happy new years

Rihanna looks like a very cold Cat in the Hat lolzorz
She is lip synching (or not) with absolutely no shame. Musicians of the world, this is the future

Just a Thought

If Michael Jackson had been the leader of a gang, he would have had the largest gang in the world. It would have spanned everyone, from Crips and Bloods to rockers who grew up in love with Dirty Diana to the baby boomers throughout the world.

Christmas Rocks--Yay Santa.

Well, as I said in the previous post, I've been babysitting my cousin for the past two days. We just sent Santa Claus an "email" it was pretty awesome how there was an instant response. Nuri said to me, "You know, I think I believe in Santa now, he knew my age, so he must know I'm tall and everything!"

He gave me another Christmas gift too.

"Next year, I'm not going to ask for any shooting games. They're violent and it's bad. And when my children have Christmas, I'm going to make sure they never get shooting games for Christmas."-- Nuri

:D ADORABLE

The Future is in His Eyes

I am an only child, but I never have been a lonely child. I had the good fortune of growing up with a cousin who was a year younger than I was. I was his boss and he was my demon. We were as thick as thieves, as the saying goes. Of course, I was the mastermind, and he was the lackey. Whenever we did something wrong, I ran as quickly as I could to hide. My cousin always stood there and took the brunt of the blame. We fought each other like hell, but in retrospect, I know that it was only because we loved each other so much.

I feel terribly sorry for my younger cousin. I've been babysitting him for the past two days, but he's eight. And something about being twice his age makes me lose my patience with his antics. I can't understand his inner intrigues. It's hard for me to understand him most of the time because he speaks so sweetly and softly.

I can hear him, even now, as I write this blog post, gallivanting in the small space of the hallway, trying to devise a game for himself. Every couple of minutes he comes in and dances and asks me to put something on the internet, but I cannot. I haven't the time. I'm rewriting an essay that I bombed with a capital B, so I've been very short and impatient with him.

I'm letting him down, just like every psuedo-adult in his life. He's got no one to share his little inner turmoils and triumphs. I can't be that person for him. I don't understand what he wants the way I used to when I took care of him and I was ten and he was two, or when I was twelve and he was four. Something about those ages before fourteen made being those ages mutually intelligible. I was always the nice one to him back then. Now I seem like the bitch in comparison to my other cousin who used to play too roughly.

I play too roughly with his self-esteem. I'm sorry.

Abominable. Still

So I went to walk the dog this morning and it was a veritable wonderland of snow. For some reason, I'm always interested in walking haltingly in the knee-deep snow and watching my dog (he's probs a little less than a foot off the ground) attempt to navigate the snowdrifts. There is honestly nothing to compare to this experience. Zeus and I arrived at the park, and it was just so white and untouched that he and I ran to sully it as quickly as possible. We both got a bit tired, so we paused on the path. Suddenly, someone from behind me said,

"Hi do you have the time?" I was a little perplexed as to how this guy arrived, but I turned around and gave him the time. I made a move to leave, but he pinned me with an intense stare, and said... "Hey, so I don't know my name."

RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN

That's what I should have done, but it sure is hard to run when you can't navigate the nine inches of snow quickly enough to make any sort of quick getaway. Plus I had a tiny, elderly dog who is a bajillion times slower. This was not a time for quick reactions.

"There's a police precinct; I'm sure they'll know your name or at least be able to identify you."
"Okay. Well...."

I flagged down a dude who happened to be walking through the park ( just like advised in CPR, I pointed at him and called him so that he could not be mistaken that I was talking to him and not a tree) and asked him whether he knew if there was a police precinct nearby. He pulled his head from the left side of his hoodie, and held his phone in astonishment at my question. I repeated it a few more times to let it sink in. "Oh no" he said, "oh no." And he hurried off to get back on his phone with his friend.

I was alone with the strangest person I had ever met. Again. He shifted sideways, and I said as uncomfortably as possible "Well, good luck." He began walking up the pathway, and I took a totally different path into the park.

Why is it that when I go to enjoy myself for the morning, I meet all the sketchy people in the world who don't know their names?

Abominable

Music: There Goes the Fear-Doves; Mushaboom-Feist


The blizzard is in full force. It's crazy to watch storm clouds of snow hurry down the street. I would hate to be outside right now. OH wait, the snow lulled for a moment. Cute. Anyhow, I was outside for the second time today to walk the dog (and the first time I was outside it was to walk the dog) and the snow was absolutely blinding. But I had the soundtrack from 500 Days of Summer in my ears and no lie, that album is the best for feeling a part of the snow globe the streets become. The snow seemed to bring everything into slow motion. My dog for some reason was walking on three legs rather than the usual four. I don't know what that was about. He went to pee on things, but it seemed like the snow slowed down his urinary tract as well. It was very funny to see him look so earnest and then have nothing to show for it. The harder the wind blew, the more I felt as if I were kissing the scarf covering my face rather than using it as a shield. I could feel the snow, but I didn't feel like it had a personal vendetta against me. It was fantastic.

I wonder how I'll feel tomorrow when it's positively disgusting outside...

Fame

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be famous in the way that I hope I will, for songwriting or being witty or something to that effect. I wonder more often, however, if I have the guts to do what is required to make the leap from ordinary to extraordinary. Most people who meet me would classify me as a Gryffindor, to use Harry Potter values of virtue. I'm loud, blunt, fun, very honest, and generally a good person. However, as years of reading fanfiction continues to inform me, most Headmasters of Hogwarts were Slytherins. Uh oh spaghetti-o.

What if I lack the ambition to succeed in the girl-eat-girl world of the entertainment world? What if I'm doomed to forever play music in some awkward downtown location with a band called the Unshaven Pirates? Well, Will Smith (and my father) would say that one needs the drive to work harder than you've ever worked before on every project. Pick one thing to specialize in, and work your ass off so badly that you pwn everyone else in the field. That's what my dad wanted me to do when I was seven, and extremely talented in piano. He wanted my mom to become a stage mom and take me from Carnegie Hall to Juilliard to wherever else. In this fantasy of his, we could always afford this, and my talent would be recognized by the entire world (or as close as he could get to that).

That's fantastic. My mom was of a different opinion, though, and she was the one who was actually on-the-ground in the situation. My dad, you see, lives in North Carolina. No biggie for most situations, but when his request was that my mom quit her job and work her ass off to further my career (which I did not want at the time), she did not take his suggestion well. She stopped taking me to piano lessons because I stopped practicing and told her I didn't want to go anymore. She decided that it wasn't worth the time and money to take me to lessons I did not want. Her reasoning was that if it wasn't fun, I probably wouldn't want to do this in a few years anyway.

But I was just thinking about how lots of models have these discovery stories like..."I was walking with a friend when [very famous fashion photographer/designer] saw me and decided that i was his muse." And I realized that either the old days had ugly people everywhere, or this had to be a lie. Honestly, any career in the arts takes more than just talent, as Will Smith says, it takes skill. Hours and hours of practice that I have not done recently. However, that's going to change, because I am going to practice every day; writing and playing my repertoire. I am determined not to fail myself when I have the time.