The Infamous iPod Shuffle Game

Okay, so my friends on Facebook are always going and doing those iPod shuffle questionnaires and posting them in Notes, and up until last night I had never tried one. But midnight came and I wasn't tired and I had already finished my book, so I decided to turn on the computer and pull out by beloved video iPod, Monica, and play the shuffle game. The rules? You can only hit the "next" button once - no cheating if you don't like the song you come up with. So here goes.... I have only included the best ones, or the ones that I found amusing. Some of them made no sense at all.

How am I feeling today?
Turn Back, O Man from Godspell (Umm, I guess it means I'm feeling sexy or something, which I really haven't today except perhaps in my dancing pants at rehearsal.)

Will I get far in life?
Till There Was You from The Music Man (Not unless I fall in love, apparently...)

Where will I get married?
The Wardrobe from The Chronicles of Narnia (In a wardrobe? In Narnia - which would actually be pretty cool - ? In a British mansion? Who knows.)

What is your best friend's theme song?
The One Feather Tail of Miss Gertrude McFuzz from Seussical (Well, Tessa is one of the prettiest people I know, so I'm not sure this song really fits. She's more of a Mayzie than a Gertrude.)

What is high school like?
Lyring is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off by Panic! at the Disco (This actually makes sense. Only not my group of friends. Definitley not my group.)

What is the best thing about me?
Thank Goodness from Wicked (I'm kind and pretty and got rid of the Wicked Witch.)

What's in store for this weekend?
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! by ABBA (Lonely nights longing for some loving. Actually I have about 18 hours of play rehearsal.)

What song describes my parents?
All Good Gifts from Godspell (They provide stuff for me and my sisters, so I guess this song fits.)

Siblings?
On Fire by Lloyd Banks (Well, this doesn't really fit any of them except for maybe Anna who's a JV cheerleader. But no one in my family really listens to rap, which doesn't help to explain why this song is on my iPod in the first place.)

How is my life going?
My Hero by Paramore (I guess good, since the original is like, my favorite song ever.)

How does the world see me?
Everybody's Fool by Evanescence (Um, not good...)

What do my friends think of me?
Valjean Arrested, Valjean Forgiven from Les Miserables (They think I'm a criminal, but are quite forgiving and godly about it.)

How do I make myself happy?
Oh, The Things You Can Think from Seussical (I think and imagine stuff. Actually this is pretty much 100% right...)

What should I do with my life?
Funkytown by Lips Inc. (Move to a cool new place and dance a lot. I'm down with that.)

What is some good advice for me?
For Good from Wicked (I should be thankful for my friends and love them and stuff.)

What is my current theme song?
Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler (I'm waiting for some big strong man to come and sweep me off my feet. Sort of.)

What sort of men/women do I like?
What Ever Happened to the Heroes by Joss Stone (I like heroic men, but there aren't enough of them left or something. I guess that's true. I guess maybe, why can't Johnny Storm exist and ask me to marry him?)

What does the world think my theme song is?
Nobody's Fool by Avril Lavigne (You don't mess with me, bit.)

The End. Mon Dieu, my iPod needs cleaning out. I just found the song "Lip Gloss" on it. Ew.

Life Lesson - July 13, 2008

Picture by Etherhill

Jealousy gets you nowhere. Honestly. I spent this whole summer fuming like a teapot about a bunch of stupid stuff, and now I'm going into my senior year of high school at odds with my two best friends. Quite frankly, Betsy got a boyfriend and relocated to Cloud Nine. I accidentally let slip that I was sick of hearing about him twenty four/seven, so she decided that instead of sticking around to hear me gripe she was going to spend every last second of the summer with Lizzie, who was already swamped with summer volunteer work and entertaining her niece and really didn't have time to go shopping for date outfits every other day. I eventually caught onto the fact that every time one of them said they were busy, they were actually hanging out together (not very hard to discover, actually, since Lizzie is my across-the-street neighbor), and thus became quite jealous. I mean, it's human nature to get a little pissed when your two best friends have five consecutive sleepovers without inviting you, and you can literally see them together if you look out of your bedroom window. And so I grew cold towards them, which was a kind of bad idea since everyone is busy over the summer so it wasn't like I had anyone else to talk to. I had pretty much ruined two months of my teen aged life by sulking around, fuming over my friends' supposed "treachery" (my sister laughed when I said that word, but what does she know? Ava was top of her class, never had a rainy day, little miss perfect when she was in high school).

This is what Ava advises:

*Attempt to include yourself. I know it sounds bitchy, and I will admit that I hate it when a friend is all, "I heard y'all were going to see Prince Caspian tonight - what time is the movie?" when it was sort of a previously planned two-person event. But maybe your friends don't know that you want to be included. Ava suggested that Betsy might have thought I was mad at her, and assumed I didn't want to go get a mani-pedi with her. And it doesn't have to be a "I know you have plans, but I'm bored - please fit me into your life" kind of deal. It's more of a, "Hey, we haven't hung out in a while, and I heard there's a shoe sale at Macy's this weekend - wanna go check it out?", or whatever floats your boat (Personally, I hate Macy's. Why are the shoes at Journey's never on sale?). And if they say they're busy, keep coming up with stuff. Show that you really are interested in hanging out with them. But if that doesn't work...

*Call up some other friends. And no, not to get revenge and evoke jealousy. To have fun! One night when Betsy and Lizzie had plans, I called up some friends to go to the movies. We had a blast, and it really showed me that there are other people to have fun with than those I've been with since preschool. But if you really miss the old ones...

*Talk to the friend(s) you're mad at. Tell them. Try and work things out. If you can't do it face-to-face, then email them or something. I used a Facebook private message to sort of vent my feelings to Lizzie. Turned out she thought I was mad at her. Hm. Funny how these things work out.

*Don't think about it. Have some You Time. I would get into these awful crying jags over my "tragic lack of friends", and I would just lay in my bed and refuse to do anything but listen to sad songs and think about how much I miss hanging out with my "BFFs". Get up. Tell yourself you're wonderful. What did I do to bring myself out of my slumps? I put on my old formal dresses and took pictures of myself in the mirror. I turned up Kelis and made a dance routine to "Milkshake". I watched the Spanish channel to see if I understood a word. I read aloud from the book I was reading (at the time, All the King's Men) in an Irish accent.

I know it's been said a million times, "If a friend brings you down, maybe they aren't really your friend". I might be over-dramatisizing this story. I'm still very good friends with Lizzie. Betsy has sort of estranged herself by spending all of her time with her new boyfriend. I'm learning to live with this new situation, and hope that things only get better. But still, consider it. Why waste time being jealous? Hate belongs in Hell, not in our hearts. It ruins relationships and corners us until we're gibbering messes. Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic too. I am, after all, an actress and a writer. But you get my point. Move on. Don't let negative people bring you down. That's what I've learned.

So Says -- Betty Friedan

Picture by bnixon

"When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity, she finally began to enjoy being a woman." - Betty Friedan

I read this quote by Betty Friedan, an American feminist of the 20th century, on Quotations.com one day while I was looking for something else entirely (I seem to do that often). It seemed to put into words something that I have thought for a long time: how can someone really enjoy their life when they're too busy trying to change it into someone else's?

I must admit that I have gone through several stages of being a conformist. When I was twelve I switched schools and met some new "friends" who were quite different from the ones I already had. I was enthralled by their lifestyles - they stayed up super-late, dressed in baggy, black clothing, and watched Inuyasha and Ruroni Kenshin (which I will admit are very good shows - they were just out of the norm for little Disney-Channel-watching me). For some reason, they accepted me into their group, and before long I was purchasing cargo pants (granted, mine were Abercrombie) and staying up past midnight to watch anime shows that I only vaguely enjoyed. In the seventh grade, I started listening to Evanescence (about as emo as you could get in our minds) and wearing dark eyeliner and arguing with my parents. I wasn't myself. Granted, this is not the "conventional feminine picture" that Betty Friedan speaks of, but it fits the concept pretty well. I was not enjoying what I was - so why did I keep doing it?

They next year I switched schools again, to the small private school all my closer friends attended. I still wore my black hoodies and cargo pants, but I soon noticed that those did not really fit in in my new environment. So, I conformed once more and began dressing like my new peers - Hollister shirts that showed every rib individually, way-too-shiny lip gloss, and pants that I could hardly breathe in. Yes, I was as bad as a conformist could get. By the ninth grade, I was just a hot mess in expensive pants who was still unhappy with myself. It wasn't until the tenth grade that I came to my senses - why was I doing all this? Why was I squeezing myself into clothes I hated and spending so much money just to look like all the girls I couldn't stand?

My experiences with conformity are not times I prefer to look back on. Unfortunately, they are apparent in all the school pictures sitting on shelves in my house, memories of those unhappy years when I would give my allowance just to look like everyone else, just to be accepted. Betty Friedan is right in saying that someone can not truly enjoy womanhood until they stop trying so hard to conform to the "conventional picture". Everyone is different in so many ways. So respect that, or better yet, enjoy it. Have fun with who you are, because you're never going to be anything else.

A Perspective on Fate

I have a friend named Robert who is too smart for his own good: computer whiz, math team MVP, the guy who can build his own video game from scratch and still have time to ace high school math. That would be Rob. We've been a pair for as long as I can remember, or at least for as long as my family has owned a camera, and on lazy afternoons and evenings, much like today, I basically live on his back porch as he organizes frames for recent animation projects. Yesterday, over lemonade and a game of Uno, he brought up a much debated topic of ours: are our lives controlled by Fate, or by our own actions?

Okay, so it isn't the stuff of a usual conversation between two high school seniors, but I had an answer by way of a couple of anecdotes.

I somehow reached my sophomore year of high school before I ever had to make friends. I met my friends in preschool and kindergarten and by some divine intervention we managed to stay together. Some might call it a blessing - I was never left alone in the cafeteria at school; I always had plans for the weekends. There was no awkward transitioning faze for me. Someone was always there. However appealing this lifestyle might sound, the constant presence of entertainment just made my fifteenth year all the harder. And what happened to me that overturned my set lifestyle? All of my friends got jobs and found boyfriends and suddenly I was alone on my Friday nights.

Okay, so I make it sound more dramatic than it actually was. But I really was in a bad position. I'm a year younger than the rest of my grade at school, so I was the only one who couldn't drive myself places, and my parents weren't too keen on letting me ride in the car with some of my crazy sixteen-year-old friends. That was a very hard year for me. But as I look back on it, I see that divine intervention (that's what I call it) or Fate (what a lot of other people may call it) or even plain old Lady Luck was looking out for me. This realization came one Sunday at youth group. My two "best friends" were skipping church to run off to a diner with their car-racing, wannabe punk boyfriends, and naturally I couldn't go. I sulked a little as I watched them leave through the back door and drive away in their cars. I knew my parents would kill me if I had gone with them, but I couldn't help thinking I was missing out (I wasn't - the girls both got grounded for skipping church).

Suddenly, a girl from my youth group came over to where I was sulking alone and asked if I wanted to sit with her. I knew her a little from choir, and at first was hesitant to give up my depressed slump, but finally I gave in and went to sit with her and her friends. We talked about annoying teachers and our plans for the summer, and during praise and worship we clapped our hands and goofed off and had a much better time than I was used to. Now, almost two years have gone by, and do you know what? Me and that girl are best friends, closer than I ever had been with my old ones.

A simple and girlish point of view on why things happen, but it pretty much defines my views on Fate and divine intervention. Fate (or God in my point of view) gives us what we need and does away with what is hurting us. It's all a manner of waiting and letting things happen. For example, if I had become impatient with my friends and tried to tag along, I would have gotten myself in trouble and risked not meeting one of the best friends I could have asked for. Someone was looking out for me that night, whether it was a divine being or a sort of invisible hand guiding me to make sure I ended up on the right path. Either way, it was a defining point for my beliefs. So trust your instincts, let stuff happen to you, and go with your gut. Some things can't be changed; some things can. But everything will work itself out in time.