Take That, Big Bird.

When my brother and I were little, there were always the special toys at Grandma's house. The toys that you couldn't wait to play with when you got there, because you never had them at home.

One of them was Candyland. There was just something magical about that old retro cardboard box held together with the brown packing tape that was smooth to the touch yet crunchy at the same time.

Yesterday, as I was volunteering like a good Samaritan at a toy drive, my brain stumbled upon this memory.

The memory of the little village.

It folded out to a full two blocks, with apartments, sidewalks, a little traffic light, and a hospital.

It was all very quaint and cute, if you didn't take into account the massacres.

Yes, that village was an instrument of extreme misfortune to the poor little people living in it. They didn't even have feet, just little stumps so they could fit into the cars, but they suffered nonetheless.

My brother and I could not wait to go get the village, set it up on the fluffy brown carpet in my Grandma's living room, and drop its inhabitants off of the traffic lights. We also pushed them out of windows, ran over them with cars, and staged massive automobile accidents.

But don't worry, there was a hospital. So it's all good.

Our favorite subject of attack was the ever-impeding, ever-annoying, ever-sappy ball of yellow feathers.

That's right. Big Bird.

If you thought that the rest of the village had it bad, then you may want to just stop reading now.

Or not. Because we inflicted the same hurt on Big Bird as we did all of the other unfortunate characters. He just was more experienced.

Try and make a happy lesson out of that, you stupid bird.

Christmas Senses

Christmas smells like trees and gingerbread. Like sweet vanilla. Like warm honey ham.

It feels like a crackling fire behind your back. Like the warm glow of a thermos of hot chocolate in your frozen hands. Like a cozy sweater, or a nice thick scarf wrapped in layers up to your chin.

Christmas sounds like bells, and choirs singing soft carols. Like the snapping and popping of firewood. Like the satisfying tear of a sheet of wrapping paper, or the long scrape of a piece of ribbon being curled.

It has so many tastes, it's hard to count. Christmas is cookies, and fudge, and candy canes, and hot drinks. It tastes like the bubble gum that you find in your stocking Christmas morning, or like soft mints from the basket on the counter.

It looks like people all bundled up against the cold, like snow settling gently on the tops of tree branches. Like silver and gold glitter, and Christmas movies, and reindeer, and the Zoo Lights. Like tall boots and long sleeves, and sweaters with little snowflakes stitched into them.

Christmas is a season all in itself. Everything about it is so warm and loving, and it's all about being cozy and cuddly.

It appeals to all of your senses, no matter where you are, and I absolutely love it.

Walking observations

The end of my street smells like laundry detergent.

I smell it every day when I walk to school.

I don't understand.

Peux-je parler francais? S'il-vous plait?

I wish that I was actually fluent in a language. So bad.

And unfortunately, I feel like the classes that I'm in are really a waste or  of time, and they will never let me achieve my goal. I always translate stuff in my head, to try and see how much I actually know, and after two and a half years of French, I still can't really carry on a conversation.

It makes me sad.

I understand some basic rules, but then others I've completely forgotten. The system of teaching is rather ineffective. We will learn something, like direct/indirect object pronouns and their placement, but then not do anything with it for a year. So when we need to go back and use them or the reflexive or another like concept, we no longer remember how to use it.

So, in most cases, I just end up altering what I really wanted to say to fit the simpler form of the things that I actually can say.

I wish that I wasn't in school, and that travel wasn't so expensive, so that I could just go live in France for a month and learn my French. Or the same with Italy.

I've been trying to teach myself Italian, and although I haven't been able to put as much time toward it as I would like to in the past few weeks, I feel like I'm learning much more efficiently than I do in my French classes. Which is pathetic.

I know that my teachers can speak French. I know that they know the rules and all of the different ways of saying things.

Now can they pass that on to me? Please? Because being incapable of carrying on a decent conversation with more than the basic language is driving me crazy.

J'aime les langues. Maintenant, apprends-moi à leur parler. 


Anybody know somebody who speaks another language? French? Italian? Send them my way.


I'm begging you.

Train of Conciousness

So, in case you hadn't noticed, my last post makes no sense.

That's because I used the wrong word.

The whole time.

Whenever I said yawn, it's actually supposed to be snore... Whatever. You knew that, right? I mean they're totally the same thing. Haha. Yeah...

Maybe I was just so excited about the fact that I got a music player on my page that I wasn't really thinking clearly.

Yeah, that must have been it.

But really. My music player is nifty. Now you know just a little bit more about me, because you get to listen to all of my favorite songs while you read. Lovely, no?

Anyway. Not the point.

We're reading The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner in my english class right now. It's really confusing, and kind of boring merely because half the time you have no idea what's going on because it follows the thought process of a thirty-three year old mentally deficient man.

Who has absolutely no concept of time.

Italics may indicate a time change. Then again, they may not.

And I'm not talking hours or days here. I'm talking years. Decades, even.

And as if that wasn't confusing enough, then they throw in two characters named Quentin. One is a boy. The other is a baby girl.

But they don't specify.

And when you have no clue what is happening, and whether you're in 1924 or 1896 or 1910, it's really confusing.

You read half of the page thinking that Benjy is talking about his brother, and then your whole sense of reality is shattered when you realize that really, he's talking about his sister's child.

Moral of this story: People are random. Thought processes suck. And Quentin is a hermaphrodite.