How Would You Like To Be...

"Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at."

-Goethe

So after the somewhat despondent undertones of that last post, I felt like it was the least I could do to make the next post at least semi-funny. Unfortunately, I rarely come up with my own material, and so once again I will rely on the clever humor of someone else to elicit laughter from an audience, and then take credit for it. Awhile ago I sent my missionary brother some pictures in an email. He was having a rough time and I was doing my sisterly duty to try and cheer him up, being thousands of miles away. Anyway, these pics always gave us a worthy chuckle, so hopefully they’ll amuse at least a little part of you. Enjoy yo’selves, biatches.

"You look like a... Something."

Like I don't?

Chris Farley, circa 1978. When he was a baby. Girl.

Don't act like you're not impressed.

Your mom.

"I love Krithpy Kremetheth." Yeah, way to go, Champ.

And drumroll please. The end all, be all of internet pictures. I was so thrilled when I stumbled upon this that I actually considered myself lucky and took up gambling. I call him Bernard.

Some things not pictured but which I can totally appreciate, humor-wise, and upon which I put my B.A. Golden Stamp of Hilarious:

1) Midgets in a hurry. But no other kind of midget, because for the most part, midgets are creepier than any serial killer.

2) Arrested Development (R.I.P.)

3) The Sword and Quill club at BYU (Whyyyyyyyy)

4) Joel McHale

5) The old lady's face in The Wedding Singer when she watches Adam Sandler eat the two meatballs she plops in his bare hands. Pa ha.

6) Lord of the Dance

7) Bret Michaels

8) The chubby window-washer at Guru's whose hairy stomach was pressed up against the glass while LaRee and I were eating lunch. Actually, that was more grotesque than funny.

9er) That Juicy Fruit commerical where there's only one pack of Juicy Fruit gum left and neither the male teenager nor the large African-American woman will relinquish their grip on it so it shows them in various situations- like while the lady's shaving her legs with one hand and holding the gum with the other, whilst the teenager is still holding onto it too... ... You'd have to see it.

10) The SNL Jeopardy skit with Norm McDonald as Burt Reynolds.

11) Norm McDonald

12) Hit and runs. JK.

13) Anything and everything Britney did, from K-Fed through post K-Fed. Funniest trainwreck to watch, maybe ever.

14) NOFX songs

Peace and Love.

By and By (For Uncle Brad)

"...and it left a dreadful sort of goneness..."

-Anne of Green Gables

So I finally accomplished something by doing absolutely nothing: I managed to live an almost quarter century without having to experience the inevitable, the utmost breaking of one's heart- the tragical circumstance of death. I of course, in my almost twenty-five years have experienced what seemed like the actual breakage of my most tender organ. When your heart breaks from unrequited love, or from the "growing pains" of life, or after all your chocolate souffle cake is gone, though it seems the hurt will never subside, it eventually does, and you heal, and you're whole again. That sort of pain is real, and it does bruise. It may even leave you a little scarred. I've experienced those kind of ache-ings enough to know just how real they are. Still, as frail as it leaves you and as indomitable as your tearducts may seem to be, nothing, NOTHING can prepare you for the kind of anguish you feel when your heart really has lost a part of what makes it beat.

 When someone you love actually leaves you, not because they choose to, but because life chooses for them, that kind of heartache is Anguish in it's most tangible form. Even with consolations of that personified heartstring being "in a better place", it doesn't alleviate the "dreadful sort of gone-ness" that you feel, as you are still here, but without them. Once you experience this sort of loss, it doesn't make the "next one" any less formidable. On the contrary, it almost makes that fear more penetrating, because not only do you not know when it will happen again, you know exactly how painful it will be when it does, and that is terrifying. 

So, how does one thwart the inevitable epidemic of broken-heartedness? If you are like me, and suffer from CBHS (chronic broken-heart syndrome... I have a lot of feelings, man) the remedies vary. For those injuries instigated by the gruesomeness of love unrequited, the cure for me has always been springboarding (and then usually bellyflopping) into the next love affair (thus perpetuating the disease, but whatev- it only has to work once, right?). For the cardiopulmonary weakenings brought about by "until we meet agains", the most noted cure is frequent correspondences with the proprietor of that particularly heart-wrenching goodbye. Now, for those kidnapped heartstrings which you feel you may never have back- what of those? You probably won't ever get them back. But the exquisite irony of tragedy is that usually, if you look deep enough, it plants a seed for something new and equally beautiful to grow. The challenge is, after you've healed, finding that seed and figuring out what to plant in the place of what you've lost. What's interesting about the etymology of the word "break" is that it has dozens of definitions. Obviously, the primal of these being "to fracture". Looking on, however, we see that it can also mean "an interlude", and if one dares to venture further, "an opening." Thus, considering these definitions in context with a "broken" heart, we learn that to harbor a broken heart means that we are engaged in an "interludory process of creating an opening". That opening is where the remnant seedlings get planted, and new heartstrings have the chance to grow. Maybe those heartstrings will beat differently than the ones lost, but they will beat, and they will eventually fill the void of those heartstrings you desperately and oftentimes unwillingly had to relinquish. You may always miss that heartstring, but you will be healed, with time, as the new one grows. And it doesn't mean you have to forget the one that beat there before. It just means that you now have learned how to trust your heart again, after time and time again, it fails you. 

Peace and Love.

Artwork by Jason Alexander Cruz

Welcome To My World

"[S]he was at heart, a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him [her] a subtler satisfaction than it's realization."
- The Age of Innocence

So... Welcome to my world. Since my propensity for watching smutty television, idling away on Facebook for grotesque amounts of time, and my seemingly endless amounts of schoolwork don't seem to ransom enough of my time, and since at least four people have told me I should start a blog (which is the exact amount of people it takes to convince me to do something), I decided to just go ahead and go blog myself. Though my life is sometimes bleakly mediocre, in my own imaginistic perspective, it is truly enchanting. And because I do imagine the crap outta things, as practically perfect as their manifestation may be, the "thing" rarely meets my imaginistic expectations. (Thus that quote at the top... Oh so fitting.) So, as one terribly indignant of boredom, I will try and keep this "thing" as far from boring as my mind will allow. In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh once wrote: "Stretches in reality, lies, if you will, [are] often necessary", and that just may be the theme of this whole thing. JK. But seriously.

Peace and Love.

Artwork: "Vase of Roses" by Vincent Van Gogh