All art is at once surface and symbol

Sorry I haven't been updating much. I just can't really think of anything to update with, you know? Other than I'm starting to get horrible dreams again. My psychologist calls them "anxiety dreams." I think that's accurate. The first dream involved a screaming match between me and my boyfriend about Homestuck, with me acting like my whiny days in Sonic fandom (him being an ex-fan, me challenging him for why he thinks Andrew Hussie is a douchebag). I hope to get into contact with him today, just to be sure our relationship is stable. 'Cause we never, ever yell at each other. And I consider it a good thing.

The other dream was mainly about Mom. ( Lord knows that always ends well. )

Yeah, I'm sure you guys don't want to see entry after entry like this either. Nobody likes a person who is sad all the time.

So um... you remember the Halloween meme where you guys assigned me to do tricks? I don't think I can fulfill them this year. Drama has hit my life like a runaway truck and I'm trying to regain my bearings.

I'm staying at Dave's while Dad goes to San Antonio to change medicine to Mom. Dear god I hope it works for her this time. I can't handle another one of her manic episodes again.

Another day, another teeth-gnashing brush-in with my mother. Today I thought it would be better if she got out of my life. When I realized that, I cried.

I've got to stop reading 50 Shades for a while. Not only do I fear it's affecting my writing what little I've done anyway (I almost typed, "and my subconcious agreed" and I cringed) it truly upsets me that this tedious creepy novel is put on the pedestal as something revolutionary, ground-breaking and feminist when it isn't. I was able to cope with it with Twilight, 'cause it's an easy comedy target and I couldn't get past the first chapter of the first book without getting bored. But I'm up to Chapter 16 of 50 Shades, and somehow it crawls MUCH more under my skin, probably due to me actually reading the material than other people's commentary/sporks/MSTs on it.

Is fandom a vocal minority? Because everything I learned about writing smut came from the Internet and fanfiction, not published novels. In fact, I often prefer fanfiction smut to "official" erotica. Usually in the former, the prose is better and between characters I was connected with and grew to know and love, not Alpha Dude and Gorgeous Virgin who have Mills & Boon sessions once every chapter. Plus they introduced me to a whole world of kinks. The bad smutfic were also easier to make fun of and laugh at for the same reason.

I guess what's really getting under my skin is that people are still under the impression that women can't enjoy porn ever (I hate the term "mommy porn"), and it makes me want to wave my arms and cry, "Are you blind!?" The people lauding 50 Shades for being ZOMG SOOOOOO KINKY!11!!11 would be fucking shocked if they were introduced to the fanfiction archives of the Internet. Even if you leave the Internet out of the equation, it amazes me how much people just don't read. Lady Chatterly's Lover? Fanny Hill? Do those books suddenly not exist anymore? The Story of O and the works of Anaïs Nin existed LONG before E.L. James stepped into the scene as "ZOMG A WOMAN WHO WROTE A FAMOUS EROTICA NOVEL!11!1!" Even shitty bestselling erotica beat her to the spot; o hai, Anne Rice and the Beauty trilogy.

When a hotel replaces copies of the Bible with 50 Shades, you know we've got a problem.

The series is spreading like goddamn HIV. This wouldn't bother me so much if everyone acknowledged this was just fantasy, but 50 Shades treats the abusive relationship between Ana & Christian as the ideal, and tons of women reading the books believe it. They truly believe Christian is this amazing and wonderful hunk because he acts like a serial killer. They think they'll be able to find their own "bad boy" and "change" him. And if he doesn't, they blame themselves because women should be responsible and obey their man.

Jesus. Either men must be douchebags to be seen as desirable by fangirls, or every single one of them is an evil rapist. I'll rant about that double standard another day.

Each time I think of giving up writing, I look up and see shit like 50 Shades and House of Night being best-sellers, and I feel like Peter Parker after he tried to quit being Spiderman in the second movie. But the way my family life has been going, I barely sum up the energy and I feel like shit. Whee.

It's bad when you're afraid to leave your room because if your mother sees you, she'll talk to you.

Usually, I look at my journal, and when I think about what to type, all that comes up is, "Where do I begin?"

A. I'm still alive.

B. My computer is still on the verge of breaking apart and still needs fixing. So I'm behind on MLP: FiM and HS, no need to tell me.

C. I have a trillion things to rant about (ex. the censorship of Derpy Hooves no thanks to SJWs, anime is a medium and not a genre and you're not magically "superior" because you hate anime, the ZOMG-Beauty-and-the-Beast-promotes-Stockholm-Syndrome argument is trite and old and I'm sick of hearing it (and no, it doesn't make you ~edgy~ to realize dark truths about Disney either), blah blah I'm fed up with idiots in general) and too exhausted to go through them all.

D. I still have Writer's Block and I beat myself constantly over it.

E. Might as well get into one of my rants from C. I fucking hate it whenever I tell people I have Writer's Block and I haven't been able to write anything for months, they tell me to "take a break for a while." Did you even hear what I fucking told you? "Not being able to write" means not being able to fucking write. At all. By telling me to take a break, you're implying that I've been working and typing, which I've been trying to tell you is absolutely not true. You're making it sound like I've been straining my brain by staring at a blank page when in reality I haven't opened Microsoft Word or a notebook in months because I feel like absolute shit. You wouldn't tell a person sitting at the beach doing nothing to "take a break" would you? That would be like telling an unemployed person who wished they had a job to "quit working so hard." It's a fucking kick in the teeth, and don't make me feel like doing the same to you if I talk about how I'm still stuck in my rut.

F. I really hope I move into Dad's office soon. I can only take one more day of listening to Dad yell at someone on the phone or Mom bitch and verbally abuse and drill Dad while he's screaming at her to shut up and yeah my brain just shut down. I feel under so much pressure and my thoughts get clouded and I feel so fucking depressed.

G. Saw Secret World of Arrietty, which is good, but that's to be expected of Studio Ghibli. ( One little complaint about the ending though. )

H. Played and finished SA1. Was going to type in detail about my replay, but right now I don't give a fuck.

I. I've been upset for months (one of the reasons being the Block) and the little things make me madder/sadder than usual. I'm at the end of my rope and I'm already aware there's a trillion things wrong with me, okay?

I've been staying at Mom & Dad's again due to A. Dave's uncle passed away and he wanted the apartment for himself for a few days. B. There's drama going on with Alicia, a troublesome roommate that's been getting under the skin of everybody involved, so it was best I was out of it. Aside from a blow-up Mom and I had (she thought I was coming home for good when it was actually supposed to be for the night, so that made her upset because she missed me. She apologized though! :o) it's better than it originally was at home, even though there's still some tangles. Mom and I even worked together on making a chicken dinner (and without fighting!)

My parents and I gathered together to watch Sweeney Todd in Concert (starring George Hearn and Patti LuPone, and Neil Patrick Harris as Tobias), and they loved it which makes me seriously happy. It's my favorite Sweeney cast thus far (I still have to hear the entirety of the 2005 Revival soundtrack, which LuPone is also in. :3) and eeeeee. Mom was even crying at the end because she was thinking about what a brilliant, talented genius Sondheim is. THEATER MEMORIES AHOY. I miss when my parents used to go to the theater all the time and take me with them. We've been kinda doing that (Dad got a couple small parts in The Full Monty musical, which is okay but not nearly as heartwarming as the original film), and I got to see a great performance of Rocky Horror with James last year, but going to Sweeney this year was such a total bomb I left at intermission. :( (Which was why I wanted to pop in Sweeney Todd in Concert in the first place~ ♥)

Speaking of theater, can anyone recommend me a decent live-stage performance (if it's recorded and I could rent it on DVD or watch it on YouTube, of course. I know how tricky this sort of thing can be with theater) of Oscar Wilde's plays, such as The Importance of Being Earnest? I know I can read them, but as I've learned with Shakespeare in high school and college, plays are meant to be seen, not read. :(

Dad found me several ancient copies of books while clearing out boxes from the garage today! :o

- The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. Which I've read long ago and remembered, of course~ ♥ It's good to see it again though. :o HELO THAR DAHL. YOU WILL ALWAYS BE MY FRIEND AND MUSE AND INSPIRATION.
- The Portable Oscar Wilde. Just when I borrowed The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde from the library! :o It doesn't have everything, of course, but it turns out we had our own copy of Dorian Gray all along. Dang. It also has most of De Profundis, and this book is a fifth printing from 1955, so it wasn't allowed to publish the whole letter until 1960. :o I'm gonna read stuff from the Complete Collection that isn't in the Portable before I have to return it to the library, such as Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (recommended to me by Sarah~ ♥) and The Canterville Ghost, which is actually a LOT like Tim Burton's Beetlejuice at first. So I've heard. :o GEE I WONDER IF I'M ON AN OSCAR WILDE KICK.
- The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. Which I've never heard of, but Dad says it's an incredible classic. I'll take his word for it, then!
- A book so faded I had to open it to see what it was. Turns out it's Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales! :o
- Fanny Hill aka John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. HOLY SNAP, FANNY HILL. WE HAVE AN UNCUT COPY OF FANNY HILL. I'm keeping this nice and safe on my bookshelf so I can read it after I've finished some of my other books, buwahahahaha. X3

In return for his generosity, I'm letting my Dad borrow Maurice. I'll have to keep an eye on him though, 'cause A. I want to be sure he actually reads the thing. B. I don't want him to lose it. Just now, I found he placed Maurice in a random place, and I had to take it back to my room for safekeeping until he's back from work. Dad has a habit of leaving his books strewn around, so they either go missing, get damaged or both. Dad needs to take good care of Maurice or else he owes me a new copy. >(

I could try reading it to him, though. We used to read to each other, like when Dad read The Little Prince in French and "translated" the sentences to English. Except whenever I try to read Dad a book I've read he's not familiar with, it doesn't tend to go very well. The time I tried to read him Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman? Completely backfired. He didn't even laugh at the jokes I thought he might find funny. :( Either he's tired or distracted or busy, and then when I ask him what he thought, he'd give a generic response, and by the next day he's forgotten everything I've read him. :( It's like the only books I can read him are the ones he's already read and liked.

Maybe that's why we fell out of reading together. :(

It's always been so difficult for me to try to recommend books and poetry, since I try to read them out loud to people (and it's not like I read with a friggin' wooden monotone at a snail's pace like my old classmates at English do), and they'd be distracted or uninterested, and I'd be worried to heck that I'm boring them to death and putting them off the very thing I thought they'd enjoy. It's mainly the distraction that bugs me, and it makes me feel that I'm unimportant and so is what I'm trying to share. Like, my parents get excited when I tell them that Maurice is probably my favorite book that I've read this year. So I read the synopsis on the back of my copy to tell them what it's about and what made this book so amazing and ahead of its time. What do they concentrate on? Not that it was written in the early 1910s and couldn't be published until 1971 due to its subject matter and giving its homosexual characters a happy ending. Not that it was just as challenged as Lady Chatterley's Lover or Fanny Hill. All they talk about is "Oh, Howard's End!" "Howard's End!" "I remember that now! That was kind of dull." And they would not stop rambling about Howard's End. I haven't read E.M. Forster's other books, but I'm not interested in them. I don't care about Howard's End, or your opinions about Howard's End, I want to talk about Maurice. And I wonder why I'm discouraged about sharing things I like sometimes. :/

Good thing I decided I'd hate being a teacher. I'd be the type of obnoxious English teacher who would make kids read a bunch of banned books and classics like Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm and they'd hate me for being forced to analyze them and be put off those books forever. The ol' "If they hadn't made me read it in school, I probably would've liked it better" scenario. :P

This post is turning bitter, so I'll end it here. I gotta take a shower. :o

So Mom and Dad tend to have a massive blow-up argument at least once a night or so. I've been blocking them the best that I could, but lately, it's like it's pervaded the entire mood of the house and I feel myself cracking.

Anyone who knows me knows I don't do well under conflict. At all.

Lately, Mom and I have been fighting a lot. Just yesterday, we snapped at each other, I called her a bitch (and I typically never, ever, curse in front of my family) and this led to punishment and even more angry spats between us. We've finally cooled down and apologized, but not after yet another fight.

By the way. My Mom had an eye examination, and she has cataracts. Which can't be removed by surgery.

Our lives just keep getting better and better, don't they?

I'm going to see a psychologist on Tuesday, because for the past several months, I've been very, very unhappy. And with these past few weeks, it's just getting worse. I've lost interest in video games, music, Internet and other typical things I like, and any excitement I get like getting to a con, playing a new game I've been curious about, hanging out with James and friends or getting new plushies, etc... it all sinks like a stone and I don't feel hyped anymore and I sit there with muddied clouds in my head. Pretty much all that I look forward to is sleeping, because I feel too depressed to do anything. Which unfortunately doesn't last long.

It's bad enough I rarely go on AIM or moan on LJ or talk to friends anymore because I feel like I'll just annoy them to death by whining about the same subject over and over again. I feel like eventually, they'll get tired of me and tell me to get up and stop complaining and do something about it and I'll say I honestly don't know. Then they'd give up on me because I'm always sad and hopeless and don't want to be friends anymore. I know it's ridiculous and I know my closest friends wouldn't think of me that way, but somehow the thought lingers and it sticks to me like a tumor. I know it's unhealthy. I just don't want to feel like I'm bothering people I care about and pushing them all away.

My Writer's Block has hit an all-time low (more like, deeper than scum), and when I actually sat down to write/type something, it's so fucking bland and horrible and a trillion things wrong that I'm ashamed of myself and hate my writing even more. I couldn't even describe what a certain room looks like, but I spent eight entire pages in my notebook with all my worries and fears and nitpicks and basically anything that can or has already gone wrong with my novel, which is more than I've ever written in well... forever. And that's just pathetic. Which I planned to type in my journal, but I'm crying too much right now, and if I try typing it all up now, I'll be reduced to a blubbering mess again. Not that anyone cares about how I'm doing on my book anyway. I don't even know if I'll even bother typing up those pages after all, I always get so distracted.

I could read something, but I can't concentrate on anything without feeling frustrated and thinking about everything else but the book itself. I'm taking a break from American Psycho, got bored with American Gods (I was disappointed how sparse Gaiman's description of House on the Rock was, and his writing style in general felt dry) and now I'm trying to read Maurice by E.M. Forster (Finally! A homosexual relationship between men with a happy ending!), except I have no idea if I'll be able to get through it because at one or two parts, the main character tries to "cure his homosexuality" through therapy (it fails, but still), which is one of my Berserk Buttons regarding LGBT literature and I don't know if I can make it through without getting irrationally angry and... I don't know. I feel like the littlest things are setting me off right now, which makes it hard for me to read.

To make things worse, my family's running low on money (AGAIN), so I don't get as many sessions with my psychologist as I did the last time I needed him (I think around before I started college), which means it's only about 45 minutes a session. Where do I even start? How much longer will I have and how much can we afford? Will I even be able to tell him everything? What if I miss telling him something important and then it's already too late? Mom said she wants to help by making a list of things I can talk to him about, but I am so horrible at organization and so picky about trying to remember every single thing that I don't think it's going to help.

In short, I'm a clusterfuck.

It's one thing if your computer-illiterate mother wants to borrow your computer to do her HSN/QVC shopping. But the more she uses my computer to "practice", the more uncomfortable I get. I never ever agreed to be mom's "teacher" in the first place, and I don't want her to be messing with my laptop to the point she makes it crash or else delete something extremely important. Then you wake up to something like this:

Me: *gets up from bed, hears the "Bad Boys" song, wonders if the TV is on*
Music: *switches to the Title Theme from Philosophy of a Knife, whose soundtrack is exactly what you want your family to stumble upon*
Mom: *absolutely clueless* *holding the laptop with iTunes on*
Me: *runs like hell to click the stop button* What are you doing!? Don't touch my music!
Mom: *still clueless* How do you get Talking Heads to play?

Great. Now I activate certain keys on the keyboard and it brings up different programs/windows. Mom is wrecking my computer. When the hell are we going to install Mom's desktop so she'll stop ruining my laptop and invading my privacy? brb, backing up my novel and fanfiction before months and months of work gets fucking decimated no thanks to her.

...And the minute I need a memory stick, all of them go missing and I can't find any of them. This is off to a brilliant fucking start!

I just finished a fanfic inspired by Cupcakes. Yeeeeeeeah. It's about Zee-Tee from Eversion and Pinkie Pie eating cupcakes together. And it gets worse. (NSFW for violence and cannibalism)

wtf self. wtf. Get back to writing consensual sex between pixellated sprites plz.

Mom and I watched Clockwork Orange last night. Nom.

So um... stuff. My cousin's wedding was a success! It was fun and light-hearted, and not your traditional wedding either, according to my Mom and relatives. There was boogie-ing down the aisle and later everyone had a nice party and dinner at the recession. When it was time for the bouquet toss, Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies" was playing as the signal. :o

House on the Rock was so worth it! Mom and my brother and I had to hurry so we could have the full tour before it closed, but what I got to see was wow. I'd totally go again to catch what I've missed! Like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. :o There was a room where newspaper articles of major disasters like the Hindenburg Disaster and the sinking of the Titanic were hung on their own frames. It was kind of spooky, especially when you were surrounded by happy, lighthearted aircraft memorabilia. :o

( Tour of House on the Rock beneath the cut! Photos inside! :D )

Edit: And after spending an hour organizing my pictures, nearly my entire post got cut off. D: dhgkjsghkjdsghkjdgh I have more House on the Rock stuff though, nom. Apparently I'm lacking sleep because I don't know how the hell I suddenly lost half of everything. D: