Fa...bulous

For the past month or two I've felt that I over use the word fantastic. It's gotten to the point that the word has lost all meaning to me...like cool or sustainable. The worst part is that I can no longer use the term for its true meaning (ie. unbelievable or within the realm of fantasty) because people don't get that I've switched meanings and it results in a good deal of explanatino to get my point across. Unfortunately, you can't very well downgrade from fantastic. You can't just switch back to your monotonous life before fantastic and walk around saying things like "That movie was good. The character development was really nice." It just doesn't work. Doesn't have the same umph.

The thing is that I only seem to notice the overuse when it's too late. I'll be at my fourth fantastic of the conversation and something will click. It's as if my brain stem, as well as controlling my subconcious processes, has evolved to take on the additonal (get it?) task of tallying my fantastics. Once it has reached its fantastic capacity it causes all speech to stop and the rest of my brain begins the intimidating task of thinking of a replacement word. However, riffling through the lexicon of my mind takes a bit of time and, generally, I've already made it to fa- by the time we need to look for another word... Another word equivalent to fantastic and starting with fa...

Fabulous! Now there's nothing wrong with fabulous. It's a good word. I like it, but when you start to replace your overuse of fantastic with an overuse and kind of forced sounding fabulous, it doesn't always come across the way you would like. For example, describing a movie like Greece 2 as fabulous has a vastly different meaning to describing it as fantastic.

And thus lies my dilema: which is better, being the irritating girl that overuses fantastic or being strangely homophobic?

,KDJ;F GO9E

I just finished my thesis!!!!! YAY! Now I can get back to more important things like updating my beloved blog and planning my trip to Ireland, which I just realized you don't know about, but my parents are sending me to Ireland for as long as I can afford to be there as my graduation present and now you're all caught up :-) Oh and I cut a good portion of my hair off...now you're really all caught up.

Time for celebratory cake!!!!

I saw a girl waiting for the bus

She was sitting on someone's lap.
At first, I thought they were a monster.

A Million

A mother dies trying to save her baby boy.
A martyr dies for his cause.
And we weep.
And we feel the pain of their love as we love.

A million people die in a flood in China.
A million people are killed in gas chambers in Europe.
And we wait.
And we remain unaffected by their love.

How can you comprehend the deaths of millions?
How can one alone be greater?

We want to cry.
We want to be upset.
Because we know we should be.
Because we want to understand.

A million people can't die.
A million people don't even exist.
It's all a corporate scam.
It's all a conspiracy theory.

I love my country

I'm currently banning myself from the internet, but I just learned something that I feel needs to be shared.

If you Google "hot Canadian prime ministers" (don't ask) the first thing that comes up is the wikipedia entry on poutine...

Epic.

Page Fright

My roommate and I were talking about authors that we like as well as reading/writing in general and, in this process, she recommended a book called Page Fright to me. It's about the random things writers do to get themselves to write. All the habits and paranoid routine they follow to get them inspired.

I started reading it a couple of days ago and I just got to a part where the author is quoting various famous writers talking about their feelings when confronted with a blank page. Now, when I think about famous writers or when I read famous books, they make it seem to easy. They seem so easily inspired and able to make me realize things about the world and myself so effortlessly. I suppose at heart I know this isn't true. Writing is incredibly difficult. How can you put into words feelings and experiences that just are and cannot be described?

I've always kind of wanted to be a writer. When I was 9 or 10 I dreamed of being a journalist. I've always loved reading and to this day think that being able to write a good book would be one of the most precious things I can do in this world. But (and there's always a but) I don't think I'm a very good writer. Or at least, I've had nothing inspire me, no "Ah ha!" moment, if I may use an extremely annoying Opera quote.

Then I read all these quotes by people, whose writing I really admire, saying how when confronted with a blank page or the need to actually sit down at their desk and just start writing, they are filled with terror. They become completely overwhelmed both physically and psychologically. On some level this inspires me because it means that they are just like me, but the thing is...they're not. They're amazing writers and if they don't know how to start, what chance do I have. Where do I start?

The answer I suppose is you just...start.

This is a little late, but

the irony in all of my sleeping over adventures is that I ended up spending more on coffee the next day than I would have spent had I just gone home and then bussed back in the morning