These things happen

I liked The Tree of Life

I’m not going to rave about it being the greatest thing ever because OMG THE TROPES?! HOW ABOUT WHAT TERENCE MALICK DID WITH THE THREES?! THREE BROTHERS! THREE POINTS IN TIME! HOLY TRINITY, BATMAN!

I just know I was happy sitting there knowing I didn’t have to look for a plot, and enjoying the blockbuster quality heaved onto the shoulders of the disjointed art-house screenplay. I mean, it’s called The Tree of Life for Christ’s sake! It begins with an attempt to comprehend death; of course it goes nowhere! This is a movie trying to say everything and in effect telling you absolutely nothing (e.g. with condolences: “These things happen. Well, at least you still have the other two.”). And yet, somehow succeeding at getting a message across, whether or not it was the intended message (e.g. with condolences: “We’re still here”). In trying to comprehend the unknown, it is possible to come to greater conclusions about what you do know and what is right in front of you. I’m not a religious person, but isn’t that what prayer is?

I saw The Tree of Life in a near-empty theater, with the few people behind me ready to condemn it as “pretentious” or boring or aimless, people who supplied unnecessary dialogue for moments that were meant to be held in silence. People who’d answer their phones or make inane small talk because there wasn’t enough of it happening in the movie. There wasn’t enough of a plot to follow, so the best solution would be to retreat to your own. Talk about where you’re going for dinner afterwards. Or how much better Brad Pitt was in Benjamin Button.

It is in attempting to constantly break the silence–to draw a plan within a scheme that’s so vast and so much larger than your self or the tiny spark, within the endlessness of the universe, you call a lifetime–that you realize how arrogant it is to even pretend there’s an answer for everything, to think we can come to terms with the finality of death by understanding what happened. Two and a half hours later, it stops becoming about what happened but the conclusions you draw from what you do know and your acceptance of the things you’ll never find.

In which we invent the Penis repellent, otherwise known as the Dickflector

Before we go any further into slut-shaming territory, I would like to say that I’m not a fan of slut-shaming. I am however, a fan of culling the race, and your girlfriend is not only a whore, but she’s got some huge non-problems you might want to look into, case in point:

OVERHEARD

Girl A: Yiiihheeee so what are you and (boyfriend) doing on your anniversary?

Girl B: Oh…yeah…he wants to come down to Manila and celebrate, and I wasn’t supposed to know about it, I mean, it was, like, supposed to be a surprise but then (friend of boyfriend) told me.

Girl A: Eh that’s so sweet kaya! Why do you make it sound like something’s wrong?

Girl B: Well, how am I supposed to tell (guy on the side) that we can’t spend the weekend together?

I’m not one for objectifying women and recommending that men “test the merchandise” before buying (yuck, who even came up with that?), but there are some really awful cunts out there getting a lot of action and just being…for lack of a better term, cuntacular. Like, I hate to break it to you, but your girlfriend might be an STD farm, and you should both get checked. I guess this is okay if you’re both assholes, but if you’re both assholes, and you’re planning to procreate, then you’re just populating the world with your asshole genes. We don’t need anymore of your asshole genes! People like you should come with deflectors, or alarms. Any kind of warning sign.

And you lady, your vagina should come with a forcefield, we’ll call it the dick deflector, Dickflector (TM) for trade purposes. My email account is as wide open to designs for this future product, just as your thighs are wide open to those two poor dudes you’re shamelessly stringing along.

Signed,

In College I:

Was friendly enough, but didn’t have a lot of friends
Spent too much time on livejournal
Had a boyfriend
Watched a lot of gigs
Slept in the library on top of a stack of books I swore I would read one day, hoping to absorb their contents via osmosis
Was not quite sure how osmosis worked
Would leave school during a 2-hour lunch break, touchdown in another city 4 stops down on the train, then head right back.

In Grad School/As a College Teacher, I:

Didn’t have a lot of friends, still
Got paid to blog
Single as all fuckery
Suddenly lost my appetite for live music. Trying to work it up again in time for The National. Not sure if that’s gonna happen because I’m going to Korea in October and I’ll probably be too broke or too tired to deal with anything besides my obligation (?) to get myself tenured.
I’m still not sure if I know how osmosis works