!) My cousin, the rapper SevOne ([link]), stopped by the other night and gave me PhotoShop!

He knows I love photography and somehow got a free copy of the real deal; I was telling him how my trial/download one ran out and he offered to upload his on the house computer. Sadly, my laptop is on the fritz for whatever reason, otherwise it'd be there too.

W00t! He even showed me and my other cousin a few tricks he knew. YAY! Love the guy!

Uh-huh--uh-huh!

@) Things get good, then bad, then good again.

They then take a sickening turn and overwhelm me. I land in a rut. A deadline looms; I climb out, somehow. Then things are nothing. They get good, great even, and stay that way for a little; I am left standing on my own for that period, wondering why I didn't do so before, or what I could have done with time wasted. I fret. I revel. I wait for something to crumble.

Currently searching for a job. Enrolled in a school, sort of, though getting FAFSA together is such a hassle, my mother no longer talking to me and all. Signed up with a career center helper program who will pay for a Red Cross package class I signed up for the other day, which will end with me certified as a CNA among other things. This will, things going well, help me tremendously in the job department as well as applying for the RN program at the schools up here.

I never dreamed I'd end up a nurse or anything other than what I wanted, really really wanted to be. It's...something. I guess. I've heard adults say "You can do anything you want to, be anything you want to, if you believe" which, honestly, involves risks and requires a support system I haven't really found yet. I've also heard adults say "I regret." A lot. So. I just wonder which I'll end up being. The circus performing/photographer/journalist/writer/painter/adventurer/agent or the nurse who signed up out of convenience and a too-often-leaned-upon helpful personality.

#) Keep having weird dreams--half of which involve feet.

One starred my uncle, who had, at someone's half-request, killed my friend's boyfriend. No one minded. I caught him hiding body parts under the couch cushions. I didn't really care, but was bewildered as to why it was under the cushions. Like, really, Unka B? He might have given an explanation. I can't remember.

A few days pass, dream-wise, and I decide I'm going to bury said body parts. There's a graveyard full of decapitated chipmunks our cat has started hunting. I started it after the killings got ridiculous and she ended up bring at least three to the front door at a time.

When I picked through the couch I could only find a hand, arm, and a foot. They were pale and still warm, dripping blood all over. They smelled awful, like the dead chipmunks I'd had to shovel to the back yard. For whatever reason, I could no longer even touch them and abandoned them on the bag I was trying to put them in.

My cousin came in and, not knowing or caring what was in the bag, sat on it.

I asked my uncle to bury the parts. He agreed to. But couldn't find them.

"They're on the couch."

He looks at the stairs.

"In the bag Mae is sitting on."

He looks at the floor, then the hall.

"THAT couch."

He doesn't see anything.

"Your daughter's sitting on it."

His other daughter walks by.

"That one--that daughter, right there on the couch."

Said daughter squirms. "It does feel like a hand."

End of dream.


$) The other dream had my dad in it.

I don't know how to feel about them because they are natural and cool, but when I wake up I feel awful. Even sick. Several times I forget.

It was dark and blue, quiet, as it always is with him. We're in the old house, lolling without the good feelings involved. I suppose my mother is gone or dead or something. I try to comfort him about it because there was nothing he could have done. I pat his back, which is hot to the touch. We talk, mostly about random things. It's tense at times, and others extremely liquid.

He tells me I'm going to be late if I don't start getting ready. I get excited and worry over what to wear. I'm going to school. High school presumably.

I dress in a denim overall dress that comes down to my knees, and a purple tank top. *shrug* I worry for a while. I walk into my old room, which has my cousin's bunk bed in it. My older cousin, 17, is on my top bunk. I ask her if the outfit is okay and she basically says whatever I feel comfortable in is fine. Not answering my question. My dad calls from downstairs that I'm going to be late and that there's a certain time he's going to leave, with or without me.

I rush to put lotion on. My cousin watches passively from above. It takes forever to rub in. When I think I'm done, I notice a spot of ash that won't go away. I reapply it. This takes hours and I worry the whole time. My dad stops calling. I keep putting lotion on.

When I woke up, with a jerk (for no reason), I was of the mind that I really was late for school. I don't remember thinking of my dad until later. I cursed and tried to get off the couch I'd fallen asleep on.

The thought occured right before I stepped on the floor. "I'm not in High School anymore."

Huh.

So I went back to sleep. Or tried to.


%) The Avatar teaser trailer is out!!!

[link]vLUrF3ItGQ&feature=quicklist

I am not as apprehensive anymore. This is really nothing against the director, or the creators for giving the go-ahead to make a live-action movie--it's a natural flinch reaction I get when anything I hold dear gets pitched to be a movie. And lately, a lot of comic/cartoons/books have been revamped and reworked into movies with actors and I...it takes a while, you know. To separate them from what I knew to what I'm being told to learn.

Aforementioned love for said canons are what make me go ahead and watch the movies, so it's not like I only go for the ones that look like carbon copies, if there ever are, thus disappointment and grudging (at first) respect.

On the actors: There's this huge racial conspir--^_^ Controversy, according to hard-core fans who want to SEE Katara and Zuko and Aang and Toph in the flesh, or at least resemble them/their cultural parallels. I admit I was a little disappointed when I found out that the actors were all a miss-match and didn't fit into what I'd always assumed to be the character's ethnicity. Accepting Katara and Sokka being white was easy. For me. It's habit now to not expect too too much realism with movies and I was already strung so tight on the fact it was LIVE action that worrying over little things would not do anything but turn me even more pessimistic than I already was. I ended up on the mind-set that as long as they act well, I won't mind.

Why, then, was I so upset about Zuko? Answer: Jesse McCartney? For real? For real?

After a while, I had to admit, there was a resemblance, but what turned me off about him was my 9-year-old cousin's look of shocked disgust when I told her. "HE's going to play that guy with the bad attitude and the messed-up face?"

"Yeah. And I told you: it's a scar."

She, I must note, is not a fan of the show, but was forced to sit and watch the season 3 marathon with the family because her father and I are total geeks and DVRd them. So she knows. She is, however, a winwin for Nick and Disney who target kids like her; she is who I go to when I need an answer on a current fad or a certain new show/actor/band/Jonas brother gossip. So telling her that Jesse McCartney was going to play Angry Prince was just a way for me to see if I should be upset or not about it.

"He's AWFUL! Ew!" and so forth.

And over time I wondered if it was a good thing, if only for the facial resemblance. He had the nose and chin. Their complexions were...sort of similar, kind of. But did he have the body or grace to fight, and did he have the acting ability to go through the anti-hero transformation that is Zuko?

So I got used to it.

AND THEN they said Dev was playing him. I was floored and all twisted up inside. He looks, after all, nothing like him. The race thing came up again but I ignored it, thinking it was already in the works so I might as well wait and see who was who Nation wise. It was harder to swallow than Katara who, unlike the guy playing Sokka, doesn't look like she could pull off a tan, if that's what they're planning on doing (he said it, not me). He at least LOOKS like his guy. Creepily so.

AND THEN--And THEN! I watched Slumdog and towards the end had a OMG moment! He got angry and aggressive and everything before that came together. I had faith in him. I had seen how he would play angsty, apathetic, angry, and anxious. Granted, for someone different, but he'd proven whatever it was that I was holding against him to be frivilous. So...yay!

NO one can find pictures of the Ringer kid, which adds to his mystique, and really I think it's a good thing. He's already got a tsunami-wave-of-fandom-hope-and-blame riding on his back. Plus, he's young. I'm glad he's out of the lime-light for now.

I haven't seen any of the adults yet.

Growing up, I found it strange that minority actors were praised so much for doing what others did, and then I realized it was because these parts were hard-won or rarely handed out. Of course, now things are different, and with big companies like Disney making an effort what with the Princess and the Frog and Up featuring Black and Asian leads, and shows like Grey's Anatomy blind casting, you know, you'd think we have nothing to complain about. I do, however, get a little miffed when things that I knew were supposed to go one way ended up another. As a mixed kid, this gets more complicated.


^)Irony, clairvoyance, coincidence, fate, whathaveyou, has become so blatant lately that it's freaking OTHER people out. ^_^ I'm feeling a bit like a clueless party coordinator for events, big and small...only the "party" is random events that end up on the news or just acknowledged in circles I belong in, and the "coordinating" is just me musing on something for a while, or telling someone a random "what-if".



But that's just me being paranoid and letting my imagination get away with me for a little. Really, I think I look into things a lot and am probably plugged into some subconscious suggestive memory or whatever, whatever.

These events lead to really cool stories though.