Clareified

The state that just keeps giving.

It started when Gerard linked to this post.

Of course, I’ve also never had earrings which cost more than three figures. And I’m a girl.

F-train made fun of me the other day when I sent him this lengthy text about how I was soooo hot. He mocked me because I then went on to explain that by “soooo hot,” I meant that I had turned the AC off before I left for work and, with all the windows being closed, my apartment was a sauna. I concluded with “so I mean temperature wise, I didn’t want you to think I was conceited. Not that I’m not conceited, but just in this instance, I meant temperature wise.”

He responded “so what I’ve learned about you, is that you’d rather be thought long-winded and boring than conceited. Mission accomplished.”

Assface. I cannot wait until my friendship with him ends in 2012.

But, yes, I confess, I want to be understood. I will use as many words, clauses, parenthetical statements, texts, tweets, blogs or facebook statuses as it takes so that my position is perfectly clear. I don’t think of myself as particularly complicated or mysterious. I do what I say I will, I am predictable almost to the letter and I cling to routine like a toddler to its favorite stuffed toy. And yet…

I haven’t given this post very much thought. I was supposed to have a guest poetry blogger today, but *ahem* I don’t, so I’m stepping up in a pinch. I say that because I’m sure there might be unpleasant fallout from this post. That often comes when I write these kind of pieces without exactly naming names, but certain parties make certain assumptions… and heck, those assumptions are usually right. And everytime I get that fallout, I scowl and decide, “fine, I’m not writing anything like that again,” but then something new happens and, well…out it all tumbles.

But usually, I try to wrestle with my language for a few days before I hit publish, with this, I have maybe an hour before Poetry Wednesday is properly Thursday. Ish.

So, here goes, advance apologies to anyone hurt or further angered, with the understanding I can’t control anyone else’s reaction to what I write. I can only be as fair as I can to my own sense of truthiness.

But F-train is an assface. I stand by that.

My friend Pi sent me this poem, with the subject line “This made me think of you”

A Poison Tree
by William Blake

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole.
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see,
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

I jokingly wrote her back “Why would this remind you of me? Stupidface. Have an apple.”

But in reality, dude, this poem should be called an Ode to Dawn Summers. In the last ten years or so that I’ve had friendships that needed active participation to maintain cause I wasn’t just hanging out with the people I see in class or at camp everyday, I’ve learned certain things about myself.

I loathe confrontation. Yet, my capacity to harbor resentment knows no bounds. Delightful. I know.

However, with my friends, I’ve discovered handy ways to express my disappointment/disapproval/anger/hurt/annoyance that both avoids proper confrontation “screaming or tantrum throwing and like” but clears the air and allows me to let go of the unpleasantness. So, I’ll make jokes about how awesome it was not to be invited to their wedding or leave clever lines in posts about how I don’t care that you said you’d write the Poetry Wednesday guest post and then flaked without a word.

My friends are smart and decent, they take the hints. They apologize in fun ways and make it up to me with lots of comments and retweetage, and we move on.

But sometimes there comes a point where I’m making these jokes too often and far too many posts are loosely based on the fucked up things a certain person or persons have done. I start to delete them. My kidding around is replaced by silence. The resentment grows. Plans for revenge crystallize. I actively start to wish them ill. I feel bad, overcompensate with some nice deed, but then that niceness is taken for granted or not appreciated enough and we’re back to resentment.

This eventually goes one of two ways, they end up doing something marginally bad, but I explode in unmitigated rage as if they had smeared feces on my walls! They apologize; but it won’t matter, that’s not really what I was mad about in the first place and I don’t care enough to talk it through anymore. From their standpoint, I’m being unreasonable. They apologized, after all, why couldn’t I just accept it. Woe be to them if they express this to me verbally. How dare they tell me how to react to their apology for the bad thing they did?! HOW DARE THEY!

The other route? Cutting of all communication.

But, in the end, I think that’s the point of the poem. You either speak your mind, tell your wrath or know that you are well on the way to growing an enemy. For me, I also take this to mean that if friends have suddenly become silent with me, overreacting, in my mind, to small offenses, something else is wrong.

I grow weary.

Then wary.

I avoid their apple trees.

Well, who am I kidding, I avoid all apple trees, you know what I mean…I’d avoid their cupcakes. Unless they were vanilla/vanilla and delicious.

Damn you sweet tooth! Daammnnn yoouu!

I had hoped to be able to announce all the big blog changes in one fell swoop. But I went with the cheaper of my web designer options and so, six weeks later, I still have a big nothing to show for it.

Cest la vie.

However, thanks to Mary, I can announce that …tada… my name is not Dawn Summers.

It’s…

Although, I wasn’t a very good hiatuser in terms of not posting here, I was a good hiatuser in terms of writing up stories from my youth and life and such and I’ll be posting those over there until…well, I run out.

My anonymity has been the most disquieting part of blogging here at Clareified. It felt a bit cheap and cowardly, even though my name is the worst kept secret on the internets since the whole Justin-and-Britney-actually-did-sleep-together one.

And the thing about Santa. (You know, gastric bypass…)

Anyway, hope you enjoy the new site. It’ll probably be more serious than this one, since I’m all signing my name to it and can’t very well insult French people all the time. Though not too much so. And I’ll still probably insult the French. What are they going to do about it? Fight me?

In honor of our commitment and friendship with Iraq, the President should change his first name to Baraq.

Well, okay, after my favorite whiskey…but totally the same thing, right?

Also, Jameson’s birth finally breaks the two and a half year streak of all my friends having boys!

And we’re hitting August up just under the wire! I have seen a lot of movies this month. However, I’ll only write up about half of them lest I break filmchaw. Yeah, this is only half of the movies I’ve watched in the last 30 days…what of it? I’ll fight you.

The Love Guru

This movie is all about the Toronto Maple Leafs! Which, as we all know from @astinto, is actually a real hockey team! So the movie is about the star of the Toronto Maple Leafs – a black guy – having a meltdown on the eve of the Stanley Cup Finals (like the Superbowl in the NFL, except dragged out for a whole bunch of games) because his wife is sleeping with the well endowed goalie on the opposing team. In order to heal his heartbreak, so the Leafs can win the cup, the owner of the team, Jessica Alba, hire a Love Guru from India – Michael…um…shoot…oh Myers! He also has a cameo as Michael Myers, Toronto Maple Leafs fan, late in the movie. There is elephant sex. On ice.

$5 a day

Quirky father/son roadtrip movie. It stars Christopher Walken, so it’s kinda creepy too. He’s the dad. He’s dying and looking for forgiveness from the son he framed for grand theft auto five years prior. The title refers to how much he spends on living expenses. Everything else he grifts, steals or wins from radio show trivia games. There’s no need to rent this movie, but if you happen to find yourself in a closed space and it’s playing on a big screen somewhere, there is no need to stab yourself in the face.

The Killer Inside Me

No shade, but I pretty much think Casey Affleck really is a serial killer. I would prove it, but I fear as I got too close, he would add me to his collection. What? His face is way too…like angelic! Anyway, this movie pretty much confirms my fears. He kills. A lot. And the whole time he’s all “aw, shucks, ma’am, did I spill your blood all over your pretty bed sheets? My apologies.” DUDE! Um. I guess this is a good movie, I like Goldie Hawn’s daughter and even Jessica Alba didn’t make me hurl. But part of what happens when you have a boy next door murderer story is that you try to keep everything calm and serene, so yeah, it’s gory, but also a bit boring.

The September Issue

Yarf. A documentary about a fashion magazine! Double yarf. I rented it because I thought they were going to uncover the real truth about Vogue or Vanity Fair or whatever magazine this was about. That truth being that Satan is really the Editor in Chief and the architect of what passes for women’s fashion. But no. This thing takes itself and fashion totes seriously. Blah. There’s even a part where the cameraman for the documentary gets a part as a model in the magazine. And then the head editor in chief lady calls him fat and asks for it to be “touched up.” Okay. That part was funny. I also hated the head lady’s smug daughter. Who, is all “nah, I’m going to be a lawyer even though my mom keeps saying I should be the Managing Editor of this magazine.” Screw you, Princess. Yup. Dawn is a hater.

Brooklyn’s Finest

Have you seen The Departed? Did you wonder how that movie would be with B celebrity actors and more black people? Then run right out and get you some of this. Seriously. It’s a black Departed. I like black people. I liked The Departed, I liked Brooklyn’s Finest.

The Young Victoria

I was a bit sloshed when I saw this. So…um…it’s about a Princess and then her uncle dies, so she becomes a Queen…and then she marries her cousin and they have a lot of kids off-screen and then he dies. Oh and someone shoots at her. Pretty much if you’re tired of movies about Elizabeth, but you like movies about royals, then this flick is for you.

When In Rome

Why does Veronica Mars keep making terrible movies? Why? It’s like she is the modern-day Sarah Michelle Gellar: boss TV actress, crapola movie star. Um. The premise: Veronica Mars goes to Italy for her younger sister’s wedding, meets a man, frolicks in a magic fountain. Hilarity ensues. Well, minus the hilarity. It is predictable from the opening scene to the closing dance montage. God, it isn’t even a good “chick flick” so far as those go. Blech.

Shutter Island

THIS. MOVIE. WAS. AMAZING! So you think you know, but NOPE YOU HAVE NO IDEA! Just great! Even the brain tumor guy with his speech impediment was good. And Leo, well, Leo was in top form, his best outing since The Departed. I don’t want to ruin anything, but basically, it’s about a crime that happens on an island for the criminally insane. You can try to pay attention to every little detail along the way, you still won’t figure out the twist! Great flick!

From Paris with Love

And then on the other side of the spectrum, we have this dungpile of dog poop. Awful. Just awful. John Travolta plays a super spy who comes to Paris looking for a terrorist cell. He is assigned a young intern guy and it just so happens that the intern’s girlfriend is in the cell! Wretched. Just vile. Lots of explosions, sadly none of them destroy this DVD. And believe you me, I would have happily sacrificed my DVD player if this thing self destructed. Dude, they stop to play chess on an active runway! ARRGGGHHHH

The Back-up Plan

Ok, now this is a chick flick – but it’s a good chick flick. I mean, wholly implausible boy meets girl fall madly in love even though she’s expecting stuff…but that’s understood from the phrase “chick flick.” J Lo is actually charming. I also like the fat black guy from Law & Order’s last season.

Dear John

Aaaandd we’re back to awful. I owed Nicholas Sparks a kick in the shin for The Notebook, now I also owe him a knee to the groin. Dreck. Oh, premise? Um. Guy on military leave meets this girl, they fall in love and write letters back and forth, until she dumps him to get engaged. TO HER DAD’S DYING FRIEND WITH AN AUSTISTIC SON. Eyeroll. Oh, the girl also doesn’t drink. Whatever.

Happy Endings

Soo…this movie is weird. But good weird. It employs many of the techniques found in terrible movies like omniscient narration and flash backs and vignettes style storytelling, but it is not a terrible movie. It’s quite good. I love Lisa Kudrow in it. It’s about an unorthodox family. There’s some weird abortion stuff, but all in all, I liked it. Definite recommend.

Our Family Wedding

This movie was hilarious. To me. Here’s why I qualify that: the movie is about an interracial couple: The Ugly Betty girl and a black guy, who are getting married. Now, the black father is a rich celebrity, the Mexican parents are working class joes. So all the offensive, stereotypes are about the Mexicans. I mean offensive. But since I’m not Mexican, I thought it was funny. O_O What?

The Greatest

Why did I rent this movie? I do not know. It had that British guy on the box. You know the one, he was Remington Steele and then everyone was like he should be James Bond! And then he was, but now he’s not. Well, so he’s a dad in this and he’s married to Susan Sarandon and their oldest son dies. But before he died he impregnated this girl and so she comes to live with the couple and the youngest son (now only child.) I suppose it’s an interesting peek into grief. Susan Sarandon is pissed off that she is getting a grandchild because now people won’t feel quite so sorry for her about losing her son. Remington Steele doesn’t want to talk about the dead kid and throws himself into prenatal caring for the preggo girl. Meh, it’s okay.

Saint John of Las Vegas

Wow, I really am unintentionally doing a “good/bad/good/bad” style review today cause this one is most definitely ABSOLUTELY BELCH AWFUL! I just invented that phrase. Belch Awful TM. It stars Steve Buscemi, who I usually love. Also Sarah Silverman who can be hit or miss and the black guy who used to sell Nancy Weed in Weeds. It’s supposed to be a modern-day Dante’s Inferno, with Las Vegas in the place of hell. I didn’t know that going in. I just saw Steve Buscemi, Las Vegas and chips on the box and figured it was about poker. It wasn’t. Boo. The best part of the movie is the Harold from Harold and Kumar setting himself on fire repeatedly. But I think it was mostly envy.

The Ghost Writer

Hey! It’s the James Bond guy again! But now he’s playing Tony Blair…or a guy that looks and talks EXACTLY *like* Tony Blair…let’s call him Bony Tlair? Anyway, he’s all a private citizen now, trying to write his memoirs, but his ghost writer has killed himself. So he hires a new one and we discover that maybe it wasn’t suicide after all! And when the new ghost writer finds out the secret the old ghost writer uncovered, his life may be in danger as well! Dum dum dum. The movie has like 15 really suspenseful minutes, unfortunately, it’s almost two hours long. So, um, I dunno, rent it on a plane maybe.

Home for the Holidays

It’s Robert Downey Jr. and Dylan McDermott! When they were young! I kept pausing the movie and taking pictures of the screen with my Droid X. Wanna see them? ? What do you mean what was the movie about? I have pictures. Of a young Robert Downey Jr. AND Dylan McDermott on MY PHONE! Haters.

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1. If Neil Patrick Harris is nominated, he should win. Period. End of effing story.
2. I can’t wait till black people get invented, so they can be on TV shows and win Emmy’s.
3. I’m glad the Indian lady from The Good Wife won one. Suck it, Whitey. Yeah, I said it.
4. On the one hand, it would have been a nice “Fuck you, NBC,” if the Conan Obrien hosted Tonight Show had won. On the other hand, that show sucked.
5. Do you guys know that my mom LOVES Jimmy Fallon? Like tried to fight-me-in-AC-because-I-said-his-show-was-boring-and-wanted-to-change-the-channel-LOVE.
6. I’m glad George Clooney does charitable work and whatnot, but is it wrong that I’d prefer he just sit there and look pretty? I can’t stand the condescension. That’s a harder word to spell than you’d you think. Don’t tell Clooney, he’ll get all judgy about public school education.
7. I tweeted a lot about the Emmy’s. If you care you can go here. But you don’t, do you?
8. I’ve never seen the Big Bang. The Emmys think that dude is better than Alec Baldwin. Obviously, I can’t judge fairly, but Alec Baldwin is pretty dang good.
9. I’m in one of those “when I’m rich and famous, I’m going to destroy the following people” kind of moods. I’m logging off now. Please leave Angela lots of comments if she guest blogs.
10. Madmen still sucks.