdose, or a fluke of nature, it was and is above all a tragedy. It's ridiculous that someone who seemed so pure, charming, talented, and beautiful had to die without reason.

I feel stupid. Like some crazed fangirl, distraught and in tears over a crush who was so far out of her league and over her head... But I'm not; I swear I'm not. This really has nothing to do with his good looks except that it is a shame that the world must now view his beauty only in movies and memories. What this is really about is the man whom "few people had the privilege to really know".

I suppose this affects me so much because it reminds me of my own mortality. If a man who was only 11 years older than me can just up and disappear, then what the hell am I doing with my life? If I were to die in 11 years then I know I would've accomplished nothing, and that I would leave very few people behind with fond memories of myself. But look at all he has created and pursued in his short lifetime, and all the people his touched with his sincerity. I am sorely disappointed in myself, for all the potential for life that I've wasted; the 17 years that I've been on this Earth and have used for nothing but dreaming and complaining.

I want to thank Mr. Ledger because, though it is a silly, meaningless consolation prize, I feel as though in his death he has reminded me to live. Because of him, I won't allow myself to waste one more day of my life moping about the futility of existence. Instead, I will live my short life to the fullest and pursue the dreams I had begun to give up on.

I feel sick with regret for taking someone so rare and beautiful for granted during his life, and only recognize his true greatness after he has passed.

R.I.P. Heath Ledger
1979-2008
You are missed.

Hell yeah, I totally ROCKED my film extract analysis of GoodFellas today! The joy I feel about this does nothing to eclipse the increasing guilt I feel at not only failing to complete my IA to my greatest potential, but at not even wanting to complete it at all. I SUCK!!!

But my teacher is a TOTAL FUCKING SKANKY PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BITCH, so I feel a complete lack of caring i for every assignment I do in that class. Besides, who cares if I failed, I can always settle for CNU (if they have a film program).

I found out today that Across the Universe doesn't come out on DVD until February 5th. I really don't think I can wait that long. I was hoping to get it for Christmas but I guess that's impossible.

Hopefully we will get to finish watching A Beautiful Mind in psychology tomorrow, even if I've already seen it eight times.

Oh, also, apparently I am Ed, the "stupid hyena" from The Lion King. Thanks guys. I love you, too.

And here I was thinking that it would be a good idea to go to an opera on my last day of freedom before school begins again. I must be some sort of dumbass.

I was sent straight back to the nosebleed section in some sort of little row made for two. I felt like I was on a really uncomfortable airplane. And the HEAT! You don't even wanna know how hot it was in that theatre.

If you combine all the elements of my experience at the opera (little bastard children, intense heat, zero leg room, no armrest, backrest which only comes to the middle of my back, and smoke scented man behind me), you get hell. At one point I was sure I was either going to throw myself off the balcony or pass the fuck out.

Needless to say I left early. So many people were getting their money back for the horrible conditions. I just got out of there as fast as I could.

The story of Hansel and Gretel has never been so boring or uncomfortable before, I'm sure.

I just finished eating the most amazing nachos ever, equipped with jalapeno peppers, onions, sour cream, and white cheddar (the secret is in the white cheddar). I mean I seriously had 42 orgasms while eating those babies (and I'm still counting-43).

Now that my tummy is full I am feeling much better, plus everyone at school is saying that the weatherman is calling for snow tonight (80% chance, cross your fingers) so all in all I feel like it's the weekend or something. I'm definitely going to pay my respects to the snow god tonight and do my little ritual.

It is STILL as windy as fuck outside, though.

The only bad thing that happened today was that I received a seventy-fucking-five on my shit art research workbook and that I finally realized my teacher's a slimy douchebag with zero talent who expects everyone else to make him look good. Otherwise, great day!

I got my psych teacher to say cocksucker in class and this is sure to be the highlight of my life. Seriously. It was amazing! It's a long story how I managed to weasel that one out of him, buy after he said it he was like,

"I can't believe I just said that in the middle of my class. I will never say that again."

He's the coolest! Why are some teachers so awesome and others are soooooo lame?

I'm planning on kicking back and watching The Public Enemy (James Cagney, ~w00t w00t~) tonight as research for my Film IA, whilst I pray for snow, of course.

Since I'm such a lazy bitch I've decided to cut down on the amount of colleges I'm planning on applying to since I know that most of them will never get done...

Damn, it is so windy! I keep getting distracted by how windy it is. And COLD! I'm praying for snow tonight, but I doubt that's gonna happen.

I'm doing my lame Art Research Workbook tonight, also known as the LAMEST most USELESS assignment ever known to man. What a waste of time. I only took art class so that I would be able to express myself creatively, I had no idea it came with a workload to match that of my other, more challenging classes. How do I manage to get myself into all of these hard classes?

I feel like something huge happened today that I should be writing about but nothing is coming to mind. I feel like there was some fight or explosion or robbery or murder or something but there wasn't. Weird...

Thank god that two of my classes tomorrow will be throw away classes. Two of my four teachers are going to be absent so I'll be receiving a sort of half day. (Not really, I'm sure they'll remember to leave plenty of busy work behind while they're off in Florida doing "work". Pssh. As if anyone does work in Florida! That's where people go to either retire or vacation. No actual work ever gets done there, I'm sure.)

SATs suck and so does Freddie Highmore. If I hear one more word about how talented that kid is...

August Rush is NOT a good movie, contrary to what you may be hearing on IMDB forums. Please don't see it unless you're full of money or enjoy crap-fairy-tale-romance-orphan-reunited-with-his-mom-and-dad nonsense. And maybe you do. If so, that's awesome cause you'll enjoy this piece of crap a lot more than I did.

Yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah. Not much else to say except to complain about all the work I still haven't done and never really plan on doing, but it's the weekend so I'm not even going to mention it... more than once.

The kid who sat next to me during the SATs didn't fill in any of the bubbles in his answer booklet. After every section I kept looking over to see if he had done any of it and each time it was blank. Poor kid. He just leaned back in his chair the entire time. Don't know what was up with that.

Oh, and about the title of this post, The Taming of the Shrew seems to actually be a very good play. Turns out Shakespeare was a G.

Boooo! This means I actually have to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. It's the weekend and I'm supposed to stay up till five in the morning procrastinating on my college applications and I.B. evaluations.

I have to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow. I think I might cry. I have far too much to do and far to little motivation to do any of it at all. What a messed up person I am...

At least I got to watch GoodFellas last night, cause THAT'S a great movie. I might even include it my Film Study I.S. since I'm doing it on "The Rise of the Criminal in Cinema". Who knows. I still need to find a foreign film for that...

My Topics I.A. is due in two weeks, along with my Psych I.A. proposal and my American Classic Film Extract Evaluation (which I'm superbly nervous about). Plus I've got to start reading The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare isn't really my bag). Guh... On top of that I've got all these colleges to apply to and interviews to attend, and I really have to finish up my hand sculpture in art. I'm pretty much screwed.

Thank God I'm such a procrastinator or else I'd be doing all that garbage right now.

Yeesh...

Dear Psycho Bitch,

You, piece of Republican trash, do not fuck with me on this issue. My rights are mine and you hold no power over me! How dare you try to start an argument when you can't even defend your position.

"I'm a Republican because Republicans uphold family values."
...
...
I can't believe that anyone would ever actually have the audacity to say something so ignorant with a straight face. It sounds like a joke on the Colbert Report.

How could you be a woman and actually agree that a bunch of old white men have the right to tell you what you should do with your body?

I'm so glad you got your ass handed to you in class today, you really deserved it.

You should have realized by now that America is supposed to be the place where you can choose your own destiny and make your own decisions based on your INDIVIDUAL standards and beliefs, you fat Nazi cow. That said, you certainly have the right to refrain from getting an abortion, but you have no right to tell others that they have to too.

If you can't understand this then you have completely missed the point of what it means to be an American.

Sincerely,
Sane Human Being

P.S. Who has the right to say what "family values" are anyway? Why don't you just go hang yourself with an aborted fetus' umbilical cord.

FUCK THAT!

Since when is my IA due on December 12th? Why the fuck wasn't I informed?

Who the hell does she think she is throwing this at me without any warning? What a selfish brat! I have never in my life had a teacher so unconcerned with her students feelings and priorities. As if I'm not busy enough already.

No wonder people murder each other...

Yeesh.

I just finished watching Videodrome and Pi, back-to-back, which probably says enough about my massive headache. I'm overrun with questions about reality and the universe and patterns and...I think I'm just gonna pass out from the directions my brain is moving in.

I'm going to be perfectly honest, I didn't really enjoy Videodrome very much. Now, I LOVE Cronenberg's style as a director -his visual effects are always brilliant- but after every film of his that I've seen I'm always left feeling that the story was lacking something necessary. The problem is that I can never pinpoint what. But this time, I think I have the answer.

In my opinion, Videodrome started out with a really interesting idea, but then it seems that Cronenberg wasn't sure what to do with it. I was totally into it at the beginning. I was shitting myself at the brilliancy of some of the dialogue- "The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena: the Videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television." (hello! instant cult classic dialogue alert!)- and buckling myself in for the ride I assumed would challenge my entire perception of reality. I thought, based on lines like the one above, that it would be totally philosophical and it would be some sort of great commentary on our times, on our modern obsession with television... but it came up short. It exhausts me just talking about it (or maybe that's the 4 1/2 day weekend talking). I realize a lot of people really love this film, and I can sorta see why, but I guess it's not really my thing.

On the plus side, the special effects were amazing! Gruesome and gory and all the things they were supposed to be. (Vaginastomach sPazZatTaCK!!!)

But,Pi...Pi, oh my! Now, that's a good film! I'd seen Requiem for a Dream, another Darren Aronofsky film, quite a while ago and loved it immensely (truly grotesque and tragic, wonderfully edited), so I came into this one knowing vaguely what to expect, though I hadn't read the summary on Blockbuster.com. Right off the bat, I'm completely in love with it -opening credits can reveal a lot about a film. My eyes are pinned open and I'm soaking it all in. This is the way I was throughout the entirety of the film and that's how Pi succeeds where Videodrome didn't. It sucked me in and didn't stop sucking... in the good way... but not in the blowjob good way. It didn't just abandon me halfway through the way Videodrome did.

I'm usually not into math and numbers, but when they have something to do with pattern of the universe and the true name of God I can certainly get interested. Crazy fascinating!

Okay, whatever. None of that was even vaguely coherent. Give me a break, I'm exhausted and I just want to pass out on the couch watching some lame MTV reality show right now (Tila should totally go for either Dani or Bobby... or both. Can she do that? That's what I would do.)

I think I'm dying.  I haven't seen my friends in almost three days.  What am I supposed to do to entertain myself?  What would normal people do?  (BTW, porn is out of the question.  Mom is upstairs.)

I've already watched all the movies I rented from Blockbuster on Wednesday, and there is nothing of interest on TV.  And there is no way I'm going to the movies with my mom or by myself.  Ugh......

I wish my aunt lived on a farm in The Middle of Nowhere, Ohio and owned ATVs and horses.  Or even that my family was made up of crazy rednecks with skewed morals and bad hygiene.  But, no, my family is just a bunch of self-important, strait-laced Irish-Catholics, who have no lives and no children for me to socialize with.  My family sucks.

If anyone else asks me what colleges I've applied to, how school's going so far this year, or what the fuck I want to do with my life, I assure you I will yank the serving spoon out of the mashed potatoes and scoop my eyeballs out with it.  Maybe then something interesting will happen on this most lame of holidays.

I like Native Americans more than I like stuffing my face with turkey.  I'd rather give this shit to all the millions of starving people in this world.  Call me crazy...