Have you ever been alone in a crowded room when I'm here with you?

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room; well I'm here with you...

I'm on the verge of reading a book. On the verge because I've bought this new book but I'm in the middle of reading another so I have to finish the current one first. But I thought the story behind this new book is worth blogging about. If you disagree, feel free to not read this post. Or phone me and I'll try to refund you the 30 seconds you lost.

Anyhow, I was gallivanting through Chapters the other day when I walked by one of those kiosks they have for "Recommended Reads" and I was immediately struck by this book. It's by this bloke: Jay Asher. It's called Thirteen Reasons Why. And for some reason, I thought it was an absolutely brilliant title. So I read the synopsis. It's about this guy who receives a box of cassette tapes from this girl. She has recently offed herself and she claims that there are thirteen reasons that led up to this decision - and that he is one of them. And it's about how he listens to the tapes to figure out how he ended up on this list. Now, this could end up being a godawful book for all I know. But I liked the title.

A message to teachers:

Stop licking your fingers when you flip pages. I understand that it makes the page separation easier but seriously, it's disgusting, unsanitary, and it makes your students cringe; especially the lucky students who get the top page after a fresh licking.

And I know I'm not alone on this. I've seen students' reactions to the finger licking and they tend not to be complimentary.

I just thought I'd put in something regarding the Twilight/New Moon films (bear with me Christian; I know you're tempted to just ignore this post altogether). Actually, it doesn't really have anything to do with the two films more as it has to do with people's reactions to them.

For the records, first let me just say that I haven't seen New Moon.

I personally have never met anyone who's a fan of the series. I believe this speaks to the fact that I associate mainly with the demographic that's least susceptible to Robert Pattinson. Because let's be honest, there's very little about him for girls in university to go crazy about. Teenage girls, I can see. Older women, I can also see. University girls probably see Robert Pattinsons (who is not, after all, THAT good looking) on a daily basis.

At any rate, for those who love the film, good on you. For those who don't, let me just say this: there have been worse films than Twilight. Much worse. You could probably lump "anything with Will Farrell" into the category of "films that are worse than Twilight," to say nothing of the countless horror films that weren't even worth putting into production.

This leads me to wonder if the people who attack Twilight (read: many university students) do so primarily because it IS so ridiculously popular. Twilight has legitimately become the new vogue among lovers AND haters alike. Those who hate Twilight will cite it as their exemplary "bad film" even when the conversation does not actually relate to it. I'll be talking about, say, The Girl Next Door, and whoever I'm talking to will invariably shove in, "You know what film I hate? Twilight." It's as if people who don't like Twilight want to actively assert this fact in the face of its immense popularity.

I think it's interesting that people will do this. Sometimes, I wonder if it's because they've confused "popular appeal" with "conformity". It's one thing to mock someone for conforming. It's quite another to mock someone who finds "popular appeal" appealing. I mean, I don't see anything really worth mocking. I also wonder if it's a way of asserting one's uniqueness. I suppose, the more people agree on something, the more unique you are for disagreeing with it? Either way, it is a genuinely curious phenomenon to take note of how many people will go out of their way to let you know that they think "Twilight is terrible," when a. it's not really (though I would hardly call it amazing), and b. when they haven't even seen the film...

Seriously. The whole thing becomes even more puzzling when I ask people, "Have you seen it?" to which they answer "No, and I don't want to." I don't really understand how you feel qualified to assert your dislike for this film when you haven't even seen it.

Oh yeah, I also don't think the filmmakers had "18-23-year-old cultural snobs" in mind as their target demographic. Maybe they should do that for the third film! There's a third film right? Or maybe it'll just be a 2-part trilogy.

I should be planning lessons right now but I could not resist posting about this. I was going through my high school stuff, looking for my grade 11 philosophy notes (good thing I never threw away my school notes; I found them (my philosophy notes) by the way) when I came across something I wrote for what I BELIEVE was an English assignment. Dated December 8th, 2003 - that would have been first semester of grade 11. So yeah, likely for English. Anyway, it's an opinion piece on trust.

Trust

Knowing whether or not what you hear is the truth very much depends on who you're talking to. For the people you are in close contact with most of the time, you usually develop a sense of what his or her baseline behavior is. Baseline behavior refers to how the person acts when he or she is talking in the ordinary routine of life.

Getting to know someone is an excellent way of knowing whether or not he or she is telling the truth but for people who you are not familiar with, it is usually prudent to be cautious in dealing with them. In other words, you should pay attention to the details of what you're being told and remember them to double-check the story as you go along. Normally, someone telling an untrue statement will contradict him or herself sooner or later. If worse comes to worse, just be wary of anything that you are not familiar with.



Yeah, it's not the longest opinion piece ever. Now, keep in mind, that's 1 full handwritten page, double spaced so you know, take it as you will. Length aside... wow, I was a suspicious person back then. Now, the interesting thing is that for the most part, I still think that my opinion piece is accurate, for what it's worth. But I wonder what happened since then. My views on trust have... changed, somewhat and I have a theory as to how the whole thing unfolded.

See, it all started with a Boy Meets World episode. Without going into details, it was an episode about relationships with guys and girls getting suspicious of each other and its ensuing hilarity/drama. But I just remember this one line that Cory said to Angela after she jumps to come crazy conclusion: "Angela, look. When you're in a relationship, you don't doubt first; you trust first." And that line was just so amazing in its simplicity that it really made me think deeper about what it means to trust someone and why it's important that we take the leap of faith, even if we don't really have a good reason to do so. Of course, that generated the whole line of thinking I now adopt and the more I tried to apply this principle, the more I realized that it's worthy of following, even if you're not in a relationship. Because when you trust first, you begin to understand how often people mis-communicate and how most people usually don't act maliciously. If that's the case, well no wonder we're all so angry all the time! We hate to be misunderstood and yet, we rarely make the effort to try and understand other people. That seemed to me to be a rather unfortunate, self-perpetuating, cycle of unhappiness.

I just thought it was interesting. Good thing I kept that dinky one-page assignment. I doesn't even have a mark on it! Probably one of those in-class reflections we did all the time.

Ohhhhhh man. 4 more weeks of prac.

I was talking to Ted when he came up to Kingston about who he was seeing during his rather short stay and among the many people I named, I came across one particular mutual friend (or ex-mutual friend, I guess I should say). Ted thought about this for a minute and then shook his head, saying that this particular friend wasn't particularly good at arranging times/meeting up with people. And it got me thinking.

There is a term, by the way, for this: flaky. I thought about the nature of flaky friends. I have, by this point in my life, pretty much stopped putting in the effort to stay in touch with flaky people (so if we still talk, congratulations. You are, in my estimation, less flaky than most) because I do understand Ted's sentiment. Or at least, it's not so much that I've stopped putting in the effort to stay in touch with flaky people; I've simply stopped caring about them.

Because here's what I've learned. If you depend upon flaky people, sooner or later, you'll realize that it's practically impossible to keep your life from spiraling wildly out of control. No joke. They will drive you batshit insane if you put enough stock in their friendship because they don't seem to operate on the same plane of understanding that the rest of us do. There seems to be something in them that justifies/validates their tendency to do things like say they'll call and then don't, or not respond to messages, or to always hit "maybe" on facebook invites.

For those of us who don't operate in this ethereal world of uncertainty and undependability (<-- not a word) this can be incredibly frustrating and/or disheartening if you care too much about these people. And the thing is, most of us do when we first meet them. Why? Because it's hard to be flaky if you're not cool, pretty, or interesting. If you message someone, suggesting that they hang out with you on, say, Friday night and they don't respond, I'm pretty sure they're not twiddling their thumbs at home on Friday night, looking for something to do, intentionally ignoring your message. Flaky friends are not necessarily bad people in that sense. A lot of the times, they simply lead a fairly busy social life and a. don't have the time management skills to cut up their time pie properly, and b. aren't socially considerate enough to empathize with the people who they've left out and as a result, just don't bother to at least tell these people that they are busy.

A part of me understands that sometimes, they just don't know what it's like to be on the receiving end of their own rather inconsiderate social behaviors. How could they possibly understand how irritating it can be to have someone not respond to them when they're always the ones doing the responding? How could they possibly understand how disheartening it can be to have someone cancel on them last minute when to them, a last minute cancellation simply means they're no longer double booked? I mean, maybe the only real flaw in their character is a simple inability to empathize with other people. And if THAT'S their flaw, 99% of our population wouldn't be able to criticize them in good conscience because it'd be like the pot calling the kettle black.

In my experience, people who lead a fairly busy social life tend to be attractive (and I don't mean physically, though that might also be the case). Simply put, they make good company. They have to; otherwise they wouldn't lead such a busy social life. And as a result, it's hard not to care about them and to put stock in their friendship because even though some part of you knows you shouldn't depend on them, they're just so darn pleasant to be around that you want to vindicate them when you ARE in their company. And that's where the balancing act really has to come in. The perks always come first - they have to or else you wouldn't have gotten to know them in the first place - and as much as you love their immediate company, you slowly begin to realize how hard it is to procure said company. And if you forget this, it becomes a sort of forbidden fruit that you'll eventually grow to curse yourself for wanting.

Because of this, I think I've grown to become very careful regarding the relationships I actually allow myself to value. I mean, I always give people the benefit of the doubt. After all, you really should trust first, not doubt first. But I guess what I mean to say is that in my mind, I've become ultra-sensitive to the "red flags"," of a flaky friend. Ironically, it's actually allowed me to have pseudo-friendships with flaky people. I enjoy their company when I can get it, but then I recognize that I'm probably not going to see this person ever again ("ever again" being the most generous estimate) and so prevent myself from hoping/expecting it. And I've realized, this is the only way I can go about interacting with flaky people; otherwise, they'll end up irking me so much due to their unreliability that I won't even want to see them anymore.

So call your friends dammit! And let them know they're worth it.

I've been watching a string of bad to mediocre films lately. Mostly my own fault - I have been choosing films for entertainment value over other merits.

Our feelings aren't rational. And the only thing that prevents us from going crazy is the fact that others seem to understand this.

I just thought I'd make a note about my previous post. For those of you who liked it, you will be glad to know that there might be more to come; more self-contained mini-stories I mean. I'm trying to come up with a good passage to use as an interlude for my informal writing project, between the first and second half. Something that's not directly related to the story. Call it a breather of sorts. So if I have the time (and creative juices), I'm going to try to write more and then pick the best of the lot.

Christian once wrote this:

"I truly think that learning to write at least half-decent poetry is a major step toward writing excellent prose. You can write good prose without being able to write poetry, and you can likely get toward excellent without it, but I can assure you that being able to write poetry hugely improves your ability in prose."

He didn't really explicate this statement at the time but I recently discovered why this was so. It came about partly because I was writing my own poetry and partly because I was teaching a poetry unit to my class. They had just finished learning about short stories in the unit before so I thought I would tie my poetry unit into that one by turning a poem/ballad into a short story. Thus, I took the song, Your Ex-Lover Is Dead by Stars and spent an entire weekend turning the lyrics from that song into a short story and when I finished, I sat back and looked at the short story I produced.

Now, I'm a fairly concise writer. But I looked at the short story I generated from the song lyrics and thought to myself, "It is amazing that the lyrics to Your Ex-Lover Is Dead can encapsulate, in 3 short verses something that took me 3 pages to write out in short-story format." And then it hit me...

This is why poetry is so important to writing good prose. To quote Coleridge, poetry is "the best words in their best order". I realized this when I was writing my own poetry - in order to produce GOOD poetry, you have to work to ensure that every word is perfect and that the order in which they come is perfect as well. It forces you to come up with the best possible combination of the best possible words. And of course, this is a skill that is essential to writing truly excellent prose. In a sense, you have to put yourself in the same mindset of writing poetry in order to write great prose - something that is easy to neglect because there appears to be less pressure to ensure that every word is perfect in prose.

Prose lets you get away with some things that you wouldn't be able to get away with when you write poetry. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But put it this way. When I write prose, sometimes I write about the environment and the atmosphere of whatever setting about which I am writing. I take the time convey to the reader what my characters are feeling and I explain the circumstances that have led up to the event in question before the "action" starts happening. And because I'm writing prose, I have every right to do this. But poetry - poetry is the ability to write in such a way that all the things I mentioned above are implicit and indicated in the way the "action" unfolds. In order to do that, your words and how they appear have to be perfect and nuanced.

This, I believe, is why writing good poetry is essential to writing great prose. See, you never stop learning as a writer.