Frets of AAAAH

Perfectionism is something that I strive for. I have always aimed to be better than everyone else at everything, and while I rarely accomplish that, I am usually pretty proud of what I have done. "Practice makes perfect" was an adage lodged into my brain at five, and I have never been able to shake it off completely.

But.

One downside to my quest for spotless, holy glory is that whenever I can't get something after practicing, I begin to lose it. I begin to doubt everything I've ever stood for. I fail at things I used to be good at before, like writing or standing up.

Like now.

I recently started learning how to play the guitar, like every teenager who thinks they're cool because they know how to play guitar (only I am hopefully not that annoying, because I hate people who can play three chords on the guitar and suddenly they think they're Paul fricking McCartney, and one of my fears when I started this was that I would become one of those).

And I can't get it.

I can play a bunch of chords, and I have good hands for guitar (because they're man hands, according to Ginger... *shakes head bitterly*) but I can't...you know...actually play guitar. I can play chords individually, but when I put them together, they sound like Death is skinning a drugged hyena. My fingers can't move fast enough.

And the thing is, even with all of the practicing, I can't get it. I can't get it! And I'm beginning to wonder if I am just being too hard on myself because I started a short while ago, or if I just suck at instruments and should give up now before somebody dies due to my atrocious playing, or if it just takes longer for some people to stop wanting to lie on the floor and die every time I they mess up a chord change.

Muse for Today:

This is wonderful. He's obviously making up for his stupid name.

(Source: http://thecountercurseisunjellify.tumblr.com)

Hateful/Lovely

Hateful

1. Rude people, more than anything. If I can make the effort to say "please" and "thank you" to you, I'm pretty freaking sure you can say it back. It's not that bleeding difficult, and it makes you look better.
2. Superiors who think they can be rude to you. For God's sake.
3. Sometimes, you introduce a friend to a TV show or a band or an author, and at first you are pleased because they like it too, and now there is someone with whom you can share your adoration! But then they act like they discovered this band, and they act as though the amount of love they have for this band eclipses EVERYONE ELSE'S. This irritates me like nothing else.
4. People who try to make a point (especially, but definitely not limited to, people on the Internet) but their facts are not facts because they are wrong/entirely made-up/paraphrased to mean something entirely different than the original meaning.
5. People who think that their opinions should be the only opinions.

Lovely

1. People who hold the door open for you. This may sound simple, but it doesn't happen that often anymore.
2. People who say exactly what they think, so there are never any mixed messages. It doesn't mean be rude, it just means be honest. You always know where you stand with these people.
3. When adults find a way to treat a child like a child without babying him or her.
4. When people are willing to deal with you even though you are acting like a harpy and probably ruining their mood. Sometimes it's nice to know that people can deal with you if you act like that occasionally. Occasionally, permanent harpies of the world, occasionally.
5. The genial idiocy of a group of people at three o'clock in the morning when they like each other and have had a sizable amount of sugar.

Quote for Sunday, July 24, 2011:

Angelica: After all, I'm playing the most dangerous game of all!

Chuckie: Musical chairs?

Angelica: No, dummy! Love!

Muse for Today:

Glorious.

Crying at the Movies

On Thursday July 14, I went over to a friend's house for her birthday party. And it was an enormous nostalgia fest for the eight of us there, because five of them were going to the midnight premiere of the eighth Harry Potter movie.

(I, unfortunately, was the slag who didn't reserve her tickets on time, and would be going to see it at four P.M. the next day instead. I am dumb. The other two didn't like Harry Potter. I'm not quite sure what they were doing there. They must have felt very out of place.)

Quite a few of us had grown up with the series, and for the three hours before they left we were talking about our hopes for the movie, how great it would be, how everything was ending, but really nothing was. As one of my friends said, it wasn't like our books were going to disappear overnight. And we would always have our experiences, all the memories tied to years and years of reading this amazing series, and talking to friends about this amazing series, and making other people discover this bloody amazing series. All the fake wand duels, all the dressing up as Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ron Weasley for Halloween, all the waiting, waiting, waiting for the next book or movie or announcement was not going to be erased from our memories because there weren't going to be any new movies or books.
They left for the midnight premiere at 10:30, and I was picked up and taken home with a heavy heart. Talking to my friends, most of whom had been similarly affected by the Harry Potter series, made it hit me--hard--that this basically looked like the end of my life. And I'd better damn well appreciate that now, while I still can.
The next day took forever, because I was waiting until four o'clock and torturing myself with Tumblr, which was Potter-saturated. We got to the theater at three o'clock, waited in a line that was already enormous and made me panic that we would end up in the first row, looking up at the movie screen like it was the top of the Sears Tower. (But we didn't, thank the gods.)
I had puffed myself up before, thinking that I was emotionally prepared for this movie. I'd read the books! I knew what was going to happen! I was prepared for the fact that every minute that passed by was my childhood being wrenched away from me! I was totally prepared, yeah?
God, no, I wasn't.
I cried:

1. When the Death Eaters burned the Quidditch pitch, and I remembered Harry as an untroubled first year playing for the first time on that pitch, and my eyes welled up before I could help it.
2. From when Snape died to the end.

Most people kept drinks in their cupholders. I kept tissues.

And then the Hogwarts Express sped away at the end of the film, it felt so final. That's it. It's only lucky for this generation that we were here to see it.

Quote for Monday, July 18, 2011:

"If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf." 

— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

Muse for Today:

I saw a GIF of Jo Rowling saying this on Tumblr, but I can't find it now, but I was emotionally vulnerable the other day and it made me cry.
“Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.”

Also, in less important news that I feel like I have to share anyway: It is my blog's birthday today. It is two years old.

Screaming at Laundry

Maybe you don't.

But if you have severe mood swings (like me, the BEST example of the worst kind of nerdy asocial teenager), have you ever had one of those days where something

really really dumb happens

and it sends you over the edge?

Today started out fine. I woke up a little late and had cake for breakfast. (Do you see this? I look like I eat cake or pie or cookies or a bowl of butter or the entire country of Switzerland for every single meal. Until I started writing about this stuff, I didn't realize that I ingest so much sugar and call it a meal. One day you'll see "Today, after my midmorning snack of a whole Cadbury's factory...") And that is a good start to the day, negative body image or not. Then I went to the library and got my summer reading books (ugh) and avoided reading them by reading Dearly Devoted Dexter, which makes me want to duct tape my eyes shut. But in a good way. There isn't a good way. But this book is creepy right from the start. Feeling comfortable? BAM! Shameful game of Kick-the-Can! Murdering pedophile! Bad fashion sense!

Anyway, then I did some things which weren't too bad.

But then- then, my mother told my brother and me to go take care of the laundry, and this already sounds like a first-world problem.

I usually have no problem doing this. My mother does a lot, and the least I can do as her child is empty the damn washing machine when she asks me to.

But my nerves. I'm not even sure what happened. Because I was just traipsing downstairs kind of like this

only not quite as happily because come on, guys, I was going to sort out laundry-
and then-

I'm not really sure how it happened. But I ended up having a screaming match with the laundry, which wasn't responding to me, and throwing clothes into the laundry basket, saying something like "Stupid laundry! ENH! Stupid t-shirt! ENH! Stupid pants! ENH!" and it was really dumb and so was I and I just ended up putting away the laundry and not mentioning this to anyone I know. Except the Internet, which is, in the end, the second-wisest option.

And this is why you shouldn't do laundry. It's super aggravating. Just buy new clothes and stuff the other ones under the bed. Or make a bed out of your old laundry or whatever, I don't know. That's what I do.

Quote for Friday, July 8, 2011:

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island*.

-Walt Disney

*Which was, incidentally, a book. Hmm?

Muse for Today:

This blog, which is probably the funniest blog I have ever read in my life. This post from that blog is also an extremely hilarious post. I only feel bad that I didn't discover this blog a long time ago. Also, this tumblr, because it combines clothes and Disney, which are two things that I appreciate very much.

Opinion Post

This blog is mostly comprised of tangents and links to stupid pictures, so I don't pretend that I know what I'm doing when it comes to blogging.
Also, I don't pretend that I have the cause to discuss important stuff. I feel bad when I share my bumbling stupidity with innocent victims.
But here I do anyway.
I am a teenager, and I have never been told I'm fat and I myself don't think I'm overweight (I know you don't know how I look, and I know I'm usually talking/thinking about eating or actually eating, but trust me) I don't always feel skinny.
When did it come to a world that prizes being skinny over everything else? And why is it damn near impossible for me feel okay about how I look without having matchstick legs and a waist like Scarlett O'Hara?
This has been said a thousand times over, that girls need to stop worrying about their appearance and that it's what on the inside that counts, but nobody seems to think that way. Almost every female role model that the mainstream media presents us with has some kind of emphasis on her body.
It's like it doesn't matter if you have talent that stretches to the moon, if you don't have the package to sell it, there's a problem. As if you can't be a singer because you're "fat" (or, you can, but be prepared to have a whole lot of criticism slung your way). Because singing obviously has nothing to do with your career, right? It's all about how good you look in a miniskirt.
It's just so annoying. SO annoying. Pretty people don't have to look like they stepped out of a matchbox and glued a human face on, but it seems like that is only way anyone will ever look at you twice.
If it is what's on the inside that matters, then why don't people act like it? It's nice to be fit, but pushing yourself to danger in order to look skinny is even something that is all to considerable.
But I'm tired of hating myself for eating a cookie, and I'm tired of feeling awful when I skip eating, and I'm tired of setting goals that I can't reasonably reach. There are ways of becoming slim--healthy ways--but putting so much pressure on girls to spend their entire lives fifteen pounds underweight almost clouds those ways, because some ways are faster and easier. It's annoying that I think like this. And most of it is my fault, for letting myself think that it's important. That my weight is the only thing standing between me and feeling normal. We all know I will probably never be normal.
(So, for the TL;DR crowd:) Yeah, weight matters. But it should, never, never become all consuming, and it should never, never get dangerous. And the way society's priorities are set up now, it's easy to forget.
I hope this made sense. I don't usually write stuff like this.

Quote for Wednesday, July 6, 2011:

"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.

That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money — that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it ... high in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl.

-The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Muse for Today:

frezned never fails to entertain me/guide my life choices/make me wish I was Australian.

I Bleed Americana

If anyone even bothers to look at this time wasting page of the Internet anymore (because seriously, thirteen days on the Internet seems to be five years in actual life. Don't these people ever do anything else?) (I am productive occasionally am a hypocrite who also rarely never does anything else.)
Except I went to ORLANDO and other places that pale in comparison to ORLANDO and the only reason Orlando makes these places pale is because The Wizarding Freaking World of Harry Freaking Potter is in Orlando.
And it was glorious.
But we're not going to talk about things like that (in other words, things that will MAKE QUESTA CRY TEARS OF JEALOUSY).
Instead, I prepared a special treat for all of you today. *rubs hands together gleefully*
BAM!

The Interesting and Cool Story about the Day of Mind-Blowing Internet Superhero FRAS

(The Story for which Generations have Waited, Cried, Killed, and Pleaded and WILL NOW HAVE...FOR FREE)*

I spent four hours in a boiling minivan this morning, because it was the last leg of our road trip. My family members were mutually kind of sick and tired of each other's company, and glad to reach home. My brother K actually hugged the house. Which was overkill. But he's little(ish) and allowed to overkill like that.
I unpacked the car and my suitcase, watched Hairspray for the fifty-thousandth time (because I am a huge sucker for that movie, and it has a much better plot than the 1988 version. I mean, in that version, Amber von Tussle acts like she's five years old. Get some real insults and then you can open your idiot mouth), and then started catching up on my Internet content, and there was a lot.

YOU HAVE BEEN SLAPPED BY BRILLIANCE. FEEL FREE TO GROVEL AND/OR LEAVE MONEY.**

Topic change without transition: There are two reasons this post is called "I Bleed Americana":

1. I have been trying to use this title for a post for a few weeks now because
2. I like the cadence of "Americana" but
3. I wanted to use it at an appropriate time, and what better time than when I hear fireworks outside my door? It's American Independence Day. The day when we were deprived of British accents because our forefathers wanted freedom. *coughs, straightens nonexistent tie, reminds self about how she is not bitter*

Lord, this is a messy post.

But I went and saw this really nice fireworks display two nights ago at Stone Mountain, in Georgia. It was really bright and loud and Southern and completely unlike any sort of fireworks I have seen. Georgians know how to do the Fourth of July. Even though people outside my house have been setting off fireworks since two o'clock this afternoon, Southerners Do It Better.™

I just don't generally identify myself as American, although I was born here and have never been raised anywhere else. A girl, a teenager, a student, an aspiring writer, a reader, a fangirl, all of these tend to come before American.

I don't know if it made me feel more patriotic. But it was something interesting to consider.
Happy Fourth of July, self. And everyone else, because even if your country didn't become independent from Britain today, we can all celebrate because we're not dead yet.

*Slight exaggeration DID NOT OCCUR. The author is a pillar of gorgeousness and doesn't have any self-esteem issues that she feels she can fix by writing nicely about herself on the Internet. Nope. Nope. Not at all. No way. No.
**The author may actually be is a complete narcissistic fool.