Tears in Rain

I HEREBY CALL DIBS on a Dr. Horrible double costume for the Halloween after Collin gets back. In order to make this fair, I give up the dibs that I had previously. (Was it for Han Solo and Leia, or was it for Simon and Kaylee? I can't even remember. I think I did a fair amount of switching.)

I can't say which character he will be. He looks more like Nathan Fillion but I'll have to watch the end of it before I make a decision. I like Dr. Horrible a lot more than Captain Hammer. He's so cute and angsty :3 But Captain Hammer's costume is a lot easier.

I have entered fangirl mode . . . this is pretty obvious. Only in fangirl mode will I use that colon-three emoticon.

Good lord, I've become that person who goes on and on and about some cult thing that no one else cares about! I never wanted to be that person.

. . . I've . . . been that person for a long time, haven't I?

(Wizard of Speed and Time, anyone?)

Well, tonight I see Dark Knight. Which makes this the best week ever. Combine DHSAB with Dark Knight AND the wrock I've been listening to, I'm surprised I'm coherent at all, I'm so filled with giddiness and glee.

Seriously, go watch it at drhorrible.com The first 2 acts are up.

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Filmmaking. I love doing it. It's so eustressful.

I've really loaded it on now. It's like suddenly a ton of people I know are working on films and they want me to help (gee, that never happened in college).

I'm doing wardrobe and editing for Legends of Minigolf: The Flamingo's Challenge. Editing will be concurrent with filming so that will get all out of the way quickly. Also tomorrow I'm waking up early to be a zombie in Jasie's film. I'm being more supportive of that film than actually being involved. And Nate wanted me to help him with a series of shorts he's shooting, but it looks like I won't have time to do that, since I took up editing for Minigolf: Flamingo. :( Oh well. Also, there was supposed to be another zombie film, but I don't think Tay ever wrote the script.

Plus I am still working full time. And I can't take any time off because July 15 marks the beginning of Halloween season. (I don't even work in CSR anymore, but the policy still stands. No time off from July 15-Oct 31.)

And in there I also have to help out with the Harry Potter party.

It's going to be an insane two weeks. And then slightly less insane, but still mostly insane, for a few more weeks.

At times like this I really wish I had someone else in my life to take care of all the details I'm letting slip through the cracks. Like grocery shopping and getting internet for my apartment. I know I've blogged about that before--I have a set limit of things I can keep track of and projects tend to push other things out of the way.

From a not-extremely-recent post by Derek.

Hillary, Obama, and McCain, are all trying to appeal to the various demographics. The black vote, the women's vote, the young vote, blah blah blah. Who's fighting for the apathetic vote? What are they doing to win the votes of myself and the millions of others who think that all 3 are sorry excuses for presidential candidates? My suggestion: free bagels. I am promising right here, that if any of those three candidates gives me a free bagel, they will win my vote. I can only speak for myself but I assume that this would be true for millions of the apathetic Americans who's pessimistic view on the future of our country can temporarily be forgotten by eating a delicious bagel ... with cream cheese.

He's really on to something. I'm about as apathetic as voters can get. I'm not even registered to vote. I have never actually voted. That means that I'm not technically a voter, but anyway, isn't it obvious that some politician, at some point, needs to do something for the people like me who just don't care about, let alone understand politics? And I can never tell if they're simply lying to please the crowds. As far as I'm concerned, they're all liars, and everything they do will make things worse for me. Why be involved at all? Whatever I do isn't going to make a difference.

Whatever they tell you about "the power of one" and "a single person can make a difference," it's not true. A single person can't make a difference, unless that single person has a lot of power, which I don't. A large amount of ones is what makes a difference, but then it's no longer one, is it. And the single person with a lot of power--well that power is manifest in people doing what that person says, so it's still not a single person. (Don't try to convince me that Frodo would have gotten anywhere without the fellowship.)

I didn't participate at student elections at BYU, either. (Or in high school, if you were wondering). School elections are a farce even at the collegiate level. I guarantee that if I had been given a free, high-quality bagel at BYU, I would have voted for that candidate. Good bagels are absolutely impossible to find anywhere in the vicinity of BYU. Yes, they sell bagels in the Twilight Zone, but those bagels are shite. They were nasty and stale and flavorless and sold out by noon every day. The closest bagel place of which I was aware was on Center street, and I didn't have a car, and I did have more important things to do than walk around town looking for bagels.

I am seriously craving bagels now.

Unfortunately, it would probably take more than a free bagel to get my vote in a real election. On the other hand, a bagel is more real than empty promises and improbable changes.

This is funny because I have friends&family who are very into politics and I expect much chastising for publicly expressing my apathetic views.

Still having problems waking up on time. I've decided it could be due to one of three things (and hopefully not a strange combination)

1. Amount/quality of sleep. (Getting too much sleep or not enough sleep)
2. Actual time of waking up. (ca 7:00 am)
3. The amount of time it takes to wake up. (From initial alarm going off to being coherent enough to convince myself that going to work is more important than sleeping)

I don't feel like messing with 1. I've had enough problems with it in the past and I need to just leave it alone. 2 I can't really do anything about. The only change I can make entails waking up earlier, and that's not a change I'm willing to make. So for now I've focused on 3. I decided to give myself a lot more time to wake up. Previously my alarm was set at 6:30, with the idea that I would press snooze a few times and eventually wake up around 7:00 or 7:15, depending on if I need to shower. Hopefully not later than 7:20 or thereabouts. But the fact is that I consistently slept in until 7:30 or later, which is no good.

So now I've set my alarm at 5:30, which the intention of pressing snooze many times until I accidentally turn it off (it happens a lot), and set a secondary alarm (on my cell phone) for 7:00.

It seemed to work pretty well today. I mean I was awake enough to get out of bed at 7:00. But 7:00 seemed unnecessarily early, since I didn't need to shower, and it was cold, and I hadn't slept very well. So I slept in again, but this time it was a conscious decision, I was in more control of when I'd get up, and I did end up getting out of bed earlier than usual.

Hopefully in the future I will realize that the extra time gained from getting up at 7:00 can be used for useful endeavors like, say, making and eating breakfast. They say that is the most important out of the things you eat.

This kind of makes sense. Maybe not, but I can make it seem like it makes sense. Since it takes me 1-2 hours or longer to fall asleep, then reasonably it could take me that long to wake up, too. If you think about it non-scientifically.

What people don't seem to understand is that with me, any single problem is NEVER just a single problem. Every single problem has consequences that lead to more problems, and every problem is caused by something else that happened. Every problem is a compound of problems. When I flip out about something, people think I am overreacting, but really I'm flipping out because I know every single way that the one thing that went wrong will screw up my life. Let's just get that out in the open right now so that people will stop misinterpreting things and smugly thinking to themselves how silly and overdramatic I am.

I've just been reading a lot of my old blog entries and journals. People were always trying to get me to calm down about things that they thought were just simple little inconveniences, when they weren't. People were always walking on eggshells because they never knew when I would blow up about a comment that they thought was perfectly innocent or helpful. People were always laughing to themselves about my caricature angstiness. (Oh yes, oh yes you were, I have proof, I was there, I overheard everything you ever said about me, do not try to deny it.)

It's not any of those. It's the fact that I see too much. I understand too much cause and effect. I imagine every little variance of every timeline that can occur from one incident.


So I wasn't upset because I couldn't go to the party. I was upset because people were incapable of responsibly communicating with me, which made me believe that I couldn't get a ride to the party (which was in SLC while I was in Provo), which means that I had wasted all the money I'd spent on getting a costume and skin paint, but turns out someone could give me a ride and they had just never told me, which I found out at the last second, when it was too late for me to responsibly request work off, so then I had a choice between being irresponsible and doing something I wanted, or being responsible and missing something I wanted to do through no fault of my own, and if I had gone to the party I wouldn't have enjoyed it at all because I knew that I had tarnished my integrity to be there, and I couldn't just skip work because I was being trained as a supervisor that night so it would look REALLY horrible, when if they had just been considerate in the first place everything would have worked out, so I went to work like the cursedly responsible person I was, angry and bitter all night long at the fact that other people are constantly screwing up my life. It was NOT the simple matter of "I was angry because I couldn't get a ride to the party and had to go to work instead." Even though that's what it looked like. (What I was really angry about was that everyone had kept telling me, consistently, for weeks, that they couldn't give me a ride, and then suddenly someone's like, "So when should I pick you up for the party?" the DAY OF, when it was too late for me to get work off without just copping out. I wouldn't have been nearly as angry had the second part of that never happened.)

For example. (I know it doesn't look like it, but I have gotten over it. It really is just an example.)

I would use another example which I posted recently on the forum which shall not be named, but I would rather avoid the insane amounts of extremely annoying questions that particular example would garner. (Seriously people, mind your own f--ing business. It is NOT considerate to hound people with storms of redundant questions. The information will come to you when it comes to you. If it doesn't, then it was never any of your business, and you can merrily live your lives without it.)

See, there I go again. If I post that example, lots of people whom I hardly know will flood the blog all asking the same two or three questions, causing me to become very irate, causing me to do a lot of swearing at them and in the meantime make the blog friends-only, causing a lot of people to become very offended at me as though they were perfectly innocent, causing it to suddenly become very fashionable to hate me and therefore troll, flame, rumour-mong, etc, and people with chips on their shoulders already will say "See I knew she sucked all along," and I will become very unpopular and the masses rally around my enemies, etc.

Or, you know, people become miffed at my perceived rudeness and refusal to answer their questions, slink off into the shadows, and grumble greenly amongst themselves, and hate me quietly like pretty much every other person I've ever offended, advertently or not. I can handle that, it's the questions I abhor.


So, apparently, not everyone else gets as in depth when they have problems in their lives. Apparently, everyone just assumes that I am as myopic as they are when it comes to things happening and just views everything as a series of unconnected events.

You're wrong, people. I'm not trying to be overdramatic. I just see how everything that happens connects together and that makes everything worse. Don't assume that you know everything about the situation, and that I'm therefore freaking out for practically no reason. There are so very many reasons for me to freak out.

What gets really annoying is trying to patiently explain to people that their "solutions" won't work because there are so many other factors left unaddressed.

Harry Potter fans put wizard tales to music
By Alan Scher Zagier
Associated Press
Published: Saturday, June 28, 2008 12:04 a.m. MDT

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I thought this was most definitely worth sharing.

It's called "Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog."

Wikipedia says, "Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a 40 minute, 3 part musical produced for the internet."

So here is the trailer for it, on the official fansite. The real site is drhorrible.com, but it doesn't have anything on it yet. Also it has a fan thing on Facebook, which I joined . . . Here's a pretty concise summary of this thing's awesomeness provided by said facebook thing.

Website: http://www.drhorrible.com/
Starring: Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer, Felicia Day as Penny
Screenplay By: Joss Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, and Zack Whedon
Directed By: Joss Whedon
Produced By: David Burns, Michael Boretz, and Joss Whedon
Plot Outline: The story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to.

Music by: Joss Whedon and Jed Whedon
Lyrics by: Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen
Score and Orchestration by: Jed Whedon

Also, it's a musical. I hope that was apparent enough. Having still not ever seen the musical episode of Buffy, I guess there's not a lot I can say except that I still really want to see the musical episode of Buffy.

I like musicals when they are synthesized into something unexpected. Like that student film Funkytown, which is one of my most favorite student films ever, it was a musical film noir. SO AWESOME. Adding the musical genre onto something often seems like the perfect way to ruin that something forever, but when it's done right, it is really done right.

Anyway, Nathan Fillion + Joss Whedon pretty much guarantees gold, right?

It's not actually a blog in the real life sense of the word, as far as I can tell. I mean I don't think it'll be posted in blog format. I'll just have to watch it and see.

I love when film people do weird things like this which totally defy conventional filmmaking. (I know a lot of amateurs make films or series for internet distribution but those usually aren't very . . . good. They're good in a funny internet film sort of way but mostly wouldn't be able to hold their own at a festival, let alone in theaters. They're funny, not quality.)

What I love more is when I actually know about it.

I miss dancing. I really want to start doing it again. It's not depressing enough that I hardly ever get the opportunity to do it--but when I do attend a social event involving dancing, no one actually dances! (And if they do, they don't dance with me. :( Come on people, I'm not poisonous to the touch.) That's like going to a buffet and not eating anything. I hope I needn't elaborate on the wrongness of either situation.

Recently Brynn had the nerve to tell me that I wasn't really a dancer. Can you imagine? The sheer audacity! Just because I don't do it very often, I don't perform, I don't compete, I'm not anorexic, I don't wear spandex, I don't put on makeup like I'm getting ready to put on my red light, I don't really like dancing culture, and I don't like very many dancers . . . I enjoy dancing and I want to do it as often as possible, and that is enough to make me a dancer. I'm just not a "dancer" in the totally connotative use of the word. Just because I don't like other girls and girl culture, that hasn't ever stopped me from being female. And I think the social dancing subculture is fun and interesting, as long as competitions don't get dragged into it (that's inevitable, but I try to pretend). It's okay to be a person who dances! Technically, that makes me a dancer.

So I've been thinking about joining a dance class. I think I know where to find some in Orem. I'll have to check it out, see if it's what I'm looking for, see if I can afford it. Then I'll have to determine if I can really afford the time. Things might get pretty crowded this summer. But I really do want to do it, and it can definitely fill up some "working out" slots on my schedule. However, I'd probably have to bow out of the Fallout campaign Justin invited me to. In fact, as fun as it would be, I think I shouldn't join just in interest of having to get a lot of other stuff done. I'm barely treading water in my life as it is (not a good argument towards joining a dance class either).

Rumor has it that the Swing Kids at BYU still have dances every Saturday, but I don't know if that's true or not. I guess I'll just have to go down to BYU some Saturday night and see. Still . . . *shudders* Stupid Swing Kids. And I could go to the MAC on weekends that I'm in Murray, if I can remember where it is, and which day it is, and what time it is, and if I think I can stomach running into my ex.

This blog is pretty boring, isn’t it. Yeah. Pretty bloody boring.

That must mean I’M boring. Let’s not get too shocked here. I always knew it was the truth. It was you, all of you, who wanted to believe that I am a fun and interesting individual. I never led you on! I never tried to trick you! I never promised you hours of mirth and deep introspection. You gave yourself your own expectations based on what you thought of me, never from what I told you I was. (If you really want hours of mirth and introspection, you know where to find Tolkien Boy’s blog.)

I’ve been reading a lot of random blogs recently, personal blogs, and most of them by people I don’t know (or don’t know very well.) There are some things I will simply never put in this blog:

Travelogue posts. Also, posts where I categorically (most often, chronologically) list everything that I have done for the past day/week/month.
Posts about how cute my children are.
Posts about how cute my pets are.
Posts about how cute my significant other is.
Posts including those sappy, “feel-good” story/poem memes that inevitably make their way in Sacrament meeting talks, even though they are almost completely irrelevant to the gospel. E.g., Footprints in the Sand, or “She was actually eating his cookies!” In fact, a meme would have to be really. Freaking. AWESOME. to make it into my blog at all. (Dear readers, the term “meme” does NOT just apply to those quiz/survey things, nor to those things spontaneously generated on 4chan.)
Reviews of books, video games or concerts (although I will still continue to post about wrock; and I may eventually review a film, though that seems unlikely, as writing hundreds of papers in the film program at BYU managed to destroy any desire I ever had to write intelligently about film.)
Lists of books I’ve read/want to read, movies I’ve seen/want to see, etc. I have a few of those in the past but probably won’t do it again. (Oh crap! THIS POST is a list!)


So, I have this tendency to wear clothing from my wardrobe. That makes sense. Lots of people do that. The problem is that my wardrobe can, and often has, doubled as a costume closet for low budgets films and plays. Even when I am wearing perfectly legitimate clothing, I often end up looking like I’m in costume. It’s hard to understand. I hate shiny fabrics, for the most part, because to me shiny=polyester(synthetic)=cheap=costumes. There is not a lot of shininess in my wardrobe and I try to make sure my few shiny items look classy, not cheap. Vests are not that uncommon, are they? I think they’re actually quite popular right now, though it’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone who was into high fashion (or as high as fashion gets around these parts). Long skirts also exist in actual clothing, don’t they? I realize they may not be the most popular item right now, but a long skirt or a dress should not automatically equate to a costume. My annoying love for peasant blouses also doesn’t help the situation. And I even wear (LE HORRORS) hats!

Today I managed to look rather piratey without donning a single scarf, sash, earring, boot, belt, hat, pirate coat, eyepatch, musket or sword. All because I am wearing black trousers (my anglophilia feels dirty saying “pants,” and don’t even get me started on “knickers,” they are breeches), a vest of purple satin and black velvet, and a blouse with a keyhole neckline and HUGE sleeves gathered into the cuff. If I were wearing a skirt I’d look more Victorian/Old Western. But the blouse has a definite 1700s feel, and combined with the vest and trousers, well, yeah. Pirate.

My attempts to dress like a normal person rarely turn out well. I’m supposed to dress bis cas for work, and I still end up wearing, well, what I’m wearing today. On my jeans&tshirt days, I just feel so lame (though I am not so far gone as to consider wearing a tshirt “experimental dressing,” a la Eleka).

I suck at writing endings, so, mainly I wanted to share that I am dressed kinda piratey today. However, there will probably be no photos. It’s too complicated these days. I seriously need to work out getting internet at my apartment, but I have trouble remembering to do anything.