Clareified

So, we’ll try to do four poems by women. Try. Here’s a lovely love poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (how awesome is that name to say? I feel smarter and more significant just uttering her name: Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Well, I also say it with a British accent, whilst wearing a monocle and balancing a pipe betwixt my lips. Whilst! Betwixt! I didn’t even KNOW those words before saying Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poem seems fairly advanced and highbrow, but when you get right down to it, she just wants to be loved. Aww, you go Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Sonnet 14 – If thou must love me, let it be for nought by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
‘I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

Unfortunately, the noninvasive, slime tests were abnormal. So, we’re off to have the have the sucky invasive ones and hope for better news. My friend Jasmine randomly tweeted this account of her biopsy five years ago. She tweeted that she didn’t know why she felt compelled to repost it now, I like to think it was the universe giving me a heads up. I like Jasmine’s writing a lot. So go read. My favorite part:

People keep telling me I’m brave, but I don’t want to feel this way. I want to act like this isn’t a big deal. I’d rather reserve the bravery in case things get worse. But it’s not terribly easy to maintain composure when you are asked to go into a hospital and give strangers — okay, highly trained and educated strangers — permission to stab you with a giant needle and take parts of your body.

Why the hell is no one telling me how brave I am?? You all FAIL!

Anyway, my really brave self checks in tomorrow. Will be off the internets for a couple of days, but I’ve already written a bunch of posts for your amusements and given the elves the keys to publish them until I return.

If I don’t survive, you so won’t notice for like a month. You’re welcome.

I’m pretty sure everybody’s in love with him. Even Julius Goat.

Nay. Especially Julius Goat!

“I cannot brain today. I have the drunk.”

Read the whole thing if you want.

The Brothers Bloom

I saw this movie on Angela’s recommendation. I was very nervous because I like and respect Angela and wanted to keep doing so. Whew! I loved the Brothers Bloom. And I usually don’t like that brain tumor guy or the Halle Berry sexual assaulter. In this they play brothers who are also con men. For their final job, they prey on an orphaned heiress. Of course, one of them falls for her and stuff happens. But NOT stuff that you expect! Well, some stuff you expect, but it totally works. The movie is funny and touching and even though the script telegraphs much of the end way ahead of time, you’re still surprised. Great job all around!!

The Box

Ugh. FAIL. First off, can anyone who ever starred in the Charlie’s Angels franchise please SWEAR never to try to do a movie with an accent? Please, pretty. Dancing around in your underwear, yes. Dramatic features with crazy accents: No. Blah. This movie SUCKED SUCKED SUCKED. I really need a thesaurus. So, the premise? Um. This guy comes with a box to your house. He says if you push the button, someone you don’t know will die and you get a million dollars. You get 24 hours. (Who the heck even needs 24 seconds?? PUSH! PUSH TWICE FOR TWO MILLION! Throw box in fire, so it doesn’t come back and getcha.) Seriously, Hollywood needs to let me make the movies from now on. Anyway, they push it, feel all bad. Then the movie does what all truly terrible movies do: they blame it on aliens or a government conspiracy. Actually, The Box blames BOTH! For extra suckingness. Push the button and hope this movie dies.

A girl at work ruined Lent for me this year. Quite possibly ruined the entire Roman Catholic Church for me. Oh, 2010, I just CANNOT with you anymore.

P.S. Dear Jesus, um no disrepect, but ima need to stick my fingers in the holes of your palm or see Michael Jackson come moonwalking out of the grave real damn hell ass soon. Crisis, Faith.

P.P.S. Um, none of that needs to happen in the middle of the night or anywhere near my apartment. Heart, Weak.

P.P.P.S Frankly, between you and me, if you would deliver $750,000 tax free dollars to me, we’d be cool.

P.P.P.P.S. Oh and not as compensation for some horrible malpractice or accidental paralysis or limb/life loss. Kaythxbye

There comes a point in your life when you realize:

Who matters,
Who never did,
Who won’t anymore…
And who always will.
So, don’t worry about people from your past,
there’s a reason why they didn’t make it to your present

My job has this insane internet filter which knocks out any sites with the word “bl-g” “wordpr-ss” or “typep-d” Also, it bans twitter, allows facebook, but bans games on facebook. So I spend a lot of time reading statuses and leaving sad messages on people’s walls. Oh, and working. I mean totally definitely like just working all the time. Anyhoo, the only bl-gs I can read are mine, Mary’s and Ugarles’. But Mary’s background comes out all weird and hurts your face.
But that’s not the point, this is the point: Ugarles, actually, I think it’s a Carrie post has an interesting piece up about trying to get a charter school started in East Flatbush – er…I mean, Prospect Lefferts Gardens? The charter school folks want to temporarily house the science focussed school in the brick and mortar home of PS 92. AKA PS Forgot about you or PS They will stab you or PS um something something real bad ending in you.
Remember how I told you kids made fun of me for “talking white”? Yeah, those kids went to P.S. 92.
This school was where I was supposed to go, based on geography, but instead my mom made me take the placement test for PS 235’s SOAR program (I don’t remember what that stood for, but there was a rainbow shooting toward the sky with a star at the end of it, so imagine it was something good.) That’s where I went.
Two things stand out for me about the argument during the meeting that Carrie reports on: 1. Damn, really? 30 years and PS 92 still sucks? What happened to not leaving children behind? 2. How big is the set on the folks who want to house their “good school” in the bad school? Big and brassy, I’d imagine. (One of the funnier lines was the person who asked if the Charter school kids would be getting bodyguards?)
The thing about PS 235 is that apparently, it sucks too; but somehow they manage to keep the SOAR kids isolated from the suckiness. We had our own lunch times, our own recess times, our own classrooms and assigned teachers. The first time I even realized there were non-SOAR kids and classrooms was in fifth grade when my teacher took ill in the middle of the day and they didn’t have enough seats for my whole class in the other SOAR sections, so we got divvied up into the regular classes. I will never forget the terrified 3 hours I spent in a FIFTH grade class with children I’d never seen in my FIVE years at the school learning the difference between mines and mine. We’re right next door analyzing Romeo and Juliet and these mugs are saying poems to remind them that the first person possessive doesn’t have an ess on the end.
FIFTH GRADE, LAWD HAVE MERCY!
When we reconvened with a substitute teacher the next day, my classmates all had similar stories.
I don’t know how 235 manages it, and I know there was some blowback from “the community” about the disparity. So I’d venture to say that sticking a charter school in the midst of PS I wouldn’t want to be you will be an uphill battle.

Um…yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

And is sending me to the Oscars this year?