No, You Can't!

Recently, I’ve been feeling a lot of pressure—mostly, from myself and the highly misguided society from which I originate—to be and do everything.

I often hear the following dialogue in my head:

Me: I want to play sports.
Highly Misguided Society from Which I Originate (HMSFWIO): Okay.

Me: I want to be a great scholar and spend all my days in the library.
HMSFWIO: Do it.

Me: I want to be the perfect Mormon and never make any mistakes. Not ever.
HMSFWIO: Jesus did it. We don’t foresee any major issues with you achieving a similar level.

Me: I want to get a perfect score on the GRE.
HMSFWIO: You’re smart. So despite your shortcomings in the testing department, it shouldn’t be much of a problem.

Me: I will do well in all of my language studies.
HMSFWIO: You betchya.

Me: I will maintain healthy and balanced relationships with every person I meet, and I will never take a single soul for granted, because I will always have the energy to be my best in every moment of the day.
HMSFWIO: Naturally.

Me: I will always treat myself well, and I will never be sad no matter how lonely I get.
HMSFWIO: Of course.

Me: I can be and do everything.
HMSFWIO: In the words of Obama, “Yes, you can.”

*************
Have you ever heard such an obscene load of bull in your entire life?

I submit you have not.

I’m not saying I can’t be the things I need to be. I’m saying I need to stop focusing on the things I don’t need to be. I think that’s one of Satan’s favorite lies with me. He’ll show me the possibilities, and then he trips me up in the greedy details. If I can have one piece of pie, why can’t I have ten? He's sneaky. It’s hard for me to accept that’s not the way it works.

Here are a couple of good reminder scriptures.

“Do not run faster or labor more than you have strength….Pray always, that you may come off conqueror; yea that you many conquer Satan, and that you may escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work” (D&C 10: 4-5).

And…

“And see that all things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order” (Mosiah 4:27).
Also…

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (14:27).

Vivo la Vida Loca!

Less than two weeks ago, I was shaking hands with and receiving congratulations from my master’s committee, as I had successfully defended my thesis.

A week ago, today, I received word that I had officially graduated from Weber State.

Fast forward seven days: I am now a student at Salt Lake Community College.

Forgive me, but that’s one hell of a demotion.

I have only myself to blame, really. As a student at BYU, I diligently avoided all language coursework outside of ASL (In my defense, I did successfully make it all the way up to ASL 402, before I stopped. How many kids do you know went that far in a language for which they never received a minor?). And BYU did not, at the time, require students to learn a classic language (derivations of Germanic, Latin, or Greek), to graduate in English. So I graduated and happily avoided learning a foreign tongue.

When I “Got into Weber,” I meticulously looked at the fine print, and realized, once again, I would be given a pass on the foreign language, as their requirements only stipulated that I had to have a BA from another university (If I had gotten a BS, I would have been required to take the language). They assumed if I had a BA, I had already learned my classic language (which would be true if I had graduated just a few years later from BYU).

Whelp kids, I’ve reached the end of the line. I can’t go one step farther in my education without studying a classic language. In order to successfully complete a Ph. D., I must acquire a third option for communication.

So let’s review. If you’ve completed your BA and your MA, and you don’t want to be hit up by any of your previous institutions for graduate tuition, where’s the best place to pick up language credit? That’s right, kids. You go back to a junior college, where you can still enroll as a non-matriculating student, without penalty.

So instead of peers who are professionals, I am now surrounded by students who barely graduated high school and have a permanent look of lost or, worse, vicious little puppies, with pins poking through their faces and black eyeliner.

"Yo necesito tu el lapiz y tu la sangre. Ahora!"

I can only say there’s one perk to going “back to high school,” as it were. I heard a phrase this morning that I haven’t heard in almost a decade: “There will be extra credit.”

Can you believe that?


PS BTW, I'm learning Spanish. I could cry.

Masters Becky & Joss

In today’s post I feel compelled to discuss two subjects.

First and foremost, last week on Thursday, I successfully defended my Master’s Thesis. And this very morning, my grade was posted…as was my Master’s Degree.

Here’s my transcript:



Isn’t it pretty?
(You'll have to click on it in order to read it.)

I’m getting buzzed just looking at it.

Secondly, and on a completely different topic, I have just recently learned Joss Whedon, My Beloved Secular Humanist Master, will be directing the upcoming Avengers film. If you are unaware of the significance of this choice, allow me to infuse a little context into your world.

There have been or will be five “prequels” leading up to the Avengers film: Iron Man, Iron Man2, Hulk, Captain America, and Thor. The creation of these films has not only pleased the legions of comic fanboys out there, but with the massive success of Iron Man and Iron Man 2, people who have never taken an interest in the canon of comic books are starting to pay attention.

(Joss, as embarrassing and inappropriate as this sounds, is my grown up Bopper pin-up boy!)

The information that Joss would be directing is exciting to me for a variety of reasons.

1. I thought with the untimely death of Dollhouse, Whedon may be forced to lay low for a little while. This proves the death of his most recent television series is not the end of his career by any stretch of the imagination.

2. This project will give Joss the opportunity to really expand his horizons. For the last two decades, he’s had to make do with measly budgets and okay, b-grade, or unknown actors. With this next project, he’ll be working with Robert Downey Jr., for crying out loud.

3. I’m excited to see what he does with such a large cast in film format. He’s always done well with large ensembles in TV-speak. This is a real change, and I’m eager to see what develops.

That being said, some of you may be wondering why I’m even talking about this. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how to approach the subject of Joss Whedon. It’s hard to explain to people who are not sold and devoted fans, such as myself. Why would anyone care about a moderately successful sci-fi/fantasy, writer/director, whose greatest claim to fame was a couple of late 1990s, early 2000s television shows: one about a rail thin, ditsy vampire slayer, and the other about a crew of space cowboys who speak Chinese?

The only true evidence I can offer is simple but profound. Joss Whedon writes stories that express the innate questions all people have about the human condition. More importantly, he continually approaches subject matter that explores issues of ethics and pushes his audience to think beyond the fantasy or genre. He is a revolutionary artist, and I love him.

(If you’re interested, please read one of my previous posts on Buffy: Television=Brain Liquefier)

Conversations with Dead People

Next week on Thursday (August 19th), I will be defending my 60-page thesis (Topic: Twentieth Century Cowboy Myth).

The feeling is surreal.

Since June 1st, I’ve toiled endlessly, with little or no contact with the world outside of writing and research. It’s been a grueling two and a half months, and I find myself horribly disoriented now that the ride is over.

My room is in shambles. My life is proverbially disheveled. And I keep looking for my laptop, only to discover the one task I have left is to check my e-mail incessantly. (BTW, it’s loaded with nothing but spam...Balls! Also, why did it comfort me to check my e-mail so frequently when I was writing my thesis? Nobody ever wrote to me. And with precious few exceptions, I never wrote anyone either.)

Now that it’s over, I cannot deny a part of me just wants to shut off to anything but Buffy and Pop Fiction Novels for a week straight. But I refrain, because the strict discipline of my life during this period keeps pounding the same question out of my brain: “What do we do now?”

Should I take a few days off (not of work, but of tasks)? Should I rebuild my room? Should I begin studying for my GRE, right away? Should I sit down and write some music?

What would you do?

I think what I’m suffering from is the giant chasm of disconnect fostered by months of “alone time” and endless hours of conversations with dead people (like John Wayne or Ford, and Owen Wister, author of The Virginian).

I thinks it’s time I rejoined the land of the living.

One Terrible Movie

My Dear Sir Yardley,

In spite of the dozen or so perfectly good reasons (all of them having to do with much neglected thesis pages) to ignore your request for me to see Clash of the Titans, I have foolishly yielded based on the following reasons:
1. I Love my sister (who persists in her silly, but genuine affection for you).
2. I thought it would amuse me.
3. You might finally cease your insistent queries (Have you seen it yet? Have you, have you, have you? But WHY NOT?).

As you assured me Sir Yardley, there were numerous reasons to hate this movie. However, I have neither the time nor the patience to discuss them all. Consequently, it is my intention to categorize and discuss the highlights of awful.

1) Unforgivable Misuse of Talent
a) I want to know what argument they used to convince the usually lovely Liam Neeson to take a role in this movie. “Okay…you’ll be playing Zeus. First, you’re gonna rape this woman, who will subsequently be killed by her jealous husband, but not before your infant bastard son (i.e. demi-god Perseus) is cast into the ocean, only to be found and adopted by a family of simple fishermen, who will later be killed by your brother Hades. Perseus will hate you, and eventually, and rather idiotically, declare war on you, because he will have miraculously deduced you are the one to blame for his family’s death, as well as the sea’s lack of fish. At the end of the movie, after Perseus saves you, banishes Hades, and has killed the enormous Kraken, you will give him a rousing speech about how it’s bad to be bad, and killing people is wrong. You will also assure him it was you who left the mysteriously anonymous gifts that ultimately enable him to trap Hades and nearly kill you. You will then bring back from the dead his five-minute, demigod girlfriend, whose name I can’t remember. After that, all will be forgiven. Trust me. You’re gonna love being in this movie!” Apparently, Mr. Neeson is not as smart as I thought he was.
b) If he’s not careful, the enormously talented and interesting Ralph Finnes is gonna get type casted as the oiliest bad guy in the history of film (please see his other work as Voldermort in the Harry Potter films and as the serial killer in the Hannibal Lector prequel, Red Dragon). His role as Hades made me shake my head with disappointment.
c) Sam Worthington is a likable actor, and I loved his work in Avatar. I think, however, he needs to take a break from action films. Terminator Salvation and Clash of the Titans just about killed me.

2) Idiotic Plot/Characters
a) Please see section a) of point # 1.
b) There were two heroines who have ten lines between them. Both nearly die hasty, melodramatic deaths. I can’t name either one of them.
c) There are at least half a dozen seemingly important supporting characters whose names were said once or not at all. As it usually is with this sort of script, they all die.
d) There’s still no explanation for the 300-year-old, neon blue-eyed, charcoal people or the random severed hand that turned into a 50 ft scorpion.

3) Terrible, Terrible FX
a) The effects for the cities looked awful.
b) The effects for Medusa were wretched.
c) Zeus’s body armor looked like something from The Neverending Story.
d) The flying daemon bats from the sea were cool, but you never get a clear picture of them.

4) Random quotes and thoughts that came to mind as I watched:
a) “We don’t have any fish. Let’s kill the Gods.”
b) Perseus’s only gift is the ability to get really pissed off. He’s a lame demigod.
c) The Kraken is apparently male, because Medusa can only kill men, and her head kills it.
d) “Shhh…be vewy quiet. We ah hunting Medusa.”
e) Marching in single file, through a lava pit, wearing nothing but a kilt seems like a bad idea.
f) Sam Worthington’s kilt is too high, and makes him look as if he’s wearing a skirt.
g) Everyone in this film has a different accent. There were three confirmed Brits, a dozen Americans with crap voice lessons, one Aussie, and one unconfirmed Canadian.

I hope you are satisfied, Sir Yardley, because I will never watch this movie again.
Until next we meet,
Becky

I Think There's Something Wrong Here...

I would like to take a moment to uphold the above video, "Safety Dance," as evidence that all the pot, booze, and sex people were abusing during the 60s did have a negative effect on the adults of the 80s.

If you don't believe me, please consider the following:



The "Literal Version" might be a little funnier:

The Bunny Song

My roommate found this song on the internet and said, "It reminded me of you and your bunny-killer ways."

Who knew that Veggie Tales would be responsible for such a production?



I love the asparagus.

"I don't want to tell a joke that is funny. I just want a plate and a fork and a bunny."