Where the Good Ones Go (BEDA #7)

Today was my grandpa’s funeral. I don’t really want to talk about it. Nor do I really want to blog. But that’s part of the deal. 

I guess, all I’ll say is that my grandfather was not a religious man, but he was buried in a very religious town, so the minister/priest/reverend/shaman/witch doctor (what are they called?) who officiated/hosted/mc’d (what’s it called?) the funeral kept saying that even though Bailey was not religious in the traditional sense, he wanted nothing more than for his kin to accept Jesus as their savior, especially on this holy weekend. 

Let me set the record straight: this idiot knew nothing about the extraordinary man who was my grandfather, and the last thing he would have wanted was for some bumbling hick with a degree from Churches-R-Us to be rooting through his bible for appropriate biblical verses. 

Therefore, in order to avoid this monstrosity at my own funeral, which is impending whether or not I would like it to be, I have selected my quotations ahead of time. My brother and sister have both agreed to uphold my wishes should I die before them. 

My funeral quotations: 

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.” 
-Shakespeare

“Do not pity the dead Harry, pity the living. And above all those who live without love.”
-Dumbledore, Jo Rowling

And of course: 

“Live to the point of tears.”
-Albert Camus

That’s really all I can do for you tonight, folks. It’s been a rough day. 

Hours worked: 4
Live performances seen: 0

“My grandpa said that he wandered himself off into the heart of the forest/And his colour still sings the engraves of his name/And he chases field mice under moonlight” -Danielle Ate the Sandwich

Bless the Telephone (BEDA #6)

I am currently in a town called Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Outside of my window is a Shoe Carnival, a Dress Barn, a Walmart, a Shell station, and a movie theatre. 

We’re not in Massachusetts, anymore. 

I am in Cape Girardeau for my grandfather’s funeral and everyone has the most intense southern accents. My mother and I had to go to the Walmart here, at 10:30 p.m. to buy my sister a dress to wear to the funeral because we left hers at my house. You meet some real characters in Walmart after 7 p.m. 

One guy kept talking about how that chick from the Hunger Games had no business “killin’ animals, cause real men don’t cover niggers in flowers.” I was terribly offended. 

My day started with a flight into Missouri at 7 a.m. quickly followed by a trip to the Apple Store.

Long story short: My hard drive failed and I lost all of the information on it and I can’t fix it and no one loves me and I’m going to die alone. Also, the guy who helped me, named Brian, sounded exactly like my friend Dave (as in thewalruswas).

After the Apple Store I went to the hospital where my brother was having a surgery because he got his face knocked off by a kid playing baseball.

That might be a slight exaggeration. Basically a kid smashed his face while playing baseball and broke his nose and septum. The nose was bleeding so profusely that they stuck cocaine inside of it, because apparently that stops bleeding? 

The doctor told him he shouldn’t really be doing sports or anything for 4-6 weeks. My mother looked at the doctor and said that the best she could guarantee was 1-2 weeks because he had a really big tournament coming up.

Ladies and gentleman I give you: My family. 

Hours worked: 4
Live performances seen: 0

Quote of the day: “God, I dreamed there was an angel who could hear me through the wall, as I cried out like in Latin, ‘this is so not life at all!’” -Spring Awakening 

Special thanks goes to Bryarly Bishop for putting up with my whiny as fuck phone call for the last 2 hours.

Don't Tell Me How the Game is Played (BEDA #5)

I don’t want to words. 

Which is probably a good thing because I have to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to catch my flight home to St. Louis for the weekend. That’s going to be a fun flight. 

Today I walked into the homeless facility/job training/drug rehabilitation community where I intern at, and I rang the bell so that my supervisor would let me in and some other lady came to greet me and she asked if I was there seeking emergency services. 

I have officially let myself go, guys. I look like I am a homeless, jobless, adolescent with addiction problems. Erryday. 

Yesterday in class one girl I don’t like got into a screaming match with another girl I don’t like, so I looked at my friend Lilly who promptly responded with an absolute dead pan:

“Imma smack a bitch, I just don’t know which one.”

It’s my new life motto. 

Tonight, we had elections for Communications, Politics, and Law Association. In order to get elected I gave my speech, my opponent gave her speech and then we both left the room while the entire organization made pro and con lists about us. 

I’m trying to imagine what mine consisted of. 

Pros:
-She can recite the first chapter of Philosopher’s Stone
-She can juggle for 7 rotations without dropping anything
-She once did an entire reenactment of Sunday in the Park with George by herself

Cons:
-She always keeps plastic water bottles with the intention of reusing, and then loses them
-She does not even have the instrumental skill to play adequate air guitar
-She doesn’t understand where L.L. Bean Boots fall under “seasonally appropriate footwear”

If I had to assess myself, I think that’s what it would look like.

Hours worked: 4
Live performances seen: 0

Quote of the day: “I am afraid of getting older … I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day—spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free…. I want, I want to think, to be omniscient…. I think I would like to call myself ‘The girl who wanted to be God.’” -Sylvia Plath

Back Up and Turn Around (BEDA #4)

You guys want to hear the Internet’s worst first world problem? My MacBook Pro still won’t turn on, and my iPhone is running out of battery, but I can’t find the charger, so I have to blog on my iPad.

It takes me a long time to type, okay?!

Tonight I want to discuss underwear and boobs. But, really.

I am notorious for not doing laundry. Seriously, I am the worst. So, sometimes after a month of neglecting to take care of the rapidly growing pile of clothes in the middle of my dorm room, I find myself without any underwear or bras to wear.

The underwear is easy enough to solve in the event that laundry is out of the question: just don’t wear any. The way I see it, if no one knows you’re not wearing underwear then you may as well be wearing underwear. But the bra problem is slightly harder to fix.

Don’t get me wrong, I think boobs are awesome, but sometimes I’m in situations where I just don’t need them to the extent that I have them… If you catch me.

Today, my bra supply was running dangerously low and so I was forced to wear a bra that really hasn’t fit me properly since… tenth grade? And I’m trying to smash these two big protruding domes of fat into a padded wire cup which is much too small and I’m also late for work and so I don’t have the time to make sure everything is… put together.

Long story short, I get to work and a parent of a kid on tour says to her daughter (under the assumption I cannot hear her), “When you go to college, your breasts will not be doing that.”

And okay, I get it. Boobs should not be hanging out, but it’s not like I was flashing a bunch of potential college students. And second of all, I know your daughter’s double AA breasts will not be doing this when she goes to college because quite frankly, they couldn’t. I think my boobs are awesome, and no, I don’t need to whip them out to prove that, but at the same time, whenever I’m a little less than put together it would be great if people didn’t assume I was on a seduction scheme.

I’ve got boobs. And I’m not trying to put them in your face, and I’m not going to hate you for noticing them, because that’s dumb, but don’t hate me for having things that I did nothing to acquire. They just kind of came with the package.

This is not a call for feminism, this is just a… Dude-shut-up-I-KNOW-I-need-to-do-laundry-you-don’t-have-to-be-mean-ism.

This is what BEDA is all about. Letting you guys know all of the shit you didn’t need to know.

Hours worked: 4
Live performances seen: 0

Quote of the day: “She’s a symbol of resistance and she’s holding on my heart like a hand grenade.” -Peeta talking to Caesar about Katniss (Or it’s She’s a Rebel, Greenday)

A Soft Green Pillow (BEDA #3)

Sometimes there is nothing you want more in the world than your mommy. 

This is one of those times. 

I’m irritable, I’m stressed, I’m exhausted, I’m not very pleasant, and all I want is for my mommy to tell me that it’s going to be okay. 

Now, to be fair, my mom is not the type of mother to do that. Her version of “it’s going to be okay,” sounds more like, “Kassandra, you need to get your shit together.” But even that is comforting in a strange way. 

I keep trying to explain to people how I’m feeling lately, and this is the best I can come up with: 

I feel like I’m wearing a really ugly coat that I can’t take off because it’s absolutely freezing outside. Except that I’m not outside. I’m inside. I can tell that the coat is the appropriate choice for the weather outside, and rationally I know that I will be pleased to have the coat in the event that I have to go outside. But the other part of me is slouching in a huge coat that is awful and horrid and I’m starting to get hot inside of it and I feel panicky because it’s starting to make me feel like I can’t get out, but at the same time, I just keep wearing it because I might need it someday! 

I’m not sure what emotion that metaphor is representing, but it’s one of the many things inside of me right now. 

Apart from wanting my mommy and wearing metaphorical coats, I’ve been destroying my hands, lately. It’s something I used to do when I was younger. I would bite my nails until they bled and today I realized that I had hurt my hands so badly that I winced every time I had to put them in my pocket. 

I am a perpetual nine year old. 

OH. I finished my re-read of The Hunger Games series, today. I still don’t hate Mockingjay like everyone else seems to. I will say, I think the main problem with it, is that Katniss literally blacks out at the end of EVERY chapter. And like, yeah, maybe it’s a good transition once or twice, but after that it’s like… the world is fuzzy, again?! Anyway. 

If I’m being honest with you, I haven’t slept in about 36 hours, so I’m going to go sleep. Sorry this blog was shit. I’ll be better tomorrow. <3

Hours I’ve worked: 2
Live performances I’ve seen: 0

Quote of the day: “I may not save the universe, but to me you’re first.” -Have a Good Life Rose, Lizzie Russo

Lift Your Load (BEDA #2)

How am I already at the: I-don’t-have-the-time-to-blog! stage?

I am currently in a boy’s room. We’re doing speech homework. Instead of actually blogging, I am going to make a list of things within my line of sight that contribute to making this room smell rancid.

1. Two day old beef-based Chinese food
2. Leftover Mexican food
3. Spilled duck sauce
4. Spoiled Mac and Cheese
5. Molding coffee

This is gross.

I find that when I actually have things to blog about, I don’t have time to narrate things.

So, in the plainest terms possible: today I slept through work, cried in my professor’s office, received a phone call from my grandfather (not the dead one), and found out that a plane ticket has been purchased in my name to go to London in August. And it wasn’t a mistake.

So, uh, party not-in-the-USA?

No, honestly, I am so thankful and grateful and beyond excited. I can’t wait to tell you all more details about my trip, once I sort them out.

Alas, now I leave to do my speech project. With a creepy cut-out of Taylor Lautner over my shoulder.

Hours I’ve worked: 0 (BECAUSE I SLEPT THROUGH MY SHIFT, UGHHHH)
Live performances I’ve seen: 0

Quote of the day: “Please don’t tell me I can’t make it. It ain’t gonna do me any good.” -Magdalena, Brandon Flowers 

(I just put my iPod on shuffle and that was the first line of the first song that came on. How great, right?!)

The Water is Rising (BEDA #1)

Welcome to April, lovelies. If I had any self control, this is not a thing I would be writing, but it feels too wrong to abstain from BEDA. It’s tradition. Today’s blog comes to you in three parts.  

Part 1: Technical problems. 

Part 2: That really personal piece of information I’ve wanted to share with you guys all week.

Part 3: A response to a blog post that Kayley wrote the other day.

One: My computer won’t turn on. I have to reinstall OSX, but the cd is at my house, so I have to take it to the Apple store, which I absolutely cannot do till Tuesday night. My schedule is so full I want to spit. As I write this, I am on a ten hour bus ride from DC to Boston typing on an iPad listening to Sunday in the Park with George. 

Two: On March 25 my great-grandfather died. I am not experienced with death, but when my favorite book characters or television characters die, I fall into funks for days. So if you apply that knowledge to the death of a man who raised me, lived with me, and supported me endlessly, then you begin to understand that this week has been really hard. 

The reason why it’s getting to me so badly is that a few weeks before I left for school, I almost pulled my Emerson acceptance because I knew my grandfather was going to die while I was away and I wanted to be home when it happened. And then when I saw him at Christmas he remembered my name and that I was in Boston, even though everything else was slipping. I swear, all I wanted was for him to hold on till Summer, but he was so sick and he needed to die. Next weekend I am going home for the funeral.

Okay, that was personal. More personal than I get with the Internet, but if you wanted to know, now you know. 

Three: In the last episode of Unblock the Smiletrap I mentioned that I was beginning to feel dissatisfied with the Internet. I said I didn’t know how long I’d be vlogging. This is a very real concern for me, so Kayley’s blog post about this topic is something I really want to respond to. 

Whenever vloggers are asked how long they see themselves continuing to vlog they always respond that they will continue to vlog as long as it continues to be fun and with all due respect, I think that’s bullshit. My videos toe the line between personal and professional. They are conversational, but they are topical. I am a partner, albeit a very small-scale one, and therefore YouTube can’t be all about fun anymore. It’s about networking and feeling important and connecting to people, but fun isn’t a huge factor for me anymore. I like talking, but I hate filming. I don’t like to worry about HD video or lighting or jump cuts. I just want to talk to people. 

I used to want to be “noticed” and have some sort of clout, but the last five years have certainly quelled that desire. I have fantastic friends. It is true that people I don’t know on the Internet are frequently beyond sweet to me. But for some reason the pieces that always stick are the assholes. I’m not talking about people who participate in discussion, I’m talking about people who always have to have the last word and who feel the need to make vloggers feel like shit and the people who have made this HOBBY feel like a JOB. 

I shouldn’t be “putting up” with my viewers. I am not fat, I am not ugly, I am not ignorant, I am not ungrateful. And most of all, I am very lucky to be friends with wonderful people, but I would like to think that they are equally lucky to be friends with me. I am smart, capable, relatively attractive, and I try my hardest to be the best friend I can be. And this is not a paragraph I want to type out in response to every mean comment I get or every anonymous tumblr question I get. It’s not worth it. 

I don’t know how long I’ll be vlogging. The reality is that I barely have time to sleep and eat right now with everything else I’m doing. Some of my best friends haven’t heard from me in weeks. I am not planning to quit vlogging, but I will also never apologize if I can’t make a video every week. 

I want people to watch. I want people to comment. I want you to send my channel to your friends. But I don’t want all of that at the expense of myself.  

I think maybe I’m just going through an internal crisis. The busyness and the grandpa and the Internet bitchiness… I got some struggz. 

And with this really fucking long ramble over: Welcome to April, assholes.

Respond to this blog in any way you wish.

Hours I’ve worked: 0
Live performances I’ve seen: 0 

Quote of the day: “I’d rather suffocate with you than breathe alone.” Don’t Breathe, Robert Borden