Friday, February 29, 2008

Real Talent/Natural Beauty

It's so refreshing to remember that there are still female celebrities in my age group who aren't embarrassing my gender as a whole by being pathetic, piggish publicity whores...because they have actual TALENT.

It seems like those ladies too often don't really get the credit they deserve because they are overshadowed by the attention the media showers on the mediocre celebrity bubble brains who ride off of their sexuality since they have nothing else to really offer the entertainment industry- or the world. You know, those talentless, shallow, one-dimensional chicks who are famous simply for being attractive in a totally superficial and plastic kind of way...they don't really DO anything.

There's such a huge difference between genuine beauty and the kind of attractiveness that one has to consciously try to make for oneself.

I've been thinking about this lately: genuine beauty versus the trivial phony. I've especially been grateful and appreciative of the girlfriends in my life who have shown me the kind of inner beauty that some women have...it shines so brightly it's almost blinding. True beauty in others really comes out during the harshest, roughest, most difficult times in your life.

I think about my closest and dearest friends- my female friends- and how naturally beautiful they all are. My closest friends don't even have to TRY and they are beautiful because they know exactly who they are, they are intelligent and confident and strong and independent and excel at what they each do best individually- and at the bottom of the beauty totem pole comes their physical attractiveness...because that characteristic, in my opinion, is the least significant. Not to say that they aren't physically attractive~ but that's not something I think about when it comes to them as people...I've always been a believer that physical beauty is trivial. If you have the whole package from your head down to your toes on the inside, then what you look like is just a bonus. Beauty and ugliness are in the same family...to call someone physically "ugly" makes even the most attractive person in the world unattractive on the inside, because that's such an ugly thing to say to say about another person. How you treat people also makes you beautiful- and my friends are the kindest, classiest ladies I know. They can see and appreciate the beauty in things that most normal people can't see, and that makes them amazing.

I admire and respect each and every one of my girlfriends for everything they have accomplished and everything that they are!

I also admire and respect actresses/celebrities who embody many of the same qualities that I love so much in my friends. The ones who take risks and take on projects and roles that are challenging and allow them to shine from the inside, and not just their prettiness. Like I said, it's refreshing to remember that there are still females to respect and admire in the media- because the media is really unavoidable.

We exist in a pop culture world!

Some unique female celebrities are genuine celebrities who have gotten where they are because they actually deserve it, and they are strong and confident and classy and smart enough to keep their heads on straight and not let the media OWN them...they are the ones who own the media.

These days it seems like any dim-witted, attractive by generic standards young women can become famous and gain "celebrity" status without having to have anything of real substance to actually offer to deserve the title. Unfortunately, it downplays the ones who DO deserve it.

I think of old Hollywood~ when actresses had CLASS. What we need is to see more of the actresses who are out there who do have that kind of class recognize them and hail them for just that.

What we don't need is more airbrushed sex puppets created by the masterminds of the media machine so that frat boys will have more eye candy to jerk off to- although I'm sure frat boys everywhere would argue.

Here is an article about 3 of my favorite actresses in my age group~ and for those of you like me who like European history (particularly the royale stuff)~ "The Other Boelyn Girl" comes out today!

3 Gals with Talent and Class

Monday, February 25, 2008

Off the Wagon

I've fallen back off the wagon...with the smoking and drinking. And I don't care and I don't want any lectures. My mother was pissed when she overheard me telling one of my few "life line" friends I remained connected to over the past two weeks that I was anticipating and planning my return to the bottom of a pint glass in the very near future. After I recovered my D&C at least- which was about Saturdayish.

Accepting the reality that I was going to lose my unborn baby, and that there was no getting around it, devastated me on a level that I didn't think was possible.

How does a woman mourn and grieve the loss of a child she never got the opportunity to meet? How does a woman escape the fact that the life she believed to be growing inside of her ceased to develop? How can a woman ever heal after seeing an empty gestational sac in her uterus, where her baby should have been? How does a woman get to the last stretch of her first trimester only to discover that, just kidding, there will be no baby at the end of it all?

Once I realized that there are no answers to those questions that could provide any remote aspect of comfort, I decided that I would voluntarily surrender myself to what would be an unavoidable black hole of misery, rather than waste any energy on trying to fight it by trying to "stay positive" and see the "bright side."

To someone who has never experienced the roller coaster ride through hell that is miscarrying a baby, there is some Holy, unexplainable reason from God as to why a baby is "lost..." in a place where an overprotective father figure holding a lightening bolt sits atop a fluffy white cloud, handing out babies to women when "the time is right" as he sees fit. In this place, a bright side exists, where everything happens for a reason and there are plenty of healthy pregnancies in the future.

To some women experiencing the roller coaster ride through hell that is miscarrying a baby, there is no God. Not for me, because no God of mine would ever put any woman through this kind of physical and emotional torture, I don't care what anyone wants to preach to me- because that is what I have been subjected to over the past two weeks: TORTURE, in all directions.

On this ride, there is no bright side to anything. In fact, the sun might as well have erupted into a world-ending Supernova...where all life on Earth has ceased to exist and all that is left is the infinite nothing that goes on forever...where the pain is so deep and numbing that it feels as if all of your vital organs have been carved out of your body with a dull, rusty spoon and all that remains is the hollow shell of a person who is no longer there. During and in the wake of the miscarriage process, thinking about healthy pregnancies, that of celebrities or friends or even your own future pregnancies, only works as lemon juice in a paper cut or hard soap in the eye.

I find myself laying face down in the dirt while the metaphorical wagon I've been traveling on keeps rolling along, but I'm not interested in catching up. I have no fear of losing my way. I am already momentarily lost and hopeless and I don't want to uncurl from the little ball of nerves I have coiled myself into. We all choose to channel our pain in different ways- some turn to God, some turn inward, and no one person on the planet can tell another how to cope in this situation...I can only rely on my own power to collect my wits and make of this what I can. Healthy schmealthy...

Right now, I can only lay paralyzed and relish in allowing what I consider to be necessary irrational thinking to temporarily cloud my judgment long enough to create a make-shift bandage for my broken heart and soul.

I'm drunk off of my own grief and clinging to it just to keep the last shreds of my pregnancy alive- if only in my mind, because my body has already let it go.

I am capable of flipping on my autopilot switch~ which allows me to go through the motions of the day, void of any real feeling or emotion to distract and raise eyebrows. I can smile, I can function, I can perform the duties required of me in order to carry out my every day, pregnant-no-more life...because I have to.

Oh, the masks we wear so as to not scare the ones we love or the people we must coexist with in society...

The facade that we put on to save face when we are screaming obscenities and suffocating on the inside is such a sham...why can't we illustrate how we are really feeling in times of grief? Why are we so concerned with making other people uncomfortable? Why can't we just put it all out there instead of diluting the truth and shielding everyone from the brutal ugliness of it all? There's a raw and intense static that hovers around me these days...stale leftovers from an exhausting two-week trip through the wringer. It's confusing...having your hormones dumped into a blender left on high speed with no lid on it. What do you DO with a mess like this?

There are no funerals or memorials for babies who die before they are born~ it's almost as if they only existed in the mother's dreams...as if none of it was real and all of the hopes and joy and planning and anticipation and excitement and enlightenment that a woman creates in her heart when believes she is going to be a mother just gets crushed into smithereens.

In my mind, I am wearing all black: black boots, black dress, black coat and gloves ...and even one of those black felt, old lady hats with just enough netting in the front to cover my face...and I stand by an unmarked gravestone the size of a hand mirror...wondering if that baby was a girl or a boy, what they would have sounded like when they laughed, what their favorite after school snack would have been and what they would have chosen to go to college for.

In my mind, when someone asks me how I'm doing, and my preprogrammed automated response answers, "I'm doing better~ I'm OK," that girl in the straight jacket throwing herself up against the padded walls of my brain wants to grab them by their shirt collars and wail,

"I don't have enough pain killers to last me through what I know is going to be a very long stint of gut wrenching sadness and I want to fucking go to sleep for the next year or however long it takes for my heart to stop crying."

But instead I strap that girl in my head down onto a gurney and shoot her up full of sedatives so that I can try try TRY to remind myself that I will live and this huge pothole- not bump- in my road will only make me stronger in the long run.

When you fall to pieces and put yourself back together, there is no avoiding the newer version of yourself who results from the reconstruction. I'm just adding more torn out pictures and memorabilia to the collage of my life.

"Once upon a time...when I was a young woman...before you were born..."

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Creepy Freak

My brother was involved in a very creepy incident last night that makes the hair stand up on my arms.

He recently moved into the cute little white Melrose Place looking apartments on campus corner in Norman.

Jenny and I lived next door to one another in those for a stint a long time ago, and despite being itty bitty and a little dingy, they are pretty cool. Very close quarters- there are only like 8 units on the bottom story (2 upstairs at the end): 4 on each side across from one another, separated by a tiny courtyard in between. Basically you can hear what's going on next door through the wall and all but fall into the apartment across the courtyard from your front door.

It's such tight quarters that you can hear the person across from you cough if it's quiet enough outside.

Well, last night Chris goes to leave his apartment to get groceries, when he sees the guy who lives next door to him (which is coincidentally Jenny's old apartment) just standing right in front of the door of the older lady who lives across the courtyard.

Chris said the guy was just standing there, looming around her door, and he got the creep factor vibe. He said it was just weird. So Chris goes to his car, which is parked directly in front of the complex where he can still see, and decides to wait and scope out the situation.

For about 10 minutes, the guy is just standing there, looking in through the screen door into the little window on the main door. So, feeling that something just wasn't right, Chris gets out of his car and goes up to the guy and asks,

"Dude, what are you doing?"

And the guys goes, "I'm just, uh waiting for some people. You know, just waiting around."

"Do you even know who lives here? What's their name?"

And the guy leans over and peers at the name on the mailbox of the apartment and recites the last name of the occupant.

Chris asks again, "What in the hell are you doing just standing out here in front of this door looking inside?"

Anyways, they go back and forth and the guy can't give him a legitimate answer. So Chris goes to his other neighbor's apartment to explain the situation to him, and they stake out the scene for further investigation.

After few minutes, the guy goes into his apartment briefly, then comes back out and returns to the front of the apartment he's been looming around, except this time he's leaned over peering through the window with a weird, creepy smile on his face.

Chris and his friend debate calling the police~ but wait a little longer just to make sure they aren't over reacting.
They watch the guy, and at this point he's been out there for almost an hour, and decide to go ahead and call Johnny Law once they see the guy move and sandwich himself between the screen door and front door of the apartment, his face up against the window of the door, with the same creepy smile on his face, just staring inside.

In summary, the cops come, and after some deliberation and questioning, they come to discover that the guy has been convicted several times already of "Peeping Tom" and burglary.
The woman in the apartment he was peeping in was asleep in her bed, which is right up next to the window the guy was staring into with that creepy smile on his face.

Which means he was watching her sleep! How fucking creepy is that?

The guy got arrested and now Chris and his neighbors are working on a way to get him evicted~ and I don't blame them! Can you imagine waking up and realizing that there is a face in your window watching you sleep?!

Friday, February 1, 2008

Jesus!

Literally.


Someone made a myspace page for Jesus. He is number one on Dryden's page~ and it made me wonder...surely all of those people who have Jesus as their friend on myspace have him as THEIR number one too, eh? (or should I say, 'have Him as their number one friend' ?)

I mean, if they accept Jesus as their myspace friend and DON'T have him as their number one, what does that say about where Jesus stands on their priority list? I'm not a Christian, but I would assume, from what I understand, that Jesus is supposed to be a Christian's number One in life and I figure that it would apply to myspace too.

Why would one seek him out on myspace, or just throw him into their social network if they weren't 100% committed to making him a priority?

You know, since some people on here take to heart so seriously how they are ranked on their friends' Top Myspace friends priority lists...I got booted off of Jill's myspace for not prioritizing her enough on my fucking myspace Top Friends...and I can't possibly imagine what JESUS would say should he go to one of his gazillion friends' pages and realize that they only have him ranked at number 5 or 8 or 10...or even worse, not even ranked at all?

What if he should go to any one of his friend's pages and discover that he isn't included on their Blog priority list, making him unable to have access to all of that friend's private matters?

What would he say? Or better yet, what exactly WOULD Jesus do?

:)

I also wonder if any of these people actually realize that by allowing Jesus to see their otherwise "Set to Private" profiles, they are allowing him into their little Cyber world of myspace shannanigans?

Or perhaps they keep their profiles tame and diluted of what their recreational activities and lifestyles REALLY consist of, so that they may maintain a particular image of what they only wish to reveal...and in that case, they are safe from Jesus's prying eyes....but are they REALLY safe from his prying eyes (again, am I supposed to say His?)

Some people might just like to add him to their roster so that they can be like "Look! Jesus is my homie~ I am down with Jesus. Look at me, the devoted and Bible abiding Christian."

That or maybe people just like to add him to their myspace as an accessory to the image of themselves that they so desperately want the faceless masses on this website to see~

Jesus on myspace, for some, becomes one of the novelties listed under the "interests" category on their profile...one of the strategically chosen elements of their existence specifically included on their page, listed among the likes of their other tastes and preferences.

(I like XY and Z...therefore you will see me as a hippie. I like AB and C...therefore you will see me as a wild party person. I like EF and G...therefore you will see me as smart and worldly and traveled...etc. etc.)

Like Barack Obama for me. I have him in my top friends because I think he's the cat's pajamas~ and I want people to know that I support him. In an odd and obvious way, he has become an accessory on my myspace page, along with my other interests.

This is how I see Jesus on the myspace pages of some others (not all of course...for every wack phony there are definitely the tried and true who deserve credit for being genuine!), although I see Jesus in this whole other untouchable category...and the fact that he has a myspace page is interesting to me...
I wonder who is the "man behind the curtain" of this Jesus myspace page business....and how he managed to recruit so many people to add him as friend?
I wonder if people ever send him messages/comments like he is actually Jesus, and what the guy who runs the profile thinks of some of the shit people send him?
I wonder if this guy starts to believe he is actually Jesus? Or that Jesus is working through him, guiding him through answering his messages on myspace.

And then I think of that guy operating Jesus's myspace profile as a complete freak...and there are some freaky people out there.
I wonder why anyone would buy into having a Jesus profile as their friend on myspace. It baffles me.
I am cracking up reading the comments on Jesus's page...not at the people and their messages to Jesus, but the fact that they are sending messages to Jesus on myspace PERIOD.
I think it's funny. The headline of the Jesus profile should read "THE Official myspace page of the son of God."

That would at least make it more "convincing."

:)

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