[...::Buggy::...]

Finally figured out how to open comments on my posts and keep them open. Apparently WordPress loves to assume I no longer want any of my previous entries commented on after a week. I may be an avid user of the Internet, but I’m not nearly as fickle. In any case, after my vicious ranting and airing out of dirty laundry in the previous post, I figured it was time for a breath of fresh air.

Let’s talk about crushes.

Ooooh yeah.

So Larry introduced me to one of his fellow soldiers in his unit, and hot damn he is fine. We’ve been talking casually for a while, via letters, Facebook, and texts, and this forthcoming Superbowl Weekend he wants us to hang out. I think he would be a marvelous change of pace from the skinny pretty boys I’m used to spending time with. And honestly, I’m not really interested in pursuing anything serious just yet…I just kind of need a break from the heartache and stress, and he has agreed to help me stop my habit of ‘cradle robbing’ (omg it was one guy, and he turned out to be a bratty asshole).

You should see me turning cartwheels with the dumbest grin on my face.

 

[...::An Address of Vituperation::...]

This post is super long, so you might want to grab some snacks.

I’ve had to put up with a lot of next level bullshit from people I call friends over the past few years. And this is kind of a double-edged blade since without these people, I wouldn’t be learning some valuable life lessons, but simultaneously, I have to put up with the headache of realizing I wasted a lot of my good company keeping these folks around. And since I don’t feel obligated to give a fuck, I will list them by name as the rant continues.

Now, I don’t claim to be a perfect, shining example of human nature. I don’t claim to be one whose moral compass is always pointing in the right direction, but it is pointing in the correct general direction. In other words, my heart is in the right place–according to common sense.

Anyway, let’s start with ex-friend numbers one and two: Laurel and Elisha. Now we came together in the most peculiar fashion.  We all had a mutual interest in text-based role-play, particularly of the AD&D genre, but we also had a mutual enemy who had screwed us over in some kind of way. This is old news, so I’ll rehash as I go along. Now, Elisha was dating Larry, who was the guy we all came to loathe due to his fickle handling of friendships. She misunderstood that he did not want to date her on a long-term basis, and got butthurt over the fact that he was seeing other people. Laurel had her own issues, but it was mainly due to Larry’s ex-squeeze and apparently my “archenemy”, Kitt, stealing her writing and passing it off as her own creative genius. Once Laurel found this out, the beast was unleashed—or rather, she jocked my swagger and fashioned this online superbitch persona that was totally unheard of when I knew her before we became close.

Now, the three of us were close for the better part of two or three years. We played together, wrote together, laughed together every night. Elisha started getting ghost on us towards the end of the Trinity, and so we assumed she’d come back when her life wasn’t as hectic. As it turns out, we decided to finally all meet up at Dragon*Con in 2008 (you can read up on it a few pages back, I believe), and solidify what I thought was a concrete friendship. Unfortunately, the online personalities they displayed turned out to be anything but self-assured and confident in themselves. Both girls were socially awkward, passive, and just in general our personalities clashed in person, but we still managed to have a great time. In any case, the two of them decided to move in together into a cute townhouse somewhere in the Bible Belt. I encouraged this, as it meant I had an excuse to go out of town–this was me thinking our friendship was due to continue.

From Right: Elisha, me, and Laurel. 'nough said.

Now, before I go on any further, I want to explain that during our entire time at Dragon*Con, I got more attention than I thought was necessary. I don’t know if it was because I was one of the few black individuals there, or because I was one of the most attractive individuals, or because I was loud and drunk most of the time–whatever the case may be, it was clear I was not the stereotypical socially inept online geek, and from the pictures taken, (see left) I was definitely the odd woman out…but that’s my ego talking.

Anyway, after they moved in, I understood that it would be hectic trying to settle down and find new jobs to begin their new life together, so I didn’t pressure them to continue writing with me for a while, and on the rare occasions they did have time, I always invited them, to which they responded with “too busy” or “too tired” (and then proceeded to sit online all day and night). I, like a fool, didn’t realize what was going on. I didn’t pick up on their blow-with-the-wind mentality. Anyone I fought with, they didn’t hesitate to bash in IMs with me, and I was steadily being ousted from the Trinity I brought together, and in my naivete, I didn’t realize that their social insecurities had begun to manifest. They didn’t want to write with me anymore because they felt I overshadowed them whenever other people joined us. I was usually the one doing all the talking, telling all the jokes, or yelling at people who heckled us in our forums, but I never once sought to overshadow their own talent. If I didn’t think they were as talented or better than me in some way, I wouldn’t have wasted two years of my life creating a storyline for our characters. But like I said, that’s old news.

We fell out.

After that, I moved on rather quickly, and surprisingly, Larry and I reconciled. It took a while for us to finally say ‘fuck what everyone else thinks’ and do it, but we did, and now we’re closer than ever. He’s dating one of my good friends, Crystal, who also hosts my website, Viperinae. She’s the nicest person I have ever seen in my life, and Larry is just plain dumb (sometimes he can be smart). But anyway, after that, I made an attempt to reconcile with Laurel and Elisha, thinking that just maybe they had gotten over their insecurities enough to resume what I thought to be a fantastic friendship. But how fantastic could it have been if they were able to go from being like sisters to me one minute, and treating me like a complete and total stranger the minute things went sour? I mean, even after our reconciliation–which I think it was mostly me doing the reconciling and them kind of looking down their noses and judging as usual–I realized that I had spent so much time outside of the box we used to be in together that I realized just how empty our friendship really was.

Elisha masks her social insecurities with this undeserving high-horse haughtiness that makes her come off as condescending and bitter–to the point where she actually pointed fingers are me for reconciling with Larry, whom I’m assuming she is still hung up on for only dating her butterhead self for a piece of tail (she gave him head, but continuously made the ‘little dick’ insults when we would go into Larry-bashing sessions as friends), and Laurel, as I said, fashioned this superbitch persona that she knows wasn’t her until she saw that I was regulating fools in the RP community. In any case, I have distanced myself away from them enough that their shit doesn’t even reach me anymore.

Larry and I finally got to hang out, and he spent the night at my place after I helped him in a bind. He’s in the Army now, so that means we’ll be talking about military shit most of the time, but he’s like a brother to me.

Now, here’s an interlude: I want to explain Kitt to you people, as she plays a huge role in the next part of this rant. Kitt is another roleplayer in the community. Now, we started off as casual friends, who occasionally played together, but we had a few issues. Apparently, she swore I was trying to be her, and that all my characters were black versions of hers. I will never understand how Nadja and Absinthe have anything in common other than gender and occupation (that and Kitt’s characters are so shallow I can’t even get my feet wet–Mary Sue Syndrome abound), but this was her thing. She would claim I stole all of her writing and put it on my website. Honestly, if I wanted to steal writing from someone, I would have picked someone who wasn’t stealing their shit from my friend–but that’s just me. Anyway, since 2005 she has been constantly taking pot-shots at me, trying to talk shit about me to others in the RP community, but it backfires because she forgets the more you badmouth someone, the more curious people are going to get and they will eventually come to me and see what all the fuss is about.

This is Kitt. Would you date her based on looks?

And when we finally split in 2007, I didn’t have to do shit for others to see what a horrible fucking person she was. This coupled with the fact that I know more about her than I ever want to know about such a loathsome individual (i.e. she got into Harvard because her dad’s a wealthy alumni, then subsequently flunked out of their psych program and now she’s going to a second-rate law school coasting on her mother’s money). Kitt comes from real life American blue-bloods. Gossip Girl wasn’t far off the mark either. She essentially went from her father running her life (before she flunked out of Harvard) to her mother running her life (now she attends Hastings in California, where she’s probably doing just as bad). Not to mention that she has so many insecurity issues that it makes me sick. She gets jealous when she’s not the center of attention, she is obsessive and possessive of her relationships with other people, to the point where this selfish possessiveness ultimately ruins her relationships with said people, and she constantly looks for a scapegoat as to why she can’t find the happiness she forlornly writes about. Now, I once pitied her, because I thought she was just a mislead rich WASP looking for acceptance (which is funny, considering I’m Nigerian royalty–but that kind of shit doesn’t matter in the US, apparently), and I was willing to get to know her and try and be her friend, and you know, offer advice when I felt she was going the wrong way.

But the bitch is crazy. Stone. Cold. Fuck. Nuts. She has self-loathing issues, delusions of grandeur, and is just in general a person who attempts to rationalize her unhealthy mindset. Not to mention she is hideous. Anyway, she has a habit of fucking her roleplay buddies (both literally and figuratively)–cheating on her ‘boyfriends’ with other ‘boyfriends’,, and then attempting to blame them as to why she’s cheating, which brings me to the next ex-friend: Aaron.

Now, Aaron is in the Air Force, but he doesn’t fly jets. He is a linguist. He translates the guala-guala shit the enemy talks, and provides intel for the soldiers to go in and kick some ass. He told me this when we first started talking, and I was impressed. I no longer speak as many languages since I’ve been “Americanized”, so I gave props to him for being able to do so. In any case, we role-played a lot, and had a good story going for my character Jezebel. This went on and off for about two years, and we talked on the phone a lot, he got deployed, came back, we talked some more. Now comes the irony. He was vacationing in San Francisco while on leave, and by chance who does he meet? Yes. Kitt. By. Chance. My guess is they RPed together, exchanged pics, and ran into each other at the club to make it look like they knew each other in real life to the people they were hanging with, but that’s just me.

In any case, she takes him to her place, and proceeds to fuck him sixteen times in a span of 48 hours. This is not what made me mad. If Kitt wants to be a cheating whore, far be it from me to stop her; if she wants to fuck strangers she just met while on the rag, then far be it from me to casually vomit to the right in disgust. Anyway, after this heated encounter, she apparently wants to see him again, and Aaron proceeds to give me all the gory details about Kitt’s choice in panties, her blowjob technique, and other ridiculous tidbits about this disgusting broad I don’t want to know. Aaron and I discuss sex all the time, but when it comes to someone I know is just a horrible person, I don’t want to know anything about them. It’s just a pet peeve of mine.

They see each other again, and next thing you know, they are in a relationship. Now, here comes the BGC portion. He was texting me, after I let him know a bit about Kitt’s history with Larry and her whole fixation with being the focal point of a love triangle (she also likes threesomes, go figure), that his doubts were gone. What was his rationalization? She cooked him a steak dinner (his words: “You don’t cook a steak dinner for someone you’re ‘just fucking’.”), she gave him a massage with lotion and shit (his words: “You don’t sit for an hour and give a lotion massage to someone you’re ‘just fucking’.”), and they went out to dinner.

Now, even after I told him she was seeing someone else while she was fucking him, and that women treat their fuck buddies very differently from the way men treat theirs, he was already wrapped up in the “Kitt Spell”, which is the same one that ruined Larry and my friendship the first time around. By this time, he was steadily getting over her, and didn’t know that Aaron was the other man until I accidentally let it out on him–he confronted her, and she added that to her list of reasons as to why I was ‘trying to ruin her life’. Trust me, if I wanted to ruin her life…I would have done so. Anyway, after she begins texting me from his phone trying to bait me into another war, I tell Aaron to holla at me when he starts thinking for himself again. He doesn’t respond, and he and Kitt fuck in the sunset.

A year later (yesterday, in fact), I get a random IM from him asking if he can come through Atlanta for a weekend before he gets deployed. His rationalization was that he wasn’t sure if he was going to come back–and I had to stop him right then and there.

First off, he is a fucking Air Force linguist. He will never see combat. Never. He is being deployed from one desk in an air conditioned office to another halfway across the world. That is all. Now, I have real friends in the military who are out there doing the real work, taking real bullets, and losing their lives and limbs for the sake of my freedom and the freedom of the US–so for him to try and use that to get a piece of action was insulting and disgusting. That, coupled with the fact that he literally dropped off the face of my world because Kitt sucked the good sense out through his dick, and he expects me to just be excited as fuck that he’s talking to me again because now he and Kitt are over is just doubly insulting and disgusting. So I ripped him a new one. He still pops up in my IMs, but he is too boring and ugly for me–and once you realize how a person really is, it’s hard to try and pick up where you left off.

Now, let’s move on to the next one: Mr. Todd. Todd was my high school sweetheart. Although he was two years my junior, he treated me a lot better than most of the guys my age ever did. We fell off the face of each other’s world after high school, because I wanted the chance to experience life on my own, and he needed the chance to grow into manhood. We parted on amicable terms. Years later, we come back together–and there are tons of posts about that–and he is a totally different person. While I have learned from all of my bad experiences with relationships with others thus far, he seems to be content to be a liar and a cheater, and then when he gets caught, desperately and feebly tries to rationalize his douchebag mindset. Even after I ripped him a new one several times for attempting to play head games with me (I’m a grown woman, keep messing with Mayima’s head–she’s young and stupid–I know better). So once I realized that he was pretty much a male version of Kitt, I dropped him altogether. I can’t be friends with someone who treats others who care about them with no respect. I don’t care if Mayima believes the lies he’s feeding her, if she knew the truth, she’d drop him too, but I’ll let that one go down in flames on its own.

Anyway, these are the ridiculous people I’ve been putting up with, and so far, I’ve managed to either ignore them or drop them altogether. But here’s the rant:

Why the fuck do you people try so hard to rationalize why you are such a shitty human being? I mean, if I am not the only who has pointed out to you that you suck as a person, maybe you need to take a step away from everyone and do some fucking self-reflection. If you can’t own up to the fact that you are this way because you want to be, and not because someone made you this way, then you need to do us all a favor and sequester yourself from the rest of society. Stop trying to justify your mistreatment or disrespect of others by saying its the other person’s fault, or you’ve been drinking decaffeinated tea, or there’s too much pussy in the world–you are a loathsome fucking person and you know it. Accept it, and at least try and make a change for the better. And most people might fucking say they don’t need society’s acceptance or judgment and that’s a delusional mindset. Unless you want to live your life as a fucking hermit or social outcast, you need to change who you are for the better, you need to learn how to fucking move within the boundaries and standards society has set–and for fuck’s sake, it’s called common sense and common courtesy. Even the most reclusive of individuals can abide by those two golden rules.

 

[...::Floating::...]

My family was in the earthquake in Haiti. I almost lost them. Luckily for me, I didn’t, otherwise I probably would have done something irrational. But now they’re home safe, and the house is full of people again.

Also, I have a small girlie crush on this soldier named Tyson. He’s really cool, but I’m not going to do anything more than talk to him. I don’t think I’m ready to wade back into the shark-churning dating pool again. I’m also going back to school, but I’m doing community college. I don’t understand what the difference is. College is college. So what I’m not wasting thousands of dollars to sleep in a dorm with people I can’t stand, attend events I don’t like, and watch nose-upturned professors lecture while they sit on their tenured asses and grow fat off my life’s savings?

At least I’ll have a degree, which is enough. After all, Harvard isn’t going anywhere and PhD people get respected no matter where they got it from. So I’m cool on the hype that surrounds college. I’ve experienced it, it kicked my ass. Time to lay back and get my education in a relaxed environment.

I guess it's time to adjust.

 

[...::Avatar -- My Thoughts::...]

…my thoughts on Avatar.

Before you read, keep in mind that this movie has been put on my favorites list. It’s in my Top 10, and it’s likely going to stay there until Iron Man 2 comes out. The movie itself, taken as is, is phenomenal, but as these things go, I have to nitpick. To be honest, this isn’t going to be some journalist expo on James Cameron blatantly admitting that he was trying to get everyone all nostalgic about Dances With Wolves, or how visually stunning the movie was in 3-D. It’s about the themes he presents.

Imperialism, racism, etc.

As a sci-fi freak, I myself was impressed by the realism of the spaceships and the thoroughness of Pandora. As an artist, I was completely floored by the visuals, and as a writer, I was completely wowed by the epic proportions of the story (there will be sequels). My question is, for someone who introduced such an innovative movie, why does James Cameron fall into the inevitable Hollywood trap of white supremacy (read: accidental racism)? There are spoilers ahead so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, please do so…otherwise, keep reading.

So Jake is called to fill in for his brother for the “Avatar Program”, where they get to mentally control home-grown bodies of the Na’avi (the native people of Pandora) to explore the planet in relative safely (because we can’t breathe on Pandora. Yay.) Several things were already cropping up at this point. You already knew that Jake was going to be the hero of the movie. Fine. That’s cool, whatever. You already knew that Jake was going to fall in love with the Na’avi warrior princess. Given. I don’t honestly mind that.

What I do mind is that why up until Jake arrived the Na’avi couldn’t fight back unless one of the “Sky People” (the Na’avi term for humans) was there to lead them? Wouldn’t it have made more sense is Neytiri (Jake’s love interest and the Na’avi princess) had lead her people to victory? Wouldn’t it have made more sense if it was Neytirir who tamed Toruk and assembled all of the Na’avi of Pandora to go to war?

This movie, for all its hype and splendor, is at its core just another ‘white man saves the day’ film in a long line of them. Let’s see what immediately comes to mind: The Last Samurai, Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas, and others I probably never bothered to watch.

Now, my next issue is with the recent release of the script for the deleted “sex” scene between Jake and Neytiri. Let me make one thing clear to idiots: The Na’avi are a fictional alien race. Knowing this, it is safe to assume that they are anatomically different from human beings and do not reproduce in the same manner as a human being. I am sure when the move comes out on DVD, there will be more information on the Na’avi and their culture.

Now, my issue is all the articles claiming that it presents bestiality issues. This is only because the script indicates that the hair queue tendrils that the Na’avia use to control their animals or interact with their sacred trees, are also used to connect with each other.

Jake(r) (Sam Worthington) in his Avatar body, and Neytiri(l) (Zoë Saldaña), princess of the Na’avi.

If you actually paid attention to more than the pretty graphics of the movie and looked at the science, the Na’avi use their queue to essentially hook up their nervous system directly to whatever they are using; be it their horses, their bashees, or their sacred trees the Na’avi view this connection as intimate which is probably why it is only used in pivotal, ritualistic moments (notice that the sex scene in the actual movie had something directly to do with moving the story forward and was not just gratuitous alien sex). So naturally, for a Na’avi to join their queue to another’s it is safe to assume that it is viewed as the ultimate intimacy as the script denotes; it is essentially two Na’avi joining their nervous systems together with their thoughts touching and something sensational beyond physical intimacy–it has nothing to do with bestiality (especially since we know nothing of the anatomy of the creatures of Pandora…just because it walks on two legs and looks humanoid does not mean it is a human). I don’t see how that even relates to bestiality and can see that it’s just another excuse for America to get their pervert on.

Another criticism that arose was that there were no representations of homosexual humans or Na’avi in the film. Seriously? Do I even need to get into this? This was an epic sci-fi story, in which the love story was between a Na’avi woman and a human man in a Na’avi male’s body. It was happenstance that this happened, honestly. I’m sure no one was actively thinking about the sexuality of the story in the midst of writing about themes of imperialism, war, and racial conflict.

That’s almost as bad as when black people were complaining that there was no representation of black people in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. James Cameron probably promotes equal rights for homosexuals. In fact, I’m sure he’s completely cool with it. But general audiences are used to seeing a traditional pairing of “man and woman” both in books and film. If you try and force something they view as abnormal all at once, the backlash could be terrible for the person’s career. They aren’t ready for that shit yet so can it, alright?

I think that’s all for now. The thought process is a bit unorganized, but fuck it. I’m not a journalist and don’t want to be. Decipher and comment at will.

 

[...::Monster::...]

It’s one thing to finally be rid of something or someone that was more hinderance than booster…but it’s another when that someone or something keeps attempting to come back if only to have a little piece of the sunshine you’ve managed to find for yourself.

I don’t like the text messages, the random phone calls that reek of desperation of trying to sneak a peek into how I’ve moved on from you and yours, and I certainly don’t appreciate the jumping into my Xbox Live parties without an invite from me or any of my friends…and subsequently attempting to talk over them as if you had a right to address me anymore.

If there was a way to erase you entirely from my life, I would do it. I’ve already gotten rid of all the pictures of us, videos, text messages, and anything that relates to us. I won’t delete the blog posts, because that’s for those I know to see how far I’ve come from you. If my cell wasn’t used for business purposes, I’d change it just so you couldn’t contact me anymore. But I have to just ignore you, and it seems to be working. I know you’ll never read this, because I know you don’t read anything but texts from your fake-wife or her bad poetry…but I need to vent.

Leave me alone. I can’t wait until karma comes back to bite you in the ass.

 

[...Real Recognizes Real::...]

That phrase may be played out, but its meaning is no less potent and true.

I did some reflecting today that I want to share with you. I have learned that honesty is indeed the best policy, and that the truth may be bloody, ruthless, and brutal, but when the healing is done, you’ll find that the wounds don’t leave scars, and the pain is gone, and that you’re healthier for it.

I had to be honest with someone today. Brutally honest. And it hurts me because this honesty had been building like a cancer in my chest and I had to let it go before the pain became to great, and I can honestly say that I feel a lot better for it. I mean, if I had allowed what was happening to continue, what kind of person would that make me?

A hypocrite, that’s what.

But if this person hadn’t heard me out, then they wouldn’t realize they were actively hurting a lot of people…mainly…a small group of us. I won’t name names, and I won’t even go into the gory details. Most of whom I’m close with already know the story. But I really had to reflect on my behavior. I have changed a great deal since the headstrong, hormone-driven teenager from Shiloh High School. I didn’t know how to choose my battles, swore I was in love with half a dozen different guys, resented my parents (although I will not hesitate to say one of my step-parents deserved this resentment…and still does! You know who I’m talmbout!), and thought socially isolating myself was a sign of uniqueness, not a sign of scared-shitless-of-interaction.

I did my smoking thing, did my underage drinking thing, did that tattoo thing, even did the failing thing. I’ve done a lot of things that are just little chapters of rebellious youth overlapping, and these past few months have seen me growing and changing into an adult. I think, after much screwing (shut up, no pun intended), my head is finally on straight, or at least…facing the right direction, and I have learned that when you’re honest with people, those who know you’re in the right (or at least have a valid point to make) will stick by you no matter how hurt they may be, and those who aren’t ready to face the truth…will angrily run away. Back to their dreams, delusions, and childhood.

In short, honesty is the best policy, and usually only because in how you deliver your honesty. I had to deliver it sharp and efficient, had to put my foot down, lay down the law, and stand my ground, and I am damn proud of myself for finally working up the gumption to be able to do so. I was afraid, and now that it’s over, I am completely content to let the chips fall as they may.

 

[...::Djarum::...]

So, fie on me for my forgetfulness of the new Tobacco Bill Obama passed in September. I purchased a pack of Djarum Blacks the day the bill went into action, completely forgetting that later that day it would be the last pack of Djarums I would ever see in the States. Thanks to idiots like Camel, who started the whole dumb shit of marketing cigarettes to kids, small tobacco companies like Djarum and other companies that sell ‘flavored’ tobacco products are out of business. All except for menthols.

And menthols are just gross.

I miss Djarum Black. And honestly, this bill isn’t going to keep kids from smoking. It’s just going to redirect the traffic of youth experimentation to some other source of underage fun. Just like abstinence-only education doesn’t decrease the rate of teen pregnancies, banning ‘flavored’ tobacco products won’t decrease the amount of smoke try-outs kids are prone to.

I hope they ban McDonald’s next. God knows they’re guilty of the obesity epidemic here.

 

[...::Irony::...]

So he dumped her. I don’t know the gory details, but I’m guessing he did it to prove to me that his balls weren’t in her little Hot Topic messenager bag. I don’t know why he feels he needs to prove to me anything, especially since any chance of romantic reconciliation has burned itself at both ends and has long since cooled. I already know that I can never stomach giving him another chance with me, because I know that he will never change. Better to keep him far away than to trick myself into thinking it’s safe to allow him so close.

In other news, being 21 is not different from being 20. I’m still just as broke as I was prior to my birthday, and I’m constantly out of gas and gas prices are steadily rising again. I am swamped with work and the flu, and my cats have suddenly decided that I make a good pillow. I don’t write much anymore because I don’t have much drive to write these days, and I don’t have time to re-align myself on the path to making my own inspiration and happiness. I’m sure Thanksgiving wil give me the time I need.

I believe a trip to Borders is in order. Time to add some new material to my library.

 

[...::21::...]

To commemorate 21 years of awesome living, ups, downs, and all-arounds, I bought my first legal bottle of wine and finished it this evening with my dinner. It wasn’t top-shelf, but it wasn’t bad for bottom shelf either.

I also engaged in somehwat debauched activities like any twenty-something is wont to do.

It was a good birthday.

 

[...Everything but the Girl::...]

Like the deserts miss the rain.

But at least I can honestly say we are friends again.

All of us.