It didn't stay in Vegas...

Alright, readers, I want to start (yet again) with an apology.

I apologize. I realized the other day that it has been an unreasonable amount of time since I have regaled you with my rants and bitchy tirades. Honestly, I have way more than what should be a realistic amount to whine about, but I'm going to try and change my pace...at least for now, that is.

Life for the past couple of weeks has been something of a...(family, please excuse the foul language) clusterfuck. Beyond "work" at the magazine, I have kept fairly busy with friends and traveling and an overtly ridiculous amount of some kind of drama or another.

But you know what? Things aren't bad. I'm actually happy. I'm feeling fulfilled and loved and needed. I'm meeting people, I'm traveling to places I've never been and, thank God above, I'm not fretting over classes.

....Ah, screw it, I'm just not as good at being all touchy and sentimental as I am with being negative and bitchy. I may be happy, but there is plenty of things to complain about.

People. Are. Difficult. Readers, I don't know what to do about a lot of things. There are people who have been my friends for a very long time who just don't act like I mean anything to them anymore. I feel like I have done and said a lot for these people. I feel like I have been as good a friend as I can possibly be.

Why aren't I being commended for that?

You know, I have a problem with those who deem it necessary to make a potentially wonderful friendship into a one-way street. To hell with that. If I can't rely on you when my problems are so relentlessly stressful that I break out into hysterics in the middle of the night, then maybe you aren't worth my effort and time.

In a matter of three days, two of my best friends have called me crying. In a matter of three days, I have done what I can to calm them down and reassure them that despite the harrowing nature of their situations, they are both strong, capable, intelligent people with the ability to overcome the most difficult of obstacles. If I were able to, I would be a professional friend. By golly and sunny cheese wiz, I am AMAZING at being a friend.

I make it a personal priority to remain as accessible and loyal and viciously protective of my friends. Think of me as that ratty, scraggly junkyard mutt with the spiked collar and a set of teeth that would haunt an orthodontist for weeks. You mess with my pals, I will have your throat.

IT'S ALIIIIIIIIVE.

I promise I will update soon.

The past couple of weeks have been hectic, to say the least.

Give me a couple of days to put on my big girl panties and deal with a few things.

If you can...

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

(This is not my poem!)

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Date a Girl Who Reads...

A note to readers: I'm aware that I have already posted today. I found this a short while ago while stumbling (www.stumbleupon.com), and I fell in love with it. I have no idea who wrote it or said it, but I can't tell you how much it means to me for someone to recognize all of the things that come from appreciating words.


"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

Love is free; take as much as you need.

I am beginning to feel relevant.

Reason being because I am suddenly realizing how many people depend on me for things. People ask favors of me, ask for me to help, ask for me to do. I am starting to believe that I actually have things to offer those around me.

Feeling relevant is pretty nice. It's a refreshing change from the old "Do I have anything to offer?" feeling I used to dread waking up to.

The internship is going very well, despite the fact that I have only been at it for a week. Already, I have written two stories and sent them to be edited and fact-checked.

It is mildly surprising when I look back on the past couple of weeks. In so many words, the past 14 days have been something of a tumultuous whirlwind of...crap and flowers.

Crap because it was stressful and, at times, discouraging. Flowers because I am finally starting to come to some very significant realizations.

Crap and flowers...hehehe.