11:10 - 2003-12-27
The Braggart and Her Floof
I hope that braggart is defined as "someone who brags" because that's just about all I'm about to do!
Well, no I'm more civilized than that. I'll just barrage you with some useless information about the things I've been doing. That should dilute it.
As I was hurriedly wrapping presents the other day, I began to speak idly about my supposed lack of social skills. And I decided in my jocular way that the best idea was to cut all ties with my friends and become their enemy, so that if I ever slipped up and did something detrimental to our relationships, it would make sense because I was the enemy. I thought about just how crazy this idea was, and about how that only made the odds better for it to become a nation-wide practice, and inexorably end me up on Oprah. My eye twitched in fear at the thought of being in Oprah, so I don't think I'm going to put that plan into action. My friends are easy people to get along with anyway, and I'd miss them if I had to hate them.
Nevermind the fact that just my thinking such a thing was a huge chunk of the kind of melodramatic prose that gives people severe nausia.
I made the realization last night that I have mostly lived in a realm of self-pity for the last few months. A filthy realm with a blind king. It's interesting that the Road of Despair leads to this kingdom, for to tell the truth, feeling bad about yourself is much easier than trying to change things. I don't think I consciously tried to escape that, but I still rebuke myself for having done it and not noticed it sooner. because while I was so busy feeling sorry for myself in the mean old world, I was growing inevitably more selfish and distant from the values and morals I so firmly believe in.
This is bad. And that explains pretty effectively my feeling of having changed for the worst: I had. And I'm thrilled that all that I was to blame, and not hormones or "growing up", as most people told me. I knew that didn't sound right. Myself I can control. Hormones and all that nonsense, I can only resent.
This realization came about as my mom's friend talked with my mom and I. At this Christmas party that evening, I had been telling my sister and her friend that Death had bought them both presents, and my mom had made a big deal about me mentioning Death. Now, my mother is already pretty up-tight about me talking about someone named Death, and about me poking fun at eating human flesh, etc because it sounds too macabre. So I figured that was why she was being so weird. Frankly, I should've just followed the rule of thumb and DONE WHAT MY MOTHER SAID. It turns out that my mom had wanted me to clam up, not just because she didn't like what I was talking about, but also because my step-grandfather's sister had died that morning, and she didn't want me bringing up a tender issue. Imagine that: I didn't know everything. That sort of behavior is way below me. I should be intelligent enough by now to realize that even if I don't understand why, I should do what I'm told to.
But I still don't think my mom realizes that Death is a person, a good person, and my friend, and not allied with Satan or something.
So more or less, I wondered what on earth I could've been up to that allowed my moral integrity to digress this much. Hmmmmm, three guesses?
We also talked about what kind of person I am for disliking babies and laughing at cannibalism and all sorts of other stuff that normal people usually don't do.
At the time I didn't have many answers to those questions, so I mostly just looked heinous and derranged.
To truth, I can laugh at a lot of ghastly things. But only because the people involved seem so unreal to me. That may sound barbaric, but if some guy was getting smothered by smiley face balloons, that would be funny. It would be slightly less funny if that person was Billy's Aunt June. I sometimes have to remind myself that the things around me shoving meat into their mouths and fornicating at random ARE alive and that they ARE human. But I certainly don't plan on suffocating them with balloons.
Not liking babies is a simple matter from my point of view. It's some kind of taboo for people to love and eternally forigve babies and make an enormous fuss over them, but I don't see what all the hub-bub is about. God made snakes and cockroaches, but we don't condone their every flaw. Perhaps this is because babies are cute, but they aren't THAT cute. They're pink and wrinkly and most of what they do is scream, eat, and poop. Maybe I'm not being sympathetic, but it's just a matter of where you place your sympathy. Babies are no more deserving of my sympathy than raccoons or parrots or scorpians. All of them do what they were programmed to do, and all of them are miracles of God, I just don't really like babies all that much. Don't worry, I'm not going to come after your babies. Just because I don't make a big deal over them doesn't mean I bear them any ill will. Most people getter more riled up about my opinion than I ever did about babies.
But I promised you guys some braggin' and that's what yer gunna git.
I picked out half of what I got this year, as I said before, because my grandma was tired of us having to go swap it all out at the store.
In the category of what I picked out, there was a Nightmare Before Christmas sweatshirt (oh yeah!) and that's really good because there needs to be a rung to stand on between "short sleeved t-shirt" and "leather trenchcoat". It's not usually cold enough for the trenchcoat, and if it is, I worry about the hassle and the chance of getting it messed up somehow. Plus this sweatshirt has monsters on it and a hood!
There was a Ray Bradbury book, a shirt with meshy sleeves, a new 'andana with Jack on it, and some shirts that look like what Graham Norton wears. I am excitedly saving the book for when school starts, because it will give me a good reason to walk all the way down to the courtyard again instead of sitting out on the pier like I have been, for lack of initiative. It promises to be a very interesting book, plus I bought my dad a Crichton book that I can mooch off him when I finish this one. I don't know exactly why I got the meshy-sleeved shirt, but it looks pretty cool. I've experienced a drastic loss of weight lately so that this shirt I picked out a couple of weeks ago is already too big. And I unwittingly took a look in the mirror the other day and gave myself a shock because I actually seemed to simulate the qualities of "style" and, more importantly, "spookiness". I wonder how I've overlooked that thus far. The 'andana is something that will no doubt see a lot of action. However, itprobably on't make much of a difference to my church crowd. They will just say, "Oh she's wearing another one with skulls on it." Graham Norton, if you don't already know, is a British late-night talk-show host who is always wearing stuff that looks like material you've seen your grandma use as curtains. So I had to get some shirts like that.
As it turns out, I got presents for all the people on my list, though I couldn't have done it without a couple of my friends and my aunt. But it's good and done with and all I have to do now is get these people their gifts.
My mom got us a GameCube, which we haven't gotten around to opening yet, because she also got us a couple of PS2 games. I figure at the rate things are going, soon I'll have all four of our game systems stacked one on top of the other in my room. She also picked out this Tim Burton book! With interviews in it and stuff and pictures! Along with that came a FarSide calendar and a reversable NBC hat. It's almost like my mom wants me to become suffocatingly sterotypical or something, but whatever, because hats rock! We got Nightmare on DVD, along with Pirates of the Caribbean, and a humongous box with like twenty disks worth of special edition Two Towers junk. BUT IT CAME WITH THAT HORRIBLE GOLLUM!!! HAHAHA!!
*snickers away about that*
I have the thing on my desk now, and it's so stinking cool! It has to wear this ribbon for Christmas. Gosh, it's ugly! Heeheehee!!
My mom got me a couple of neat shirts, one is read and stripey and the other is this purple sweater thing. And I think she spent about a hundred bucks on this black, furry, super soft hat that looks a bit Russian and reverses to this maroon leathery stuff on the inside and this pair of gloves. The gloves are composed of the kind of material thta yo do not wash dishes in, or pick your nose with, or haul wood, or let people borrow, or pet certain animals, or golf in, ect. They're leather and have more furry stuff on them, huhoo! But my mom bought them too big so she must go pay for her mistake and get smaller ones.
Eh, um...Lesee what else was there?
And some boots! And some t-shirts that haven't come in the mail yet! And some other shoes! Good gosh, what am I gonna do with all this loot?
I got some earrings and my ears aren't even pierced!
I'm thinking of getting Raymi's ears pierced so he can wear earrings and look pretty.
He'd prolly just look gay though.
I already made him wear a bow, and he looked kind of unhappy, but it was pretty funny to watch him play with it.
For Christmas dinner we went to my Grandmother's and she cheerfully told us about the group of dangerous rabid animals she had living in one of their storage sheds. My grandparents live pretty much out in the middle of the bleeping nowheres. At first we wanted to go outside, but after hearing an endless rustling and chittering coming from that building and after seeing five or six silhouettes go scurrying out of it, we decided to go in and watch this artist on KERA slowly paint a picture that was supposed to have some turkeys in it. But he kept going back and messing with the shoreline and adding more weeds, it was like the turkeys would end up in the next episode, and it would be called "Turkeys, Continued". My sister explained the pretty well-known principle of oil painting: You have to go from the background to the foregrand, so you do the background, then paint everything that's close up last. This meant that the turkeys would be the very last part and that I would simply have to wait an hour for them and be disgusted with the sluggishness and monotony with which this man was painting. I never DID get to see those blasted turkeys, but I was sure to annoy Little Doodoo with repetitive questions about when he was going to paint the turkeys and why he wouldn't do it now. She answered angrily saying, "If he drew them NOW, they'd have grass all over them because he'd have to paint in all the spots he missed and do them all over again!"
Then as time wore on, she tried to distract me by singing a little song, but I persisted saying, "Turkeys" and she answered, "Fine, you just keep sitting there thinking about your stinkin' turkeys. I rather be outside with the racoons."
Racoons were one of the things we assumed to be in the shed.
And the evening was more or less just me and my cousin giggling unstoppably about the following.
My sisters friend said, "I got a new phone."
And my grandma asked, in a cheerful voice, "Is it a Mickey Mouse?"
And my mom said, "No, Mother, it's a phone."
This had us laughing hysterically for about an hour. It's still pretty funny, I've been giggling as I write this.
If you're thinking, "My gosh..." I'd like to know what is so satisfying and superior about keeping a straight face or being unable to laugh at something, and why people even bother to say stuff like "It isn't that funny." Even if you are a tight-wad, I'm not going to stop laughing just because you don't think it's funny ^_^
Then again, some people just can't laugh at stupid stuff like I can, so I usually don't worry about it if I'm laughing and people are staring and not getting it.
This next simester of school should be pretty interesting. At least, it better be. I'll probably have a new schedual, and I have a couple of new classes, both of which I will probably use to draw pictures and play my phone or something.
That's something else I got for Christmas, a new phone to replace my lost one. This one is kind of strange, which is normal I guess, but it looks really neat and I likes it.
I got a phone call just now so I am a bit out of the zone, plus I've been typing away on this thing for four hours. I'm about done with you people. Now I'm gonna sit and listen to my Two Towers CD.
*Waves*
Away with you.
