The Five Stages of Deleting Facebook

There comes a time in every person’s life when a drastic choice is made on a whim. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to delete my Facebook account. Keep in mind that you can’t truly delete your account, you can only deactivate it. This makes it possible to go back whenever you’re ready. Which is most likely the day after you deactivate your profile. After being off of Facebook for two weeks, this is how my coping process played out:

1. Denial. I felt as though I didn’t really delete my Facebook. I could go back whenever I wanted. It was still there. My friends were right where I left them in case I needed them. Of course, I would eventually need to retrieve some pictures off of my profile as well, so I knew I would be back soon.

2. Anger. Whenever people asked me if I deleted my Facebook, it made me upset. Aren’t I the center of everyone’s Facebook? Do they really have to ask? Of course I deleted it! I’m not a clone like everyone else! I can live a life without a stupid website if I want to! No one understands me!

3. Bargaining. Sometimes after a shock, a person will recount the events in their head and see where they might have reacted the wrong way. Maybe I should’ve waited to see if anyone got engaged or posted wedding photos. Okay, here’s the deal–if I go on Facebook just to quickly check for juicy pictures, I won’t go on again for another month.

4. Depression. This was the time that I was feeling like I made a horrible choice. I felt like I was misunderstood and others didn’t comprehend my motives for quitting. During this phase, reassurance definitely helped me to know that I made a good choice. It’s hard to bid a loved one farewell.

5. Acceptance. Understanding that I didn’t need Facebook to have friends and stay in touch with people was a great awakening. I felt proud knowing that a website didn’t control my life and that I could leave any time I wanted to. I no longer felt that I needed to see every single picture that one of my friends posted or every status update about New Years Eve.

That being said, I missed Facebook a lot. And it helped to know that people missed me a lot too. People noticed my absence. So I stayed off Facebook for two weeks and shuffled my feet back. And it’s good to be back on my old familiar Facebook.

Les Miserables Moments That My Mind Can’t Erase

When I really look forward to a movie, I’ll build it up in my mind, imagining a perfect show. Les Miserables gave me great expectations. With an all-star cast, great songs, and Anne Hathaway in tears, how could this movie not be amazing? And for the most part, it was really good. There were just a few things that my mind had trouble getting past. I concentrated so much on these minor movie details that these are now my only memories of the film.

Eponine’s Waist. An important character in the story is Eponine, a girl in love with a guy who doesn’t really notice her. She sings one of the best songs in the entire movie, so props to her. The thing is, I don’t even know what her face looked like because I couldn’t see anything past her belted mannequin-esque wasit. It’s not even that she looked unhealthy, it’s just that her waist is abnormally tiny. She should’ve composed a song about her body structure rather than her crush.

Can we have a moment of silence for this waist?

Cockney Accents. Okay, I know that the film is spoken (or sang) in English and most of the characters have British accents because we’re used to it. They do this with most period pieces even if they don’t take place in England. But some of the characters in the film tried to do a French accent (snaps for Sacha Baron Cohen!) and it’s confusing because most of the characters had proper British and even cockney accents! I don’t remember any Cockneys in early 19th century Paris. If all of the actors in the movie are as great as we accredit them to be, then shouldn’t they be able to do a French accent as well as sing?

Helena Bonham Carter is Type-Cast as Dirty. At this point, I cannot name a movie where Helena Bonham Carter isn’t unkempt in one way or another. Even on the red carpet it looks like she might have yesterday’s makeup on or something. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of HBC and I think she has mad skills. I have to applaud her for her recent love of singing what with Sweeney Todd and now Les Mis. But I wish she would class up her act and stop being so grungy.

Look how clean she used to be in her Lady Jane days.

Amanda Seyfried has the Voice of an Angel. I actually don’t care for Amanda Seyfried that much–I don’t care for any actress that takes off their clothes for a role. I mean, to each his own, but seriously, just no. I hate most actresses, is what I’m trying to say. Anyway, in the movie, Ms. Seyfried’s character Cosette not only gets to marry the hottie Marius (Eddie Redmayne), but she also has a voice that makes me hate her. If I could sing like that I would sing lullabies to myself. Although in high school, my choir teacher gave me a trophy and said I had the voice of an angel. I was an angel who couldn’t read sheet music and had to listen to the other people singing around me and copy them. So angelic.

Russel Crowe = Snoozefest. I forgot how boring the part of Javert could be before I saw Russel Crowe act it out on the big screen. Javert is the antagonist to Jean Valjean’s (Hugh Jackman) protagonist. Javert just wants to serve the law and make sure everyone is punished for their crimes. He manages to sing about this over and over and it’s like, DUDE WE GET IT. Another thing that bugged me were the locations that he chose to vocalize his thoughts. He would randomly sing on the top of buildings,  the ledges of bridges, and in alleyways. Figure your life out, Javert.

In my head, this is the entire movie/musical summed up. I urge you to see the movie and test yourself to look past these details. Lets compare notes–which were your most memorable scenes/characters/events?

Searching For Sugar Man: A Review

Usually people will comment on what a small world we live in. Coincidences and connections make our planet seem far smaller than we would like to believe. The documentary Searching for Sugar Man will make you feel like the opposite is true. It makes one realize that our world is so big that one side can be totally oblivious to what the other side is doing.

Sugar Man was a song recorded by the artist Rodriguez in 1970. Sixto Rodriguez lived in the Detroit area his whole life and grew up in working class surroundings. He mostly worked in automobile factories and construction sites. Most people that knew of him said he looked homeless. Rodriguez ended up recording an album in the states and it went absolutely no where. No one had ever heard of Rodriguez. Have you heard of him? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Somehow, one of his records was brought to South Africa. It was bootlegged and sold so often in Cape Town that eventually everyone had a copy. It was one of the most popular records of all time. Rodriguez was a South African legend and he never knew. He just kept working hard labor jobs and trying to scrape by.

The funny thing is, South Africans didn’t know anything about the singer/songwriter that they adored. They only had his album cover to go by. That’s all they knew about him. Nothing was written of him online, no one had heard of him since. Piecing together clues from his lyrics and using the help of mangers from record companies, two of Rodriguez’s biggest fans searched for him and found answers to all the mysteries surrounding the musician.

I begrudgingly went with my husband to the theater last night to see this documentary with him. Hearing the title, I convinced myself that I wouldn’t enjoy it and that my husband would end up owing me. To be honest, I think I liked the movie more than he did. Nah, I think we both would give it 5 stars. It’s a great film. I don’t often refer to movies as “films” but this one deserves it. I didn’t give too much of anything away in my synopsis, so I urge you to find it and give it a watch. It’s still playing in some artsy theaters, but hopefully it will be released on DVD soon.

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white,

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

 

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time–

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,

Ghastly statue with one gray toe

Big as a Frisco seal

 

And a head in the freakish Atlantic

Where it pours bean green over blue

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.

I used to pray to recover you.

Ach, du.

 

In the German tongue, in the Polish town

Scraped flat by the roller

Of wars, wars, wars.

But the name of the town is common.

My Polack friend

 

Says there are a dozen or two.

So I never could tell where you

Put your foot, your root,

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

 

It stuck in a barb wire snare.

Ich, ich, ich, ich,

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.

And the language obscene

 

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.

I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew.

 

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna

Are not very pure or true.

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew.

 

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.

And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue.

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You–

 

Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

 

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,

In the picture I have of you,

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot

But no less a devil for that, no not

Any less the black man who

 

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.

 

But they pulled me out of the sack,

And they stuck me together with glue.

And then I knew what to do.

I made a model of you,

A man in black with a Meinkampf look

 

And a love of the rack and the screw.

And I said I do, I do.

So daddy, I’m finally through.

The black telephone’s off at the root,

The voices just can’t worm through.

 

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two–

The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.

 

There’s a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

 

A poem by Sylvia Plath

Left Over Resolutions 2012

Doesn’t 2013 sound like an unlucky year? Is no one bringing up the fact that thirteen is unluckiest number of them all? Hotels don’t even make a thirteenth floor, that’s how bad it is. But it’s okay, let’s just all keep pretending that 2013 will be a great year.

I was looking at my resolutions last year and I was actually very surprised. Usually resolutions depress me because I’ve never really set a goal for myself and accomplished it. At least, not on purpose. But I completed a lot of the things on my list with flying colors!

For example, one of my goals was to start volunteering and I estimated that it would only last four months once if I started. Well, not only did I get a volunteering job, I stayed there for 10 months. Technically I’m still there, but they’ve been slow for a while so they haven’t needed me much.

Another resolution of mine from last year was to be more spontaneous in Victoria–do things I haven’t done, make more friends, and put myself out there. Well, now I’ve made lots of friends and did many adventurous things. And by that, I mean that I went camping twice.

Something else I had on my list was to read more. I projected that I would probably read one book this year and I ended up reading five! My little library is growing. I didn’t even realize I was completing a goal I set out for myself. Maybe that’s the key to setting goals, they have to be something you like to do so that you’ll end up accomplishing them no matter what.

Something else I wanted to do was to “make our apartment cozy and perfect”. I am so proud of myself with this one. Around the time that I wrote last year’s post, I had saved up a little over $1000 with my babysitting money and I wanted to buy a couch with it. Since then, I’d saved up enough to buy that couch, a chair and ottoman, a rug, a TV credenza/mini entertainment center, a trunk, and a mirror. I have definitely accomplished that goal. It makes me proud to have “feathered the nest” and I think it makes Paul proud too.

I still had other things on my list that I didn’t really accomplish like going to church more, stop hatin’ on people, and to complain less. And I think those will be my resolutions for this year. The year of the left-over resolutions.

But really, like I said last year, I’m basically perfect and I’m just writing this list out to feel more human.