What I've been doing or whatever

I keep trying to write a post about what the heck I've actually been up to lately but I can never finish it for some reason. So here's what I've been doing:

Writing

I've been writing a lot over the summer and fall. I co-authored a patent with my dad for a pocket knife he invented, started doing some freelance writing, and started writing for a women's website. My feminist blog is still going as well, although I haven't had as much time for that with all the other writing projects I've had.

Health

The summer was sorta meh but I'm starting to feel better now that I've found a drug combination that actually suits me. Funny how that works. It's like I've been in a dark room and someone suddenly flipped a light switch on.

MoFem stuff

I felt some feminist fatigue over the summer. I was very tired of all the same old arguments against the things I cared about. I was tired of being ambushed in conversations online and in person. Everything Church-related felt very triggering to me. My Church attendance hit an all-time low. I had to pull back a little from the Church and from some feminist activities, but it was a good thing for me at the time. It saved my sanity.

Now that I'm feeling better, I think I'm in a better position to deal with stuff. Church, rather than torture, seems pretty okay to me. That's good news. I know that I will be criticized for my opinions and beliefs in the future; they're unorthodox ideas. But I know that I'll find appropriate ways to respond to people, and that there's always something I can learn from them.

Projects

I got back into driving over the summer. I haven't done anything hardcore. It's a process. But knowing that I can do it, and that I'm on that path, is really exciting.

I'm crocheting a lot. I'm a lot better than I was a year ago. Lately I've made a headband/earwarmers, an infinity scarf, a crochet hook case, driving gloves, and legwarmers. I'm hoping to make a sweater this winter, because I've never done anything that challenging before.

Future?

I dunno. Jordan's graduating in a few months, and then everything will change again, probably. I don't want to be a freelancer forever. I daydream about having a normal job outside of my house, one that I drive my car to. No, neither I nor Jordan knows what he wants to do after graduation. Sorry about that. We'll probably keep living in Utah, at least for a while, but we hoooooope that we can leave this state at some point.

I'm bad at books?

I keep trying to read books that have high ratings on Goodreads, but I keep finding myself disappointed and sometimes bored like crazy.

Last week, for example: I tried reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Water for Elephants. And I hated both of them. Why is that? People love both of these books, right? Am I just super bad at liking good books? Well, here's my defense [*spoilers, maybe*]:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was... original... but it was just about the most obnoxious book I've ever read. The story takes place in 2003 (I think) and mostly revolves around a weird, depressed kid trying to recover from the death of his father, who was at the World Trade Center during the attacks on 9/11. I'm not really a fan of books that use the deaths of parents as backstory. It just seems... lazy. Like the writer needed a "real reason" for their protagonist to be depressed or something. I dunno.

The author used a lot of gimmicks to move the story along and Give It Character, including using tabs instead of spaces to show a character was using a typewriter to narrate; putting in pictures from the kid's Things That Happened To Me scrapbook; jumbling up all of one narrator's words as he runs out of space in his notebook, forcing him to write over his previous words and turning the pages black; putting blank pages in the middle of the book; ergghhnnnngggggg. There were three things that bothered me about this: 1) It happened so often that I lost track of what was going on; 2) It felt like the author relied on the weird gimmicks to tell the story, instead of, I dunno, his writing; and 3) This is a novel for adults. If I want pictures with my story, I will get a comic book, a graphic novel, or an old-fashioned picture book. More prose, please.

Water for Elephants was so boring I only got through a few chapters. Here's what I didn't like: It was tedious, there was parental death as a plot device, the main character had little to no personality, it felt like the author was trying to "shock" the readers with circus life/a peek into the mind of men/etc. and it seemed sort of over the top.

Did any of you guys like these books? Am I just cray-cray?

Our missionary, Trevor

Well, this lil' fella is coming home from his mission tomorrow:

It makes him happy to be taller than at least one dude in the world

It still feels almost too weird to be true.

When my baby sister surprises me a little

We were talking about Neil Patrick Harris and I asked her if she had ever seen pictures of his adorable kids. She hadn't, so I showed her a bunch. After stalking him on Google for a while, she asked me if he had a significant other, so I showed her a picture of David Burtka and said that they were engaged. And she was like, "Cool." She then noticed a picture of Beyoncé and started talking about her.

I worried that she would react badly to such shocking information, so I'm delighted that she was just so... normal about it. I'm not sure if that's because she's awesome, my family's awesome, or her generation's awesome, but I'm proud of her anyway.

Okay

This is what I've accomplished this week. It's adorable and you're not allowed to say otherwise.

It's a birthday present for my baby sister. She still only considers stuffed animals to be legitimate gifts. That, at least, makes it easy to know what she wants for her birthday.

Guest post at young mormon feminists

I hope you all had a nice General Conference (for all you Mormon readers; everyone else, I hope you had a nice weekend in general). Guess what? I wrote a guest post for young mormon feminists! I will warn you that it's some hard-core Mormon feminist musings, so if you think that will bother you, don't read it.

Today: awesome

I'm not sure if any of you will appreciate this but, well--look (you'll have to click on it b/c it's small):

I had been wondering why my blog has been getting so much traffic from Hannah's site. And NOW I KNOW. But anyway, it's so fun to see my little blog next to all those totally famous amazing ones. Her blog is one of my favorites and I've always wanted my blog to make it onto the blogroll of a totally famous amazing blog, so this is cool.

And no, this isn't an April Fools' Day joke. I'm just that awesome.

Liebster Award

Hey dudes 'n' ladydudes. I got nominated for a Liebster Award! I don't usually do this stuff, but it came from my cousins, McCall and Brevin over at Snapshots, and I like them, so I decided to join in. Here are the large pictures for you to look at now.

11 facts about meeeeeee:
1. When I was little, my parents would ask me to "hold a hand" to cross the street. Not wanting to give up my freedom, I took advantage of the linguistic ambiguity of that phrase by holding my own hand to cross the street.
2. I've been an anonymous writer for a high school and a university publication.
3. I have mild synesthesia. Letters, numbers, words, and music have colors to me.
4. I love Nancy Drew computer games. They are so awesome. I was embarrassed of that for a brief period of time (the Dark Time, when I dated mean people), but then I was like, "You know what? Screw you! These games are fun."
5. My lil' sis is adopted, and we're twelve 'n' a half years apart. She's aaaaaaalmost taller than me now.
6. I'm a feminist. But you already knew that.
7. I am an extremely picky reader, a relatively picky movie watcher, and a not very picky television watcher.
8. I was nominated by my choir teacher in high school to go on a choir/band tour trip to Europe. And I went. (And so did my cousin, Brevin!)
9. Once, my roomie and I were at a play, and some dude pulled her on stage to dance, and she dragged me along with her. And verily, we danced with an attractive man to a weird version of this song. It was magical.
10. I wrote a scholarly paper on the word "jimmered" once for a linguistics class.
11. I did karate with my brother and dad during middle school and high school.


11ish blogs I'm nominating:
Celeste's blog is Overworked Little Writer
Karissa's blog is Be of Good Cheer
Mike's blog is just because
Kristy's blog is Chilly's World
Jenn's blog is Life as a Lindsay
Katie's blog is Hillbilly and Mountain Girl
Rachel's blog is Climbing to the Top
Emily's blog is Perceptions and Facts


11 answers to McCall's questions:
1. If you could write for any well known magazine or newspaper, what would you write for? I'd write for Ms. magazine, of course! Think of all the amazing people I'd meet! Holy frijoles, Batman.
2. What is your favorite school subject?
In high school, I enjoyed English, AP European history, human development, clothing construction, sociology, psychology, and choir.
3. Did the Chicken or the Egg come first?
Both, I suppose:

4. How often do you sing in the shower?
Pretty much never.
5. If you had 12 kids what would their names be?
Kid, child, niño, niña, you, him, her, the baby, the blond one, the blonde one, boy, girl
6. City or Country living?
City.
7. What is your favorite smell?
Lilacs.
8. What blog do you visit the most?
Probably Feministing (rated R for discussing Real Life and sometimes swearing about it) and Feminist Mormon Housewives (rated A for Awesome and Aggravating material).
9. If you could write a book, what would the name of it be?
Andria's Book obvs
10. If you could only use one form of social media for the rest of your life, what social media website would you choose?
Blogging, because I like the angry comments. Jk jk I like writing and stuff.
11. What is your most prized possession?
My collection of clay figurines that Jordan has made me for our anniversary every year. Each one is a scene of something from that year. They're really sweet.

My questions:
1. What is your favorite type of book to read?
2. What is your dream job?
3. If you could visit any country, which would you visit?
4. Where do you think you'll be in ten years?
5. If your 16-year-old self could see you now, what would he or she think of you?
6. If you could donate one million dollars to any charity, which would it be?
7. What do you consider to be your greatest strengths?
8. If you had to describe yourself as an animal, which would you choose?
9. What is your favorite type of music?
10. How old were you when you had your first kiss, and how did it happen?
11. Who is your favorite figure from history?

Changes

1. We're moving out of Provo at the end of the semester.

2. I've decided what I want to be when I grow up.

So, moving. There are several reasons for it. The biggest reason is that we think I'll be back on my feet sooner if I have my family around. I'm less prone to lethargy if other people are in the house and I'm expected to wear normal-people clothes, not pajamas. The other main reason is that we aren't entirely fond of Provo (aside from our friends, of course). Jordan will have to commute to work/school until he graduates in December, but after that, we are done with Utah Valley.

I want to work in book publishing when I grow up. I want to be involved in finding great novels and making them incredible. I want a job that will stretch my mind and that will allow me to use what I learned in school. I can't believe I never thought about a career in book publishing before. It makes perfect sense for me: it combines my love for reading, my passion for language, and my desire for continual learning. My hope is to feel good enough to do an internship by this time next year to gain experience and see first-hand what it's like to work in publishing.

Making a sweater for my new pocketknife

My dad is a Renaissance man. Lately, his thing has been designing and hand-crafting pocketknives. They're really cool, and I've always loved pocketknives, so I told him to make me one. Since I'm his favorite biological daughter.

The coolest thing about the design is that it's really easy to open with one hand. Plus it has a safety lock at the top, so you can't accidentally slice your finger off.

The only problem is that it doesn't have any way to attach it to my key chain...

...so I crocheted an adorable little case. Hooray!

Blog backup

Hey Blogger friends. It's time for you to be responsible and learn how to backup your blog. (Assuming that you lack that skill.) It's easy and will only take you a few minutes, so just do it.

1. Login to your Blogger dashboard.
2. Click Settings.
3. Click Other.
4. Click Export blog.
5. Find the XML version of your blog on your computer (if you have a PC, go to My Computer and check  Downloads), and put it somewhere you'll remember. It doesn't hurt to put it in a few places. I put mine in My Documents and in Dropbox.
6. You're awesome.

To back up your blog template, go to Template and then click Backup (Backup will be in the upper right-hand corner of the screen) and repeat step 5. Step 6 is just a statement of fact.

You can visit this link for more in-depth instructions.

Guest writers: myself at age 10, 14, and 15

I've been keeping a journal faithfully since I was eight. (I know: totes adorbs.) I'm currently on notebook #17 or something. I'm too lazy to count.

My journal serves many purposes for me. I use it for cathartic purposes when I'm struggling. I release negative emotions and look at them on the page, which can be helpful in identifying why I'm feeling a certain way. I also like to reflect on experiences and try to capture the spiritual and intellectual growth I notice in myself. And sometimes I write just because I want to put words together in a way that sound nice to me.

I try to avoid the "captain's log" type of journal, where I list the day's events and nothing else. I know that in the future when I reread my journals, I won't really care what happened on a given day. I'll care about the internal struggles I had been grappling with and how I dealt with them. I'll want to revisit the prose I crafted that communicated how my life "felt" at different times. Mostly though, I think I'll value the honesty in my words and in the emotions expressed on the pages.

For funsies I pulled out a couple of journals to see what I wrote on February 12th during various years of my life. I wanted to start with the earliest age I could find, but it's not actually today's date; it's about a month off. But it's so hilarious I had to include it.

Age ten: [Flowers are taped to page] These very flowers were from my Nana's backyard. They are to remind me of sweet, fresh, spring, and of my home that I soon find.

First of all: BAHAHAH. This made me die laughing. It's just so... I don't even know what to call it. You can tell that I read a lot is what it is. To provide a bit of context, we had been visiting my grandma in Utah while house-hunting. We were about to move because my dad was hired as a doctor in good ole Cache Valley. I don't remember feeling nervous about finding a house, but I do remember feeling sad about leaving my friends behind.

Age fourteen: Church choir started up again today. There were 4 altos, 2 sopranos, 2 tenors ([I name two cute boys]), and then one bass. But we'll get more people. 

[Cute boy] and the other boys did their song today in sacrament today. I felt the Spirit as they sang. I couldn't really tell which voice belonged to him though--my brother said he was the one singing in the highest voice, but I'm not sure. I'm hope [my brother] will join the Church choir. I doubt it, though. 

Anyway, we did the song practice for the small group of girls (I'm the pianist--have I not mentioned that before?). At one point (we were in the Primary room) [same cute boy] walked in and looked at me. I think I smiled at him, but I can't remembered [sic] if he smiled back or not. 

Our class presidency got set apart today--finally. It was very good, and I feel a special sort of love for everyone.

Various choir adventures and various boys? Yeah, that basically describes my high school experience. I love that I had to throw in the detail that he looked at me omg omg omg. But I don't remember trying to convince my brother to get into music back then. I guess it paid off, because now he's a magical beast bursting with musical talent. Six months until he's home. Ladies.

Age fifteen: There are a lot of types of screams people can have:

• high-pitched shriek that quickly turns to laughter. That happens a lot at lunch, when someone startles you, or something similar happens.

• loud, piercing scream of rage, when you're angry.

• the hyperventilating sort of "Oh-oh-oh-oh!" that occurs with 'fangirls.' Another thing similar is the 'girl scream'--where girls are happy or something, and they just let out a high screech of excitement. Trust me--I've done it.

• There's a short, "Aiii!" sort when a spider is suddenly found on your leg and you hurridly brush it off. This is a good 'shriek.'

• There a [sic] "WWOOOOAAAUUH!" that occurs especially on roller coasters. That's what my roller coaster scream sounds like, anyway.

• Also, there's the heart-stopping, blood-curdling, scream-as-loud-and-high-as-you-can, top-of-your-lungs type of scream, that happens when an evil murderer is advancing on you with a long knife, or you're riding Tower of Terror and you were suddenly thrust into your first drop.

• There's also an "AAAAGH!" That's mostly used by men, when they're suddenly frightened. 

That's all I can think of for screams.

1. Oh my gosh. I wrote pretty much the same thing a couple of years ago on my other blog. My older younger self sorta plagiarized my younger younger self. Can we make up a word for that? 2. What kind of fifteen-year-old sits down and thinks, 'Today, we will be writing about the various types of screams in the ole journal. Let us begin.' (Only the royal "we" will do.) 3. I haven't changed at all, ever. 4. I kind of love who I am.

I used to be nervous about what people in the future would think when they read my journals, but it doesn't seem like a big deal anymore. I'm just writing about real life, and after all, I'm just some girl, you know? Of course there will be embarrassing, weird, silly posts. For me, the charm of the "awkwardness" is that what I've written is still so me it makes me laugh.

surface

We went on a date yesterday, partly to make someone else cook for us, and partly to distract me from the difficulty of transitioning antidepressants. Again. There's a dangerous vulnerability in allowing too much time for thinking in between meds. There's a fine line between my thoughts and the depressed thoughts. My thoughts are the ones that know it'll be okay, that I'm fine, I'm fine, it just takes a little while to adjust to these things. But the depressed thoughts tell me it's not the medicine; it's you, you're the problem. I have to defend myself, so I seek out the most upbeat, silly things I can. I'm glad that there are shows like Futurama that are ridiculous, witty, and hilarious the entire way through. I'm protected. I'm safe.

On the way to pick up some food, we listened to Greg Laswell, an artist we hadn't heard for a while, since we hadn't updated our iPod for so long. While listening, I had this strange moment where the whole world lit up with energy and color. I simultaneously felt like I had never heard music before, yet remembered exactly how his music used to make me feel. I remembered the weak brown of his guitar mixed with a blur of color in Take Everything; the lush dark blues and purples sweeping softly through Take A Bow with the twinkling pinpricks of white. But the fullness of the music caught me off guard, as if I had been half-mindedly listening to it play, muffled, from an adjacent room, and a door had suddenly been opened.

Sometimes I have these moments that pull me above the surface and I remember. Like the unexpected parting of dark clouds in a storm, letting the warm light stream through. A sun shower. It's still raining; the ground is still wet. But I stare up at the sky in wonder as the raindrops hit my cheeks, and I feel like I've never seen anything so amazing or beautiful. Rain and sun at the same time.

Moments when I surface, moments when I remember and see and feel with sharpness and clarity, they are what gently pull me toward the future. A future of filling my house with the sound of my voice in song. A future of walking outside in the sunshine and seeing the colors and smiling, because I feel my body and spirit in harmony, neither my thoughts nor my body imprisoning me. A future of feeling like myself with all the energy of my soul, from my head to my toes.

A future of breaking free of the surface and staying.

A 100 Hour Board nostalgia sandwich

So this little critter showed up the other day. I was expecting it to, but I still had a case of the "Ah, the good ole days," anyway, thinking about the spectacular people I met and the strange adventures I had. Maybe this is lame, but who cares: pretty sure the Board is one of the best things I got involved in at BYU. If it weren't for that, I would've gone crazy with the BYU-ness of BYU. You know what I mean.

The post tempted me, for a moment, to go back and reread some stuff I wrote, but I thought better of it. It would be like a combination of reading the most cringe-y essays from the 8th grade, journal entries, and crazy hyper texts from high school. I'm just glad I'm a little less cray-cray.

People are cray: books edition

Within the past week, I've read five novels. I figured that, since I can do anything I want at this point in my life, I may as well catch up on the hundred or so books that I've been meaning to read.

I've been using Goodreads to track my progress, because I like seeing my stats and the tangible evidence that I'm so freakin' awesome at reading. I haven't added any friends because I'm not interested in the social aspect of it; I'm very particular about what I read, and it's very rare that someone recommends something that I actually end up liking. Well dang, I sound arrogant and obnoxious. Sorry about that. The truth of it is that I'm really picky and I don't wanna hurt feelings all over the place by shutting down book suggestions. Occasionally, though, I like to peek at the reviews to see what other people thought of the books I read, and, well...

Holy gosh darn freakin' crap. People are SO WEIRD. I know that Rule Number Whatever of the internet is to never read any comments, but I like to anyway, and they always just baffle me. You would think that adults, reading books intended for adults, would act like adults about it, but apparently that is too difficult.

I want to give examples for the awesome feminist classics I read, because the weird comments there were the weirdest. The other two books were random; one weird fluffy pseudo-fantasy book, and one murder mystery thriller (although that had some interesting comments as well).

I'll start out with The Bell Jar. The book takes place in the early 60s and centers around Esther Greenwood, a college student on a summer internship. Throughout the novel, it describes her internal conflict with societal expectations of women and her personal desires and confusions as to what she wants to do with her life, as well as her continual descent into depression, suicide attempts, and resultant medical treatment. 

Personally, I connected with the book on several levels. The distorted thinking, confusing apathy and sadness, and desperate despair are thoughts and feelings I am well acquainted with. It was strangely comforting to see my own thoughts on the page, expressed by another human being. I also understood Esther's desire not to lose her own identity in the course of experiencing life. She was afraid of committing herself to big choices because it could prevent her from making other choices; her biggest fear was to become a wife and mother and slowly see her personality disappear. I, too, have the fear that I won't be me anymore once I have kids.

Now, onto the crazy. The biggest thing people had against this book was... (can you guess?) it was depressing. Hah! They were all like, "Ugh, it doesn't even make sense for her to be depressed. It bothers me that there wasn't an anti-suicide message in the book. This book was too depressing, and it didn't serve a good purpose for the plot, it was just self-indulgent..." 

Blah blah blah dumb crazy. Okay. People. I understand that if you've never been depressed, you won't completely relate, and that's just fine. But the author is showing you what it's like. She's showing you what it's like to be so depressed that dying doesn't seem so bad. To throw in a "Hey kids! Suicide is bad!" message would undermine the tone of the book, and it would be insulting to depression sufferers. She's not promoting it; she's showing you what it's like to feel that way.

Onto the most controversial book of the three (and, in my opinion, the best); The Color Purple. It's written as a series of letters by the main character, Celie, a young girl who lives in the South. Hmm. I wanted to write a plot summary but I don't think I can write a short one. Instead, I'll mention the main controversial points of the book to provide context for the crazy comments.

Because it's first-person from the perspective of an uneducated young woman, it's not an easy read. It's like reading Huckleberry Finn; you have to get used to Celie's dialect. The book talks about violence, incest, sex, sexual and domestic abuse, racism, homosexuality, and has some swearing. Also, it uses the word f*ck colloquially (I don't recall it used as a swear word), which may be offensive. (?)

And now, for the weird: People complained that the book was too confusing, but not always because of the dialect; they expected the book to spell everything out for them. They forgot about that thing you have to do once you leave high school that people call reading in between the lines. You don't have a teacher who's going to say, "By the way, that line is implying that these characters are falling in love." You have to pay attention and figure that out yourself.

Less weird and more depressing: people obviously got their undies in a bundle about the fact that a book talked about the terrible things that actually happen in our real world (and seemed to completely miss the message and beauty everywhere in the book). This makes me sad. I'm sad that people are more offended at a piece of art imitating (events in) life than the events themselves. The people reading these books aren't children, or teenagers. They're adults, who in theory are mature enough to handle adult themes, and if not, should be adult enough to know when to walk away.

Oh, and people complained that the book made them feel feelings. Ones that made their heart feel funny, their tummy hurt, and their brain itch. They said, well, rape is bad and stuff, but do we have to talk about it in such a negative way? The author should have written about it in a more positive way! Excuse my French, but WHAT THE HELL? Rape is not a happy subject. You will feel uncomfortable talking about it, reading about it, hearing about it. As that one wizard guy said, "Fear of a name only increases fear of a thing itself." Get used to talking about real things.

My favorite comment from a fellow reader was that those who consider themselves Christians should avoid this book, because it's too offensive. Guess I'm not a Christian?

The last one for today is The Red Tent, historical fiction about Dinah from the Old Testament. In essence, the author took a few lines from the Bible and turned it into a 300+ page book; kudos, Ms. Diamant. Dinah was the daughter of Jacob (who had like a jillion sons) and Leah (who supplied a bunch of those sons). The point of the book is to explore what life may have been like for women in the Old Testament, how women passed down their legacies from mother to daughter, and what Dinah's life was like.

I thought it was a lovely read. I'll definitely remember Jacob's family better in the future, and that Simeon and Levi were total scummy jerks. I know that there were liberties taken with the text, obviously, but I enjoyed the fact that women were actually important and in the foreground of the story. I wish more of the Bible were like that. And heck, all of the scriptures.

Anywho, this book naturally drew lots of Judeo-Christian readers, and their complaints were... really weird. First, someone said she would have been able to enjoy the book more if it had been Biblical fiction instead of non-fiction. Uh... did she miss the part where, on the cover of the book, it says A NOVEL? And I'm pretty sure the back of the book says it's historical fiction. And a section on the inside. So... lady, that one is all on you.

Other people whined that the book was chick lit thinly veiled as historical fiction. Okay. No. No no no. Chick lit is fluffy. Light-hearted. It's like eating sugary whipped cream. It goes down all right but after you eat it, you realized you didn't really eat anything at all. Sure, chick lit and women's literature both have women in them. But women's literature has substance. You usually leave it feeling like you learned something. If someone says that a historical fiction novel depicting the trials and triumphs of women during a very dangerous time is chick lit, they need to go back into their cave and spend some time thinking.

Okay. The bestworst comments were about the fact that the book depicted Jacob as a real man, and not a mystical demigod. People were so offended at the idea that Jacob probably had a... are you ready for me to say this?... SEX DRIVE. (How do you guys think he ended up with so many sons?) There's a scene in the book before Jacob gets married where a character (I don't remember which) sees Jacob masturbate in the woods from a distance. It's not graphic, and it's euphemistic, but the readers get what's going on. Some of the comments were like, "HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT A PROPHET OF GOD WOULD DO THE YOU-KNOW-WHAT-BAD-THING?" And I'm like, "So, you're offended at the suggestion of that, but not at the reality of the forced circumcisions and consequent murders? Okay." They also hated the idea that Jacob might ever get angry, or frustrated, or sad, or have any feelings in general.

Of course, people were also offended that there were PG-13 sex scenes where the characters were excited to have sex because they wanted to get it on, not because they were hoping for another awesome sturdy son. They didn't like that Leah was a strong woman who liked sex! They didn't like that the patriarchal system was portrayed in a negative light! They didn't like that the women celebrated their menstrual cycles together instead of shutting up and dealing with it! They didn't like that Joseph was GAY (I am still scratching my head over that comment; I have no idea how they jumped to that conclusion). What I learned from these comments was that if you depict the Old Testament as anything but dry and boring with perfect prophets, you are crossing unseen, holy lines.

Richard Castle is REAL

This week, while searching for new books to read, I stumbled upon this gem:

I'm sure that it's pretty terrible. It's authorized fan fiction, after all. BUT I am happy to hear that the rumor about what happens on page 105 is totally true, so...

Complaining: I like it.

I LOVE complaining. Just for the sake of it. I'm a recreational complainer!

I think most people don't know this about me, because I don't reveal it to them unless I feel really really comfortable with them. I usually worry they'd think I'm one of those angry negative people or something. Which... well. I guess some people might think I'm one of them, because I totally have depression, and I totally love feminism. Rants sometimes happen when you are a depressed feminist. But I save those for my husband, and rants, for me, serve a very different purpose than complaining. I rant to relieve frustration, and I complain to entertain myself. When I complain about something, it's usually because I either find it interesting, or because I find it mildly annoying. Here's some of the stuff I complained about last week:

• A well-intended but totally weird lady in Relief Society told us that the only media we should partake in was "wholesome" stuff like BYU Radio, instead of Trashy Reality Television, Because It Doesn't Teach Us Anything Worthwhile... What? WHAAAAAAAT? Do people do that? Listen to radio? BYU-kind? And you know what, lady? I learn PLENTY from my trashy tv, okay? Like plastic surgery is a bad idea sometimes, some people are cray-cray, and good parenting skills is very important. So THERE. Also, she said "mediums" instead of "media," which is awful.
• While we're on the subject, prescriptive grammarians kinda suck. But I'm not one, even though my mom totally thinks I am! Ruuuuuuuuuuuuude. (jk I love you) I don't correct people. I just know a couple (read: actually a lot of) grammar rules and notice when peeps violate them, so there. (Honestly, I'm most annoyed by people who hypercorrect, rather than people who just don't know what they're doing, or who know what they're doing but really don't care.) Also: GRAMMAR IS THE MOST BORING PART OF LINGUISTICS. 
• Disney is totally racist. I'm not talking about the obvious stuff. I'm talkin' linguistics! Let's consider The Lion King.
• Simba's voice actor is white, and he speaks Standard American English. 
• All the other main good guy lions speak Standard American English, but they are voiced by black actors (except, strangely, for adult Nala).
• Scar speaks a high-class British dialect (RP, probably?), and has darker fur than everyone else. (Weird...) It is TOTALLY impractical for him to develop his own dialect/accent, when everyone else in the pride is apparently American. Yeah, the film makers probably did it because we like smart, British bad guys, but come on. One lion has his very own dialect? For realsies?
• The dumb bad guys have ethnic dialects: Hispanic and lower-class Black English. I couldn't assign a dialect to Ed if I tried, because he doesn't really talk. Is he supposed to be mentally disabled? I'm not sure. 
• The superstitious African shaman monkey, Rafiki... I had to look him up, but apparently it's a Swahili accent. (And his name means "friend" in Swahili, cute!)
• The dumb good guys: Timon is a Jew with a Brooklyn accent and... I have no idea on Pumbaa.
• Zazu, of course, has a high-class British dialect, because he's stuffy, works with the king, etc. Btw, do you know who did the voice acting for him? THIS GUY.
• Did I forget anyone?
• (You know I totally love Disney with all my heart, right? My major just ruined my ability to watch movies like a normal person.)
• Our house doesn't have any heating, but we have a heater that keeps us from dying. But I like to sleep with about twelve blankets at night anyway because it's so cozy falling asleep surrounded by fluffy softness. But in the middle of the night, I feel like I'm going to DIE of HEAT AND SUFFOCATION AND LEG-TANGLINESS so I have to throw all the blankets except for one onto the floor, and it's not as fun or exciting anymore.

Are you a recreational complainer, or am I just a weird person?