Azmiam's Xanga

I'm baaaaack...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:34:38 GMT

And just in time for Christmas, too. :)

There's a lot to update on, but no one reads this, anyway, so there's no need to be lengthy. Justin and I broke up in February (hence the long, LONG gap in posts), I moved out in June, we missed each other like crazy and decided to get back together, and I moved back in a few weeks ago. We're engaged now and I'm so excited that I'm almost vibrating. We're driving to New York next weekend so that my grandparents (and, really, pretty much my father and his family) can meet him (and me- I've never spoken to these people, aside from fairly regular letters back and forth between myself and my grandmother) and once we get through the ridiculous expense of Christmas, we're going to start saving for a wedding. Yay!

Anyway... Aside from that, nothing much to report except meaningless details, so we'll just let those go. I'll try to update once a week or so from now on. Now that I actually have something to talk about. :)

Music As A Weapon IV Tour! ZOMG!!!11!!one!!

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:46:13 GMT

Okay, so, here's the deal-

The MAAW tour begins soon. VERY soon. They're passing through Baltimore in early April, though I'm unsure precisely when or where. I DESPERATELY want to see this show. I haven't seen Disturbed since their Believe tour, and they've done so much since then! Justin doesn't want to go because the only band that he knows that will be there is Disturbed and he's not particularly fond of them, and I'm certainly not going by myself. I need someone to go with me. Is anyone interested? If so, PLEASE let me know!

I find your lack of faith disturbing...

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:06:19 GMT

Okay, I HAVE to say something about this. It's too frigging awesome to ignore.

I had received a friend request from one of those news blogs that posts user-written articles and advice columns. I clicked the Deny button- I have NO idea how they found me, but I obviously need to make myself scarcer- and it gave me a drop-down list of options for the reason that I was denying the request.

The very last option on the list was, "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

That... Made. My. Day.

I'm at the office, so I can't geek out the way I usually would, which often entails popping in one of the DVDs and dancing around in undignified circles while the theme song plays, but I may do that when I get home.

Hooray for nerds! We're taking over the world!

Resolutions and Reviews

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 03:05:14 GMT

My resolutions for the new year are to open my mind, broaden my horizons, and make a few friends so I actually have something to do on the weekend. Damned antisocial tendencies...

I'm spending New Year's Eve alone because Justin wanted to go to a friend's house, as he does every year, and I feel silly being the only adult in the room not imbibing alcohol. I sit there with my soda and watch everyone interact so freely and I get terribly frustrated because they've known each other all their lives and have wonderful inside jokes and personal experiences to share and I barely know anyone enough to join in the conversation. If I weren't painfully socially awkward, that is, I may want to join in the conversation. Besides, Justin needs some time away from me. We work together and we live together. I'd get tired of me, too.

As I'm sure most of you know (most of you being the one or two people who actually read this thing), I've been talking about seeing the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, for quite some time now. It just came out on DVD and I snatched it up. We watched it a few evenings later (I was strictly prohibited from watching said movie without him) and I have to say that I was impressed. I didn't think anyone could play The Joker as well as Jack Nicholson, and, indeed, it wasn't the same, of course, because every actor brings their own flavour to a character, but Heath Ledger's performance was classic, memorable, and intriguing. He's gleefully careless, yet diabolically methodical. You don't know, really, if he's insanely brilliant or brilliantly insane. The only part of the movie that I didn't like was when Batman dropped Maroni off of the fire escape and he landed on his feet and we heard the bones in his legs breaking. Ugh... It turned my stomach. I couldn't look at the screen for a full minute while I pulled myself together. Something about that snapping sound just... Anyway... I also loved the changes they made to the Two Face character, both subtle and obvious in both Harvey Dent and his darker alter ego. He had such a small part, really, as Two Face, but it definitely stood out. His performance burns into your memory, so to speak. Pardon the terrible pun, of course. All in all, great movie. I'd recommend it even to people that I hate.

I also grabbed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the same time. I'd seen it in theatres, of course, being the Indy geek that I am (though I'm a Bat-geek, as well, and I managed to miss out on that experience, dammit), but I watched it again as soon as I got it home, and have watched it twice more since purchasing the movie. It's really a very good film. It goes against the grain of the other Indy films, but it also fits in perfectly. Two of the original films were about Nazis and Christian legends and artifacts and the other was about saving an ancient civilization (with very odd practices, I might add; I've watched this the least of all of them because the heart thing just creeps me out), so they focused quite a bit on religions and well-known and widely-pursued ancient artifacts, while the newer film focuses on extraterrestrials (or interdimensional beings, as we later find out) and an "artifact" that I, personally, still am not sure has been speculated to really exist as the others, as I've found nothing on it, but it brings enough of the classic Indy flavour into it to make it endearing and addicting and fit perfectly into an empty slot in the Indy library that you didn't even know was there until you saw it. If you haven't seen it yet, go get it. No, really. Right now. I'll wait.

I also picked up the new X-Files movie, I Want To Believe, at the same time- I did a lot of shopping that weekend. This one I can't say much about because even the smallest details may give away something vitally important to a fan of the classic show and I'd end up with a lynch mob outside my window, but suffice it to say that it's also a great movie. I've watched this one twice, as well. Can't get enough of my Mulder and Scully.

Another thing I've been doing a lot of lately (you can only watch so many movies before your brain starts to hurt and you have semipermanent white spots before your eyes) is reading. Stephen King, of course. What on Earth else? He's released several books in a very short time, the first being Lisey's Story, which everyone raved about but I wasn't terribly fond of, Blaze under the Richard Bachman penname that was supposedly killed off years ago after contracting "cancer of the pseudonym", Duma Key, and Just After Sunset, another collection of short stories to add to my King library. I've already said that I didn't enjoy Lisey as much as apparently every book review columnist in the world, mostly because it was extremely slow-going, even for Stephen King, master of the three hundred-page character introduction, but it did have its perks. Most were at the end, so I won't discuss anything here, for those who haven't read it yet. Blaze started out very good, but the smouldering embers had cooled by the time the story finished. The beginning kept you on your toes, but the ending was a bit anticlimactic. Again, though, it had its redeeming qualities, but I'll leave that be, as well. It's been long enough since I read it and I've devoured so many books in the meantime that my current memory of the story could scarcely do it justice.

My faith in my Mister King was, as always, beautifully and artfully (pardon the pun- again) restored when I picked up Duma Key. I had begun to wonder when I'd see another truly creepy King book, but I found it in Key. It's disturbing and terrifying on so many levels and it really keeps you looking over your shoulder throughout (if you draw or paint, don't read this book- trust me), but it's not so horrifying that you lose sleep over it, which I've only experienced with three of King's short stories- The Road Virus Heads North, 1408 (which renewed my unease and mistrust of strange hotel rooms), and The Moving Finger. If my love for King's work was restored with Key, it was increased with Sunset. None of the stories, save one, were really eerie, but they were all intriguing and wonderful reads. The only one that really left me with that copper-fear taste in the back of my throat and the hairs on my arms standing up was N. It wasn't creepy so much as it was disturbing and unnerving. As someone who shares a frightening common trait (OCD- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) with both the main character and the subject of the main character's writings (it's a story about a man writing in his journal about a patient), it hits a tender nerve and makes you afraid to rearrange your bookshelf for fear that it will turn into something more sinister. I already fear the number 23 (if you haven't heard of the 23 Enigma, go look it up; it's the bane of Obsessive-Compulsives everywhere- it haunts you!), and now I'm paranoid that I will begin to see creatures bursting forth from the void and have a sudden urge to arrange everything in even numbers and geometric shapes with lots of diagonals. The spice cabinet should be afraid.

I suppose that's all I've really got for now. My meaningless ramblings are usually...well, meaningless. I hope everyone has a fun New Year's celebration, whatever you plan on doing. BE SAFE. Don't drive drunk- sleep on your friend's couch, for heaven's sake; they won't mind when they see that you're alive in the morning- and even if you're sober, beware of crazy swerving drivers who brake too often. They may be rapidly leaving "soused" and approaching "pickled".

Be careful out there tonight!

Movies! ...Okay, maybe not...

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:13:33 GMT

Okay, well, first off, just so everyone knows, I still haven't seen the Batman movie. I know, I know. Slap my wrist and let's move on.

Harry Potter got bumped back and Twilight slipped into the November slot. I'm very excited about Twilight despite my disappointment that I'll have to wait another 267 days (according to the-leaky-cauldron.org) for the Half-Blood Prince. At first I was upset that the movie seemed to deviate so blatantly and so often from the book that I wasn't going to see it, but now that I've seen the new trailers and the scene snippet in Edward's room, I'm going to see it anyway. Apparently I've contracted the highly-contagious Twilight fever that's been going around for a while. That would explain the fangirly squeals and the new Twilight tee-shirt...

Anyway...

Nothing new to report, really. Spent some time with my sister some weekends ago when she travelled with her boyfriend from Florida to New Jersey (permanently this time) and we're starting the Christmas season here at the Salvation Army, which always promises to be a long, terrifying, and traumatizing event, but, other than that, nothing much.

Alright, I confess. The main reason I wrote this is so I have an excuse to update my Xanga and LiveJournal. I'm boring and I suck.

Aww...

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:42:33 GMT

One of my clients just invited me to her wedding in December.
I feel so special.
^_^

MOVIES!

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:06:10 GMT

Okay. Raise your hand if you are dying to see the new Batman movie.

All of you?

Yeah. That's what I thought.

If I have to watch yet another weekend pass without seeing it, I will sell my Harry Potter book collection for money for movie tickets. Every time I see a preview for it I make little excited noises, which scares my boyfriend a bit, I think, and run to check my wallet to see if I have enough money to buy tickets for three shows in a row. I'm a huge Batman fan, as is evidenced by the action figures strategically and obviously displayed on my computer desk, and as such I have a hard time imagining that anyone could be a better Joker than Jack Nicholson, who is, in my mind at least, worthy of godhood. Let's just say that in my opinion, the only reason anyone should watch the travesty that was the original Kubrick version of The Shining would be to see Nicholson's spot on performance as Jack Torrance. The movie deviated from the book so horribly and the supporting cast was so disappointing that to claim that you enjoyed the movie for any other reason than the charming-but-creepy Torrance is either a lie or downright insanity. But I digress.

After seeing the trailers for the new movie, despite my love of the original Joker, I have recanted my hatred of the Christian Bale Batman (in all fairness, he was Bruce Wayne as he was intended to be- kind of an asshole- but I'm more partial to the Michael Keaton Batman because that was what I grew up with, just like I prefer the original Star Wars trilogy over the special edition version, with its edited Sarlaac and Hayden Christensen stuck in at the end of the movie instead of the original actor, which pisses me off, but we won't start in on that) and have decided that I will suffer through Bale's un-Keaton-esque portrayal of Batman just to see Heath Ledger, rest his soul, deliver what's been hailed by, well, everyone, as his greatest performance ever. If they decide to nominate him for that posthumous Oscar after all, I may just tune in for an actual red carpet event if only to see the acceptance. Then I'll flip back to CSI to watch more of the same reruns that they've been playing constantly for the past year or so.

Along the same lines (movies, not Batman), I've recently stumbled across the tantalizingly short trailer for the new Harry Potter movie coming out in November and I have to say that I was leaning so close to the screen that I nearly fell out of my chair. I will most likely be waiting outside the theatre until midnight on November eleventh because I just couldn't possibly wait any longer to see it. I may even call in sick to the office that day so I can come home, go to sleep, and then get up and go see it again. It's difficult, though understandable, to see each movie and book get progressively darker because you begin to sympathize with poor Harry and you begin to resent Rowling for killing off all of his friends, but I do love the movies. I've been watching them pretty much constantly as of late and I'm not really sure why. It could have something to do with the fact that I've seen every other movie I own at least a dozen times and the Harry Potter movies are the only ones that I'm not sick of yet.

Anyway, where I was really getting with this is that if anyone is planning on seeing either of these movies and they want someone to keep them company in the theatre because no one else understands their geekdom, let me know. I'll be geeky with you.

:)

Okay, that's enough of my geekiness. Reading back over this I have a sudden urge to buy a pocket protector and thick glasses and make a Tonton costume.

Oy.

Epiphany. I hate those.

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:11:09 GMT

I was lying in bed last night, just trying to get to sleep, and something kind of hit me.

I've become exactly what my mother always said that I would.

I'm not doing anything important with my life, I'm not going to college and I probably won't be for quite some time, I'm working a thankless job with no benefits that barely pays enough to keep gas in the tank, I don't drive so I'm pretty much stuck where I am, and the only thing I have going for me is Justin and most of the time I think he'd be happier if I weren't there. My closest friends all live out of state, one of whom I've never even met face-to-face, and I'm a horrible friend to the ones close by- I never answer the phone when they call, I rarely return internet messages, and I'm just never in the mood to talk to anyone about anything. I'm almost totally reclusive.

I'm one ratty bathrobe and about six cats away from being the Crazy Cat Lady.

I'm a completely dependent person. I have a hard time doing anything alone because I'm always afraid that I'll do something wrong. I won't even cook because I don't want to screw up and have to face the embarrassment of being inadequate. I'm so afraid of everything and everyone that I won't even leave the apartment to walk up the street to the library because I don't want to meet new people, but I'm starving for friendship. I don't want to do the things that need to be done, like laundry and dishes and etc, because I just don't have the drive or the energy to get up and do them. I've read so much that I can't bring myself to pick up another book, I've watched all of my movies to death, and there's only so long that I can sit at the computer playing Free Cell and listening to Eric Clapton before even I get tired of music. There are so many things that I want to do, but I don't know how to do them or where to start, and I'm so afraid of failure that I can't bring myself to try. I want to move away and start over somewhere, but we can't afford to, and Justin's emotionally attached to the area, and I'm not emotionally or financially able to live on my own, nor would I want to leave him. We have too much stuff for our small living space, so most of the time I'm either irritated that I can't move or I'm claustrophobic and want to get out, but then I remember that I have no where to go. There are no groups or clubs that I can join in Luray and I don't want to join anything in Front Royal because that would mean that I would have to rely on Justin for transportation, and I already depend on him so much that I feel disgustingly guilty. I want to learn how to drive, but Justin is too impatient to teach me, I'm terrified to learn, and everyone else who can teach me has other things to do, and if I did learn how to drive, we couldn't afford another car anyway, so the point is pretty much moot. I just feel so suffocated, and I'm sure that Justin does, too, but I don't know where to go or what to do. There's nothing in Luray that I'm interested in, aside from maybe volunteering at the library on the weekends, but that just brings me back to my fear of meeting new people. I'm always worried that I'll make a bad impression and that they won't want me around anymore.

I don't know.

Part of me wants to keep trying, but the other part just wants to give up and just become the hermit. Sometimes it seems like things would be that much easier.

A dream...

Fri, 23 May 2008 19:00:49 GMT

I had a dream last night.

It’s not so surprising or unusual. Everyone dreams, even animals. Some of us simply remember having done so more often than others. While I do dream every night, I rarely wake with the sensation of having dreamt, and even less frequently remember the slightest bits of my dreams, let alone the whole thing.

But I remember last night’s dream. In sharp, frightening detail.

I dreamt that Justin was dying.

I came into a bedroom that I’ve never seen before, almost small enough to have been a bathroom. Justin was lying on a bed, gaunt and pale, covered in sweat. I don’t know what was happening because I was never told, but his sister, Jessica, knelt on the floor next to the head of the bed, which was really only a mattress on the floor. She was crying. He turned his head and opened his eyes when I came into the room. He smiled and reached for me, calling me Beautiful and asking me to sit by him. I fell to my knees at his side just as he lost consciousness. I cradled his head to my chest. I sobbed and cried out to God, begging him not to take him and screaming for Justin not to leave me. His sister only cried, her head in her hands.

I don’t know if I fell asleep or not. All I know is that it was suddenly morning and Justin was alive, smiling and walking around. We were in some kind of structure, almost futuristic, with a metal floor and a ceiling that was really a ceiling, but only arcs of the same metal that the floor was made of. We were, for all purposes, outside. He hugged me and kissed me and told me that I had saved him. He asked me to marry him and gave me a necklace instead of a ring. It was a large pewter angel charm on a sheer cream ribbon. I accepted, and suddenly I was wearing the necklace and crying. It was like I was watching a movie where some sadistic editor had taken out all of the important scenes. Something had happened and Justin was leaving me. He walked away and I was alone.

Next I knew, I was a child. I was in a big house, dark but homey and crowded with furniture and tapestries and big colourful rugs on every scantly carpeted floor. There were fish tanks everywhere. I walked into a large room, looking down at something in my hand. It was a small clear blue glass tea cup with a tiny fish inside. I called for my daddy as I entered the room. A man who could have been my father when he was younger looked up and told me to collect the fish. Far as I could tell, something was happening with the tanks. There was no water on the floor or furniture, but most of the tanks were empty. The water had simply disappeared and, in some cases, so had the tanks themselves. Fish and gravel, plastic plants and little castles, everything lying perfectly dry on shelves and floors all through the huge house. There was a great long tank in the middle of the room and my father stood over it. The top of the tank was divided into sections by black plastic bars. I had no way of knowing what they were for, but I somehow did. The black bars supported the sections of the lid of the tank. There was a woman in the tank. She looked like she was in a wet suit, but she wore no shoes or gloves and her face was bare- no oxygen tank or even a mask. There was barely enough water in the tank for her body to be completely submerged. My father held a small pitcher of water, like a plastic lemonade pitcher that most of us had in our refrigerators every summer as a child. He leaned over the tank and began to pour. Like the story in the Bible about the woman and the jar of oil, water flowed freely and ceaselessly from the plastic container. He started at one end of the tank and progressed to the other. Even though the tank itself wasn’t sectioned, each part of the tank where the top was divided by the bars filled independently from the others. As he moved down the tank, he counted off the sections like a man taking inventory. As he moved, the woman in the tank swam along with him, face down. I moved on.

I came to a shelf with an empty spot where a tank once stood. The fish were dry, but still very much alive. Some of them simply lay on the shelf, their gills moving, but their bodies still. Some of them moved along the shelves, but gracefully, as though swimming on their sides. Some of them swam through the air within the boundaries of where the tank walls would have been, as though nothing had changed. None of them lacked for air and none of them flopped about. Their behaviour hadn’t changed. I began to use glasses of water to catch these fish in the air. As I scooped them up and they touched the water, they fell into the glasses and swam through the water and didn’t come back out to swim through the air. I caught still others that were simply lying on the shelf. I eventually came to a tank that hadn’t changed- still filled with water with its occupants still swimming about merrily. I put the glasses of fish into the tank, but the fish in the glasses remained in the glasses and none of the tank fish seemed to notice that they were there. I eventually lost the fish from my glass tea cup, but not the water or the cup itself. The fish simply wasn’t there anymore. I began to look for it, ignoring the other fish lying about. I found it on the floor amid a tangle of plastic seaweed and large saltwater fish swimming through the short carpet. I tried to catch him, but instead kept catching the other fish. I would each time upturn my tea cup and only the fish would tumble back to the floor, the water and small plastic castle remaining in place without so much as a ripple. When I finally caught my little fish, my dream ended and I woke up.

I don’t remember anything that happened in my dream before I walked into the bedroom and saw Justin dying. Maybe the sheer shock of the moment, even though it was only a dream, drove everything else out of my mind. I do know, though, that something happened before that. I don’t think that I’ll ever remember it.

I know why I dreamt of Justin dying, and I know why I dreamt that he proposed and then left me. The greatest fear in my life is losing Justin, who means everything to me, and that often manifests itself in my dreams, though never before with such clarity. I also know why my father greeted me with a command instead of a loving smile or a hug. I never knew my father. I have only a picture of him that his parents- my grandparents- sent me this past January. I never before knew anything about him, and I still really don’t. I’ve always felt rejected and inadequate, like he didn’t want me because I wasn’t good enough, even though I know that wasn’t true- he was gone before I was born and had no way of knowing such things. That doesn’t stop the feeling, though. I also sometimes feel that even though I’m his daughter, if he ever met me, he wouldn’t accept me. It’s been twenty-one years. Realistically, he has no reason to. This is also another frequent theme in my dreams.

What I don’t know is why I dreamt of fish, and in such a strange way. I’ve never dreamt of fish before. This was something new.

I’m not posting this for someone to interpret. I simply didn’t want to forget.

For some reason, it seems an important thing to remember.

Lookie lookie!

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:16:29 GMT

OMG, how much would I love this in magenta, lime green, and black?