Escape

Whenever I'm feeling particularly morose about my own love life (or lack thereof), I like to pick up a Meg Cabot book and remind myself that there are successful relationships in the world. See, sometimes I find myself wondering if there is such a thing as true love, or if people are simply responding to biological impulses (to, you know, procreate). Then I have to laugh, because there's nothing I enjoy more than following relationship development in a piece of fiction. So, romantic love is one of the many Aida paradoxes; I'm not sure if it exists, but I like experiencing it vicariously.


Case in point: one of my favorite aspects of the Harry Potter series is the Ron/Hermione relationship. Obviously I read the books first for the amazing story and worldbuilding. The thing I probably cared about second most, however, was when Ron and Hermione were going to get together. It's kind of a silly thing to be so focused on, but there you have it. I have an embarrassing amount of Ron/Hermione fanart saved on my computer, which can make showing my friends my iPod pictures awkward, and they are pretty much my number one fictional couple, ever.


Then there's The West Wing, with the Josh/Donna storyline drawn out over seven seasons, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, the only piece of fiction I can think of where I didn't like the established canon relationship (by which I mean Kataang, as I liked all the others, even Maiko) and preferred another (Zutara). Anne/Gilbert, Elizabeth/Darcy, Han/Leia, Chandler/Monica, Lorelai/Luke (and Lorelai/Max while that lasted), Michael/Mia, I could go on and on. Romantic relationships are pretty much the first thing I latch onto when I'm starting a new series, and I love to recognize the tropes and predict the prolonged issues the characters will have to work out before finally riding happily off into the sunset.


I don't know why this is. I just wish my own love life would turn out as happily as any of my favorite fictional couples.

Have a Nice Day

I love college, I love Wesley, and I love voting. That is all.

"He was swerving to avoid a tree." "And what happened?" "He was unsuccessful."

I'm playing Justice Sotomayor in moot court. ¡Somos boricuas! I can now embrace my Latina wisdom with much gusto. Yes!


I'm pretty sure I aced my foreign policy midterm, although I was not in my writing zone for the essay portion. I still think my argument came across well, and as we're being graded for substance and not style, I doubt I'll be marked down too severely. Now I have to finish my West Wing midterm and start researching my Sotomayor paper. The work of a college student is never finished!


Lauren came by chez moi tonight, and we watched the first two episodes of The West Wing, my favorite television series of all time, together. I'm thinking of starting a Wesley West Wing series, not unlike our Disney series, but I'll have to gage interest and see how that goes. There is never enough West Wing love in the world, though, so the more people I can get to watch it, the better. And Lauren knows all the best lines by heart, just like me! She's a great West Wing buddy, among other things.


Voting for my man Tom Perriello tomorrow! Democracy in action always makes me excited. I have a good feeling about this race... let's hope I haven't tempted fate by voicing that opinion aloud!

The Life of a Government Major

If I never read the words Rational Political Ambition Theory again, it'll be too soon. My foreign policy midterm is tomorrow, which means I have been producing flash cards like a fiend. I actually opened a second packet of them today! Hope this raises my college student cred. The mock court assignments in Constitutional Interpretation are also being decided tomorrow, during discussion section. I'd like to be either Ginsburg or Sotomayor (left-wing ladies represent, especially the wise Latinas), but I wouldn't mind taking a back seat during the trial and writing as someone like Thurgood Marshall instead. I'll be treated to a 10-11 page paper in any case, due the week after my birthday. I am filled with joy at the prospect, as I'm sure is readily apparent.


The Stewart/Colbert rallies are fast approaching! I'm very, very excited. This is the kind of thing I always wanted to do as a high school student, but never could because El Centro is in the middle of nowhere, where nothing ever happens (I wonder how I would translate that sentence into French - so many negatives!). Michelle is coming to spend the weekend soon - can't wait to take her all around UVa, the Corner, and the Downtown Mall! Mellow Mushroom is a must. We shall have a blast, which we would in any case, because we are fellow missionary kids and she is such a fun person to hang out with.


I want to do nothing but watch Gilmore Girls and Avatar: The Last Airbender this weekend, but I really ought to be doing Supreme Court research instead. Woe. On the other hand, prayer partner event on Friday (and no class)! And by that time, my midterm will be over.


19 days to 20!

On Notice II

Line six says "T-shirts with logos/designs on the back." That is such a pet peeve of mine, I don't have words to describe the extent of my annoyance. Even though I no longer have hair long enough to completely obscure a shirt, the idea of putting the larger, more prominent design on the back has never, ever made sense to me. Don't you want people to look at your front (and in the general direction of your face) when they're trying to read your shirt? Someone please explain the logic to me.

The Social Network

The Social Network

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

The Social Network is an excellent piece of filmmaking. It is absolutely an Oscar contender, and rightfully so. You may not like the characters, but they get under your skin and make you angry and even sad. When it comes down to it, The Social Network is not a story about the founding of Facebook; it's a story about the destruction of a friendship.

Aaron Sorkin is one of my favorite writers. I appreciate his talent all the more for making me care about Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg, or at least their fictional counterparts. These are not the kind of guys I would choose to befriend in my own life, but they feel real. Zuckerberg is a class-A jerk, and he's both condescending and self-righteous. Yet I got the impression that he really wanted to be genuinely liked and accepted. I thought he deserved neither, I will hasten to add. Still, though, he wasn't entirely a black-hearted villain. My favorite characters have layers (hi, Zuko!), and while Mark Zuckerberg of The Social Network will never make the list, layers he did have. My sympathies lay far more with Eduardo (who is also not the type of person I would hang out with; rich frat boys who have meaningless casual sex with girls they just met in bathroom stalls are not particularly endearing to me), which to be fair was probably the filmmakers' intention. For some reason, he saw something in Mark that no one else did. The first time we see him, he hurries up to Mark's dorm to ask if he's okay after a break-up. Eduardo the character seems to me to be a good person who was just in over his head, and whose best friend ultimately cared more about fame and fortune (and proving to his ex that he's the better person, which he absolutely isn't) than he did about him. There is clear hurt in his face during his deposition scenes with Mark; he's trying to understand why things turned out the way they did. Mark isn't really his enemy, but he stomped all over their friendship, and now there's a lawsuit and things between them will obviously never be the same again. It's a fascinating character study if nothing else.

My one huge beef with the movie was its portrayal of women. Apart from Mark's ex-girlfriend Erica Albright and Rashida Jones's character, I'm hard-pressed to come up with any examples of smart, capable female characters in The Social Network. Mark's sexism is particularly rage-inducing. He sees himself as superior to Erica. He talks down to her, tries to impress her with his vast knowledge, insults her school, and calls her a bitch on the internet when she breaks up with him. He then proceeds to hack into the webpages of each of Harvard's dormitories, steal girls' facebook pictures, and put them on a website for guys to compare their hotness. In what universe is this okay? Ours, apparently, but that's beside the point. Most of the rest of the women in the film are limited to being groupies or drunken partygoers. Eduardo dates Christy (after hooking up with her in a bathroom stall), who turns out to be utterly psychotic. Facebook is a boys' club; there are no women among its founders, and the one female intern who is given dialogue is treated only as a sex object by the male characters. It bothered me, and what's worse is that the film seemed to be implicitly condoning it. No. Just no. Women are people, not sex objects, and they're just as intelligent as men, thank you very much.

So, my verdict on The Social Network? Well-written, well-acted, well-scored, with some troubling sexist attitudes. Go see it - and then talk about it. I do hope it wins Aaron Sorkin an Oscar. And I really hope Mark Zuckerberg is not really that big a jerk in real life, because I use Facebook far too much and I don't want to financially support a misogynist.

8.5/1o.

Things That Will Never Make Sense to Me

• People getting engaged or married at age 18-21. Especially to someone who is also 18-21. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, when I hear someone I know is tying the knot and they're younger than I am, I'm stunned. Why do you want to get married so young? How do you know you're going to be remotely compatible with this person fifty years from now? Does not compute.
• The popularity of Twilight. Whyyyyyyyy?
• Lady Gaga.
• Or why I kind of dig her music, because I don't like her as a person at all.
• People who think Barack Obama is a socialist. LOL no. He's slightly to the left of Bill Clinton.
• People who think Barack Obama is a communist.
• Actually, just conservative politics in general. Let's give more money to rich people and let poor people suffer because they're lazy! Guns! Racial profiling! Arugula is elitist! Amurica!
• Half the things my Sims do. The school bus is right outside, why are you merrily painting along while your sister runs out the door? It's your first day of school OH NO IT'S NINE O'CLOCK AND YOU MISSED THE BUS AND YOUR GRADE IS NOW A D EXIT WITHOUT SAVING.
• Why I decided to cut my hair. I miss you, waist-length locks.
• Marijuana legalization. Sorry, I'm a bad liberal, but I just don't see how this is a good thing in the long run. Maybe because I'm not a fan of drugs. Or even drunkenness. Although admittedly I've never had a drink in my life, so I can't really say I don't like alcohol. I'm waiting until I'm twenty-one, okay?
• Why I just signed up for NaNoWriMo, when clearly I can't even blog every day for a month. How can I write an entire novel?
• Speeding. Is it really that hard to go 70 mph on the freeway, Californians? Or at least keep it to 75? Apparently yes.
• PEOPLE WHO TALK ON THEIR CELL PHONES OR TEXT WHILE THEY'RE DRIVING. NO. JUST NO.
• Fight Club fanboys.
• Why I'm blogging when I really should be getting something to eat.
• The awful situation in El Centro this past Monday, and why a ten-year-old boy no longer has parents, and why my eleven-year-old brother no longer has a sixth grade teacher.