always got something to do, someone to be seeing, somewhere to be dancing, i'm a weak human being

so i pretty much suck at this whole taking you guys with me on the final leap to this marriage. in my defense, my days are crammed full of errands and family visits and boys' homework and swimming and a million other things. there are times i don't get home or get a chance to just sit in my room and relax until after one. by then, i'm way too tired to worry about coherency in a blog post so i read a bit and fall asleep. at the moment, i am ditching my aunt's retirement party to sit at home in my pajamas and catch up on my internet life. i feel kinda bad, but even as i walked in the door at ten i was ready to fall into bed. i don't think i could have made it through the whole party anyway.

to fill you all in on these last minute wedding plans, aside from meeting with the dj person saturday night (it annoys me how nothing can happen when the sun's out here) i'm pretty much done. photographer has been chosen and coordinated with, the flowers for my hair have been bought, dj person has been chosen and paid, and i can't remember what else i did but all the loose ends are falling into place. this wedding has been one of my greatest products of procrastination. it's on wednesday (eek!) and most of the details and plans were set over the course of the past couple of days. who said that the last minute can't be used for everything?

on a completely different note, the street in front of/next to my house is flooded with cars, and has been for the past week or so. see, in our culture when someone dies we hold what's called a 'aza which is basically three nights where everyone comes to give their condolences. a few days ago, one of our neighbors died. we had three nights of craziness on the street has hordes of people came to pay their respect. the three days finished the day before yesterday. yesterday, another three days started because the dead dude's wife died. i feel like there's a great story in this (a few, actually), but i don't have the time or energy to write any of them out or even flesh them out much in my head. i'll leave it up to you to write the romance, the mystery, the horror, and whatever other version you can think of.

*Procrastination - Amy Winehouse

i'm hopping from stone to stone as i try to cross the stream, deceivingly calm on this thursday in june. but i know what's lurking in its depths, hiding in the shadows on the sandy floor. i know, if no one else does. i move from one stone to the next with barely a thought. there's no time to think, only to move. deep inside me, i know the monster's next move, but it's not much help because it knows mine, too. as it rears its head, churning the waters, a crowd gathers at the shore. they wave their arms and open their mouths wide in shouts, but their voices are stolen by the waves, by the wind. i don't know if it's me they're urging on or the monster. i try to pretend that i don't care either way. the other side is one hop away, but no matter how many stones i pass, no matter how many moves i make, it never gets any closer. i lose my footing in my haste, and as i stumble i come face to face with the monster. i look deep into its eyes and see too much that is familiar. doubt who i'm rooting for myself. i see my own eyes staring back at me as i regain my balance. i hop to the next stone, turning my back on the monster. safe for one more minute. putting off the moment when i'll finally have to confront it. 

see, i don't know what to say

today was so productive that i'm half expecting to wake up in a minute with a to-do list a mile long and should've-could'ves tangled into my hair. it really can't be a real day in my life. not only did i spend hours lazing around reading (i finished a book and a half. go me. i'm usually a slow summer reader.) and swimming, but i also helped my brothers with a big chunk of their summer homework and spent time with the family. i also got the flowers, my bouquet, stage-thingy (if you're not familiar with saudi weddings then this might sound ridiculous), tables, and finger foods for the guests dealt with. i chose the cake. i got my wedding hair and make-up settled. and by "i" i totally mean that my parents (and a couple of cousins for a couple of things) were doing most of the work and i was along for the ride. duh.

oh, and we got internet. excitement. (could someone explain how my sister who shares a wall with me and my parents who are right across the hall have perfect connection in their rooms and i have one measly faltering bar in mine? this happens every summer, and i just don't get it.)

but the real story of this post happened yesterday. my parents, uncle, three cousins, and i (yeah, we were like an army of totally unnecessary people) went to the hotel that my wedding is being held at to see the hall/ballroom thing. while we were there, the dude showing us around was like, "wanna see the suite?" and so we were like, "um, okay, sure. why not?" so he takes us to the fourth floor and starts knocking on the door and this saudi guy dressed in what amounts to underwear and an undershirt here opens it. there were a bunch of very confused looks exchanged when the hotel guy tells us that there were no empty rooms but we can look at his. um, awkward much? so my dad and uncle barge in like they own the place and after a couple of minutes i get dragged in to see it. all i remember was that the guy had a tray with his dinner on the bedroom floor and the tv turned on to some action movie. he was trying to be nice about it and saying stuff like the room is big and the hotel is nice, but inside he was probably wishing we'd get some consideration and leave him alone. let me just say, if a caravan of random strangers showed up at my hotel room and asked to look around, i would not be as nice as he was. doors would most likely just be slammed in faces.

oh, and i just wasted the past twenty minutes trying to find a song for this title. my summer playlist, though absolutely amazing, has nothing, and my mind refuses to look past the completely random twenty odd songs that i've been listening to on repeat.

*I Don't Know What to Say - The Magnetic Fields

i am in misery. the silence is slowly killing me.

so i've been in the desert for a few days now with no internet connection (i find it ridiculous that junior can't find a connection to steal when every other computer can) and no time to bum it off of the cousins. though my sister has found ample internet opportunities in the midst of her complaining about the lack of internet. it doesn't make sense. i feel so cut off from the world.

anyway, i am so dreadfully behind on wedding preparations that i'm not even going to get into them. i did horrify/deeply offend a make-up artist yesterday by saying that i wasn't going to do my eyebrows for the wedding which was fun. i just don't do them. it's not like i killed anyone. according to her, though, there's no way the make-up could possibly show without me doing them. considering the amount of stuff they cake on over here, i highly doubt that. oh, remind me to document my saudi wedding rant sometime in the next few days.

since it kinda looks like the whole internet situation isn't going to be fixed anytime soon, feel free to go back through my posts about saudi arabia from last year and the year before if i don't post much now. it's pretty much the same here minus spurts of panic about the wedding and pangs of annoyance. fun stuff.

also, i have been walking around all day singing maroon 5 because of my nephew that has been singing the same three lines of the song all. day. long. i also just spent the last hour reading up on all the blog posts i've missed since i left america.

anyway, i'm exhausted and going to sleep. hope your summers have all started off swimmingly (it never seems like summer starts till i reach the desert) and hopefully i'll have time and internet to keep you updated on the countdown to the wedding (which is july 6th in case i forgot to mention that).

*Misery - Maroon 5 (i dunno if this is the song's name or not, but i don't feel like looking it up or getting my ipod so let's just pretend.)

come tomorrow, tomorrow i'll be gone

so tonight is the last night i'll probably ever sleep in this bed. do you know how completely insane that is? i love this bed with all my heart. it's my place, you know? i study on my bed, sit for hours on the computer on it, read, eat, watch tv, play board games, paint, sew... you name it and it gets done here. and tonight's the last night of it being mine.

also, we were at 5 below this afternoon (sorta like a dollar store if you don't know it) and they had these books for one and two dollars, and, well, you know how i am with books. usually they just have things like world encyclopedias and trivia books about elvis and the beatles, but they had this whole collection of young adult novels and one had a quote by judy blume on the back. who could resist a book that judy blume claimed she couldn't put down? not me, that's for sure. so i bought it and just finished it. you know when you read a book that's good but you just should not have read it? like, you are not in the right emotional state to make friends with those characters and live through those experiences and have the story haunt your mind, and it may be a really great book but reading it was just a very big mistake? yeah. this was one of those times.

anyway, we're leaving for the desert tomorrow. (why does it feel like i blinked, and when i opened my eyes a year had passed?) i'm not gonna have internet tomorrow, but i should probably have when i get there. and then you guys can all follow along on the hectic final three weeks or so leading up to my wedding. won't that be fun?

random side note: have you guys ever watched boy meets world? you know when topanga and cory break up after the school ski trip and shawn says that it's been raining for seven days because god is crying over the fact that the perfect couple he created are no longer together? it's pouring like crazy outside right now and that's the first thing that popped into my head. i'm not exactly sure why, but there it is.

*Save Tonight - Eagle Eye Cherry

baby, it's cold outside

it's summer. last week we were all sweltering in hundred degree weather and mugginess that hit you like an anvil if you dared to step outside. it was bad. so why is it that i kept waking up last night from the cold, and i could barely drag myself out of bed this morning to shower because outside of my blanket was like antarctica? now it's really nice outside, but all of this weather changing is kinda ridiculous. especially when i don't have any sweats to put on because i already moved them into the apartment i'll be living in when i get back from the summer (my books are also gone and the empty bookcases across from my bed make me sad) and i'm left with shorts and t-shirts unless i wanna sleep in jeans.

anyway, so i wake up early today because i thought i had a million and three things to do before we left, but i grossly underestimated my ability to be productive and now i'm done with everything, my parents aren't home, my sister is still asleep, and nothing is on tv.

also, i realized that in all of my writings, i have a problem with starting too slow. it doesn't matter how long or short the piece is, i take too long to get to the hook. this was first brought to my attention when i entered sincerely, mr. nobody into that amazon contest a year or so ago. i realize that having been written in three weeks and practically unedited, i can't judge everything by it. but the same issue has since come up a few times with my shorter pieces, and i honestly don't know how to fix it. i've tried. so if anyone knows how to either bring the hook up or hint at the hook/foreshadow without hitting the reader in the face with it and could give me any advice, then i would be eternally grateful and forever indebted to you.

*Baby, It's Cold Outside - Bing Crosby

we were young and stupid. do you remember that?

i think my generation is mostly stupid. i can say this because i belong to their group. looking past their general lack of what used to be common sense only is not so common anymore, their inability to have any perspective on anything, their big dreams and little action, and their general destruction of the english language, i'm going to talk about the fact that a lot of them tend to be pretentious hypocrites. while this may be true in many areas of life, let's talk about the most superficial, shall we? justin bieber. (wow, i feel kind of stupid because i had to google how to spell his last name. i keep spelling it ei instead of ie)

anyway, the people of my generation are so loud about how much they hate everything, namely justin bieber. (this post could really be about a million other things. we have some obnoxious people in this generation of ours. yeah yeah i can be pretty loud too, i know. add my name to list of obnoxiousness.) he's an awful singer, he's overrated, and he's destroying music.  okay, you're all entitled to your opinion and everything, but shut up already, won't you? no, i'm not saying this because i'm a huge fan of his. i honestly have no real opinion on him. while i never seek out any of his songs, hearing them does not put me in a homicidal rage. you know why? cause i have this little thing called dignity. (haha for the purpose of this post let's just pretend.)

remember a few years back what we were obsessing over with all of the fanaticism kids now devote to bieber? *nsync and backstreet boys. people were divided into one of three groups: nsync groupies, bsb groupies, or the people who pretended to hate them both because they thought it made them look cool but were really huge fans of both. (i mean come on, you know all the lyrics to all the songs and you want me to believe you don't like them? even if you do recite them mockingly, i'm just not buying it.) you would fight to the death for whatever group you belonged in. while i liked both bands (and still do), i was a bsb girl myself.

anyway, with the generation ahead of ours listening to music like the violent femmes, the smiths, and depeche mode (all great bands by the way) do you think they were very psyched to suddenly have pop boy bands take over the world? no, probably not. but do you remember them spending hours bashing them online (ignore the fact that "online" didn't exist the way it does now)? did they ever get into arguments with people ten years younger than them over taste in music (i've seen this a lot)? did they spend so much time obsessing over something that they claimed they hated? no. because it's just a waste of time and a sign that you are in desperate need of a life.

if you want to take part in bieber bashing, find a fanatic fan your age and have at it because arguing with a kid you could babysit just makes you look pathetic. better yet, get a map to the high road and try taking a walk down it. along the way, you may find a stand or two selling lives. feel free to pick one up. you don't like justin beiber? great, don't listen to him. but let the people who enjoy him enjoy him without your long-winded rants about "good music" and how kids these days are stupid and deaf.

*I Still - Backstreet Boys

i took the polaroid [poster] down in my room

we're leaving this friday for the desert, and i don't think i could be any less prepared - both mentally and physically. and the days are all starting to bleed into each other until it is just one long, never-ending three:o'clock on a sunday afternoon. i don't even know what to do with myself these days. but i'm not going to get into any of that right now because my main goal in life at the moment is to ignore it (did i ever mention that i suck at the whole goal fulfilling thing?).

anyway, i've been sitting with this post open for two hours and instead of writing anything have been procrastinating on other people's blogs because their lives are so much more appealing to me than my own at the moment. blah. i need to do laundry. i hate doing laundry.

oh, i've also been in a pickle about a poster. see, about five years ago (i can't believe it's been that long!) a friend got me this orlando bloom as will turner poster for my birthday that i went home and tacked to my wall. remember once upon a time when i told you people that i hate closing the curtains because it makes me feel trapped? yeah. because of that issue of mine and the location of the poster, it became a kind of known thing about my house. my sixty or something year old neighbor stopped me one time to say that she loved my poster and always looks up at it when she drives up to her house. a sister of my friend/friend of my sister's used to drive by our house whenever she was in the neighborhood to see it (i'm assuming that she stopped, but i actually don't know 'cause i haven't talked to her in forever). another friend said that she only knows my house because of the poster and if i ever took it down she would have no idea which house was ours. originally, i was planning on leaving it where it is, but there are a few issues with that. a) it's mine, and i want it - even if i don't hang it up - because it was a gift, and b) i think my sister is expecting me to take it. but if i do take it with me, i'd need to get another poster to put there because my wall already looks too empty now and i can't undress all of them. (our walls are, and have always been, covered with posters and maps and pictures and photos and flags and t-shirts and masks and you get the idea.) so, should i take the poster with me and get something else to put there? or do i leave the poster where it is? or should i just leave another empty space on the wall to speak of my absence?

*Tire Swing - Kimya Dawson

lying to yourself doesn't make it easier

recently, a bunch of people have been telling me that blogging regularly is hard. in light of that, and seeing how i blog semi-regularly, or regularlry enough, this means i obviously was given some special gift at birth that makes me amazingly awesome. and being the generous person that i am, i have decided to share this gift with you. here are all my secrets on how to blog regularly. you see, the problem most of you are probably facing is that you're confusing blogging well with just, well, blogging. you don't have to have some really cool thing to say in each blog post, or really anything to say at all. you don't have to have the perfect words. all you have to do is sit at the keyboard and let your brain throw up onto the screen. in a good way. take whatever mindless thought is collecting dust in the corner of your mind or whatever pointless thing you did or did not do that day, and dedicate an entire post to it. give it its undeserving fifteen minutes of fame. i mean, obviously don't just laundry list the whole thing up, but give it life.

i find it funny that i started this post two days ago. i honestly can't remember what other mindless drivel i was going to add to my list of "secrets," so i'm just going to leave it at that. at least for now.

moving on. the past couple of days have been entirely devoted to my cousin, his wife, and his two kids who were all stopping by our area on their way to florida where the wife is going to study. five minutes away from disney world and orlando studios. meaning harry potter world. the unfairness of this is killing me. anyway, back to the past couple of days. they were all about them. when they were at our house, my day was filled with playing with the kids, talking to the wife, helping the cousin get paperwork in order. when they were off at offices getting scholarship stuff taken care of, i was just sitting around waiting for them to come back. and now they're gone. and there's an empty suitcase waiting to be packed and a house that looks like ground zero of an earthquake that was hit by a tornado and then used as a playpen for thing one and thing two that should probably be cleaned. and there are no more distractions to keep me away from either.

i really don't feel like packing. i really, really don't feel like cleaning. and i hate the fact that ignoring them won't make them do themselves. and i hate that pretending they're not here won't make them go away. and yet, i'll just sit on the computer and not look past the fifteen inch screen and pretend that the room is cleaned and my stuff packed.

this post is in desperate need of direction.

*3 Little Words - Frankmusik

maybe you're crazy

so i woke up yesterday all geared to write a post (or think of a post to write) when i notice that i have eighteen new email messages in my inbox. due to the fact that a, i check my email compulsively, and b, i'm really not that popular (shocking, right? i know! i was pretty surprised myself.) this is not a common occurrence. what is even rarer is that, in front of my own eyes it jumped to twenty in like three minutes. i obviously went to check my email first and much to my surprise, they were all blog comments. i start reading through them and apparently my sister had taken it upon herself to make sure that every single post every written on my blog had at least one comment. every. single. post. now, keep in mind that this is the sister that lives halfway across the world and sits alone at home with two kids under three all day. she really doesn't have loads off free time on her hands. also take into account that i have over five hundred and eighty posts on this thing, ramble on about pointless crap at times, and no one knew the blog existed for the first couple of months, meaning lots of posts with no comments. overall, it's a pretty daunting task to take on. but insanity seems to run in my family alongside the brown hair and eyes, and she did it. we went shopping for hours for stuff for my cousins (who, by the way, said that they didn't want us to bring them anything until two nights ago when they suddenly decide they want the entire mall please and thank you.) and when we came back, i was still getting emails about new blog comments. it really was crazy. but also awesome. and so, here's your acknowledgement and recognition. yay you.

on a completely unrelated note (actually it has to do with my other sister so it's slightly related i guess) my younger sister has always had a problem with how i walk. or, at least for a very long time. my last year of undergrad she would always be telling me, "you swing your arm too much when you walk. stop it." eventually, she got used to it or i stopped or something, but she stopped commenting and we both forgot about it. until a couple of weeks ago. she and i made this graduation gift basket for a friend and drove all the way to campus to give it to him and do you know how he thanked me? when i was leaving he told my sister that i walked like an idiot (something to do with my swinging arm. gosh, people, i really can't control it). and so now, whenever i walk with her (which is a lot let me tell you) she says, "wow, sarah, you walk like an idiot" or "can you please stop walking like a idiot?" so thanks for that, ash. i dunno if you still read this, but whatever, thanks anyway. (just to clarify, though, i actually wasn't insulted or offended or anything. i thought it was pretty funny.)

*Crazy - Gnarls Barkley

it's so hard to relate to the whole human race

people are the worst. they really are. and no matter how many times i come to this realization, no matter how many times i swear to just wash my hands of the whole human race, there's something in me that refuses to just let go. i don't know what it is or where it's hiding, but you can be sure that as soon as i find it i'll kill it. after that i'll pick up my stuff and steal out in the night to a deserted island, the kind people say you'd go crazy living on because the only sounds are the waves rolling up the shore and the wind whispering jokes to the palm tree fronds. and the only voice i'll ever hear is my own, and i'll spend my life scribbling pretty words onto the sand and watching them being taken out to sea for the mermaids to read. and i'll write about the people i used to know on tree bark. i'll write how they told me to hold on and hold on and never let go. and i'll explain how the very next day they looked at me with contempt and said, "you should have let go days ago. what's wrong with you?" and i'll burn the words over the fire and watch the smoke curl up into the air and wish i could have burned away all the lies and masks humans insist on hiding behind and wrapping themselves in. and i'll think that maybe if i could i wouldn't have had to run away.

and i'll think that maybe they were just never worth the effort.

*The Future Freaks Me Out - Motion City Soundtrack

has it really been that long? and how did we get so old?

so my family and i went to a picnic today at my brothers' school, which was also the school that my sisters and i went to for most of our grade school career. it was super fun, despite the fact that most of us woke up in the morning not in the mood to go. a good chunk of the day (like three out of the five hours we were there) were spent sitting with a group of guys, most of whom were in eleventh grade but a couple were in their first year of college. anyway, they were really fun to hang out with. guys are always fun to hang out with, they're just so much more relaxed than girls. except when they start to "fall in love with you" and then things just get awkward and annoying. these guys were not stupid, though, and it was fun.

before we joined them, though, i saw this kid that i thought might be someone who graduated with me, but i wasn't sure. i asked my sister if she knew who he was and she was like, "he kinda looks like (i'm gonna call him Guy for the sake of this post, okay?) Guy, but..." "but if Guy ate a whale for breakfast, right?" "exactly." before we could go ask him if he was Guy, though, he disappeared. so we did the next best thing and went to my old math teacher to ask her. "he looks kinda like him, but that guy's fat and bald. there's no way he's only twenty three," she said. we sat with her talking for a while when the dude walks right by us. my math teacher calls out, "Guy?" and he's like, "yeah! i saw you earlier but thought you didn't remember me so i didn't come say hi." she goes off on the usual how are you, how's school, how's the family, blah blah blah while my sister and i were busy trying to pick our jaws up from the ground. he leaves and my teacher goes, "wow. he really let himself go." understatement of the century.

anyway, despite the fact that none of you know the guy which makes this a pretty pointless story, i felt that it needed to be told because it just shows how old i've gotten. forget the fact that the second graders i used to substitute are now tenth graders running around in packs trying to attract the guys that were also running around in packs. ignore the fact that most of the people i used to know at the school are either graduated or dead. look over the fact that the annoying little kids that were on my bus are now bigger than me. guys from my graduating class are being mistaken for old, fat, balding men. when/how/why did this happen?! thank god i'm still being mistaken for a fourteen to seventeen year old.

*So Cold - Catch 22

don't wanna close my eyes, don't wanna fall asleep

most of the time, i hate taking naps. i wake up feeling gross and grumpy and usually worse than i would have felt if i had just stayed tired for a few more hours. mind you, sometimes i have days when i can take a nap and wake up refreshed like a normal/weird person depending on who you're asking. but those are few and far between. last night i fell asleep at around seven thirty or something while watching tv with my brothers and woke up about an hour later. now, in the grand scheme of things, an hour really isn't that long. and all i was missing was reruns of the fairly oddparents (speaking of which, have you guys heard about the movie for it this summer when they come to life? and timmy is played by drake bell and is twenty three but still acting like a kid so he can keep cosmo and wanda? i'm not sure how i feel about it. the commercial looks like it might be okay, but all i can do is think of avatar and cringe.) but somehow i woke up with a headache and a bad mood and a feeling that i just slept through half my life. i tried playing online scrabble, but after a turn or two realized that i just was not in the mood to think up words. then i started to read and even that couldn't make me forget how gross i was feeling. eventually, i just had to go to sleep even earlier than usual, and after already sleeping an hour, i ended up waking up at three. an hour of tossing and turning later, and i managed to sleep until six:thirty when my alarm woke me up after sleeping too long. i don't know about you guys, but when i sleep too long i wake up groggy and gross.

so basically, the moral of the story is not to take naps at night. or ever.

*I Don't Want to Miss a Thing - Aerosmith

everybody knows you're a liar

remember a few years back when the harry potter people announced that they would be splitting the seventh book into two movies? sure they claimed it was because the seventh book was just oh so important they didn't want to cut anything out of it, but everyone knew the real reason. with a movie franchise that successful, they just didn't want to see it end. they wanted to drag it out as long as possible, to suck out every dollar they could from us, before they had to throw in the towel. and with harry potter, it seemed to work. there was enough content in the book to make the split, fans don't really mind putting off the end, and we can all almost pretend that they truly did do it just to give us the best ending of the series they possibly could. almost.

then twilight comes along and everyone starts babbling about how it's the next harry potter. it gets its movie deal, starts doing well at the box office, and suddenly they look at harry potter, realize they could probably make more money, and decide, "well, hey, this fourth book could not possibly be one movie. it's like two complete different books in one." uh, no. i honestly don't think they'll be able to successfully pull off their one book - two movie stunt. not that i have anything against twilight, but what are they going to do? have one entire movie with bella getting married and then sitting on the couch dying then "giving birth" and another movie dedicated to the non-fight that took up way too long in the book? it just doesn't make sense. but they're doing it, and they'll make their money, and that is that.

then the hunger games starts gaining popularity. it's suddenly the new twilight which was the new harry potter making thg the newest harry potter. the movie deal comes along and they seem to be taking it all seriously. they have the author writing the script and seem to be getting actors that are invested in the franchise. it's all good and dandy. they watch the bajillion fans whine and cry and fight over each new cast member and fake leak of the script and they laugh at the stupidity of the teeny boppers. and then, before the first movie even really starts filming, they announce that they're going to have to make the trilogy into a four movie franchise. um, what? talk about counting your chickens before they hatch. how do they even know it's going to be successful enough to be worth the added movie? how could they possibly need another movie? there are three roughly 300 pg books, where would they get enough stuff going on for another full length movie? where would they even split the books up? or are they going to do some prequel/sequel thing that has nothing really to do with the books? whichever, i think it's getting a bit ridiculous.

the movie industry needs to realize that we're really not that stupid. sure, i've gone to see book adaptations and lamented the cut of some of my favorite book parts, but i got it. it's something you have to do to switch it to movie format. suddenly deciding that a movie series making (or hoping to make) lots of money can't be cut, claiming that "they're doing it for the fans," does not fool us. it's all about the money. even if all three series come out with an amazing extra movie, even if i get out of each one thinking that splitting the books was the greatest decision ever made, the very fact that they can't just come out and say why they're really doing the split will still annoy me.

moral of the story: stop comparing things to harry potter or they will have more movies than books.

***UPDATE: just in case you guys don't read other people's comments, watch this. it's hilarious.



*Lying Through Your Teeth - Head Automatica

i don't believe it, not for a minute

when arguments break out about how disney movies are corrupting the minds of the young, about how they are creating girls who want to be princesses and sit around and do nothing all day, i am always on the side of disney. cinderella does not just sit around waiting for her prince, she sneaks out and gets him. belle sacrifices herself for her father and won't settle for the most gorgeous and desired man in her town because the beast isn't a monster, gaston is. when people claim that disney movies give children unrealistic ideas about the world, uh, fiction has been doing that since the dawn of time. if your child can't tell the difference between fiction and reality, well then, that's not disney's fault.

but there are some movies that have always made me ask, "why?" do whatever you want with movies about fairy godmothers and evil witches, but why take a historical moment and then completely warp it? at jamestown, we watched a movie about the early settlers. part of it talked about john smith, pocahontas, john rolfe and that whole story. my brother turns to me and whispers, "they got it wrong. pocahontas was never kidnapped, and she fell in love with john smith." which of course, is completely untrue.

it's common knowledge that the history they teach in grade school is about as close to what really happened as those stories that claim the elephant got its trunk because an alligator tried to eat its nose. people tend to have that moment in their first "real" history class when they find out that all the heroes they've learned about their whole lives were pretty much the biggest jerks on the planet. i don't know why they think children can't handle the truth, but they like to gloss over all the sticky areas. many people live their whole lives believing in the distorted version of american history. but while our school system is sugar-coating everything for us, they try to stick to the big facts as much as possible. while the perspective is skewed, the events actually happened.

i never understood why disney had to rewrite history with movies like pocahontas. if you don't want to say what really happened, then don't use real people. the story would be just as good if the names were changed. and that's really all they would have to change. everything else could be left exactly the same. children would be just as willing to accept that some native american they've never heard of fell in love with a settler as they are to accept pocahontas did. why mess with their heads?

i've found it true that people want to believe what they were told as children. they'll learn the truth later, but it's the lies that stick with them. they choose disney over history books and their fifth grade social studies teacher over their college professor. so why not just go ahead and let them in on the truth that not everyone was perfect from an early age? i'm sure they're smart enough to understand.

*Take It On the Run - REO Speedwagon