Joderita's Summery Summary

It has now officially been three months (and 2 days) since I graduated from university with a Bachelor's degree. I am officially a card-carrying grown-up! Even though I don't technically have a job. Or a car, house, or family of my own. But whatever, those are minor details. Here is what I do have: knowledge.

Yup, you heard me: knowledge. If you read my last blog, you know that I have plenty of knowledge (read: bitterness) about the "real world" after college. And now, I have plenty of knowledge regarding what to do with your time if all you have to your name is a useless piece of paper in a decorative leather degree-holder.

First, apply for lots of jobs. Looooots. Hundreds. Don't get your hopes up for any of them. Be patient. Do your best not to get depressed, because eventually, the right thing for you will pan out. Don't for any reason or under any circumstance read Oh the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss. He's not even a doctor, I don't think! (And yes, I hear you, Mom, saying in a faint whisper, "Um, but you weren't patient... In fact, I had to calm you down on several occasions and remind you that what's meant to be will be." Whatevs. This is my blog. I'll give advice that I don't follow to whomever I please. So there!) When the time is right (read: When you are starting to panic about the money you owe and people are knocking down your door collecting), you will get a second interview with the BEST company EVER, and be pretty much guaranteed by the interviewer that you have the job, it's just a matter of waiting for a new project to start. Minutes after you hang up with the BEST company EVER, you will get a job offer from a bookstore (which would be awesome, because honestly, you spent all your previous paychecks on books anyway). You will then sign on to your email at the library and be pleasantly surprised to see another job offer in your inbox. Now having three job offers (all of which you would really enjoy doing), you will not quite know what to say to some of them, and exactly what to say to others of them ("Heeelllll yes!").

Next on the list of things to do if all you have to your name is a piece of paper is read. Read lots. Read CRAZY lots. Here is a list of suggested reading, complete with the amount of depression or happiness it will provide you.

KEY:
+ Uplifting
++ Pretty Uplifting
+++ Pretty Darn Uplifting
- Depressing
-- Really Depressing
--- Really Friggin' Depressing
+- Uplifting Beginning, Depressing Ending
-+ Depressing Beginning, Uplifting Ending

++ The BFG by Roald Dahl
+- The Witches by Roald Dahl
--+ An Inconvenient Wife by Megan Chance
++ Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris
++ An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James
+- Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
---+ My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Piccoult - Most Depressing Book of the Summer
+++ Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
++ Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
++ The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson
++ Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
-+-+ The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler - Most Mood-Swingy Book of the Summer
--/++ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and other short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
+++ Kiss of Midnight by Lara Adrian - Sexiest Book of the Summer
++ The Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris:
Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead to the World
Dead as a Doornail
Definitely Dead
All Together Dead
From Dead to Worse
Dead and Gone

Oh the Places You'll Go

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
Or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!


Dr. Seuss sucks. Hardcore. Stupid rhyming books about all the things you'll do with your life and stupid marketing world for deciding that it's the PERFECT graduation present!

You wanna know the places you'll go? If you already have a job while going to school, you will remain there being mostly miserable and wondering why none of the "entry-level" positions for which you are probably a bit more than qualified are only hiring people who have five and ten years of experience. How is five and ten years of experience "entry-level"? HUH?!

If you do not have a job when you graduate because the company you worked for up and went bankrupt on you three months before you graduated, then here is where you'll go. Back home to live with your parents (rent-free is nice, but honestly, didn't you have bigger plans for yourself when you were younger?) where you will spend the long long hours of the summer days applying for hundreds of jobs at places where you are way WAY WAY overqualified and yet somehow still not qualified enough to even get an interview. When you do get an interview, let's say with a car dealership for a position as a cashier/receptionist (where, let's be honest Chaplin's Volkswagen and Subaru, you do NOT need to know a single damn thing about cars), the manager who is interviewing you will act incredibly condescending and ask you a bunch of questions that couldn't possibly have anything to do with the actual job for which you are interviewing. You will then get an interview in the local mall for a job that would make you want to pull each and every hair out of your head one by one. Nevertheless needing this hair-pullingly boring job, you will give your best interview and dazzle the interviewer, who is much nicer than the jack-ass at the car dealership, and then STILL not get the friggin' job!

Growing more depressed and slightly panicked, because you owe several people money and your phone has been shut off for non-payment, you will finally FINALLY land an interview for a job for which you would be perfect and which you would actually love to get (not to mention the pay, which would be actually very good). You will be among the top five from over a hundred applicants, and you will be moderately nervous, but still confident in your prowess as the perfect person for this job. You will interview and knock their socks off, and then not hear from them for a week (which, for this particular position, is bordering on waaay too long to make a proper decision). Having your hopes deflated in such a fashion, you will start to wonder about the other crappy things in your life (which, if you're being honest with yourself, are much less horrible than other people out there, I mean at least you're not out on the streets, homeless and with nothing but the clothes on your back) and you will wonder why on earth, at 18 years old, you thought that you would have so much more done with your life at this age than you actually do. And becoming depressed about job prospects and failed life dreams will get you thinking about other things that have failed in your life, and you'll start to wonder if maybe those people back in the day who treated you like you weren't worth noticing were maybe right.

I think Dr. Seuss should be re-written:

Congratulations!
Today is your day, along with another seven hundred fifty thousand people your age!
You're off to Great Places, if you were smart enough to study computer sciences or something like that instead of one of the fine or performing arts!
If you are smarter, prettier, skinnier, craftier, cleverer, honester, cheatier, and everything else-ier, then You're off and away!

Otherwise, you're screwed, dude, and this book ain't for you.

Yay! No wait. Noooo! ...Meh?

I feel like I'm on an emotional roller-coaster. Cliche, I know. But everything that's going on right now is so up-and-down.

First of all, I'm graduating in a month. And that is SOOO EXCITING! At the same time, it's terrifying and slightly depressing because 1) I will no longer have the structured living-style that school provides which I've had since I was five years old, and 2) the economic climate right now is not conducive to finding a stable, well-paying job.

I just finished my first full-length play!! I still have some minor edits to do, but it's finally done! I'm so excited, it is making me giddy! I know it will probably never be published or performed, but it is still a very proud accomplishment for me. And now that I've finished that, I might have time to work on Madelyn Gray. Which is also very exciting, because it's been a very long time since that has happened.

Today was my mid-term for one of my classes, and I'm pretty sure I did poorly. I don't think I full on failed (though I wouldn't be surprised if I did), but it's still scary that I've let myself kind of go in this class. If I don't get a C in this class, I won't graduate. Which is terrifying. This is the only class in which I am not sure I will pass with an acceptable grade. It's unnerving. And I think my teacher knows that I've got a case of Senioritis. So, now that I recognize that, I will apply myself more than I have been this quarter.

My roommate and I are doing our senior projects together, he's directing and I'm acting. I'm excited to work with him because he's a very good director, and I'm excited to sink my teeth into something (as my role in the show I just finished up was miniscule). On the other hand, we have a little less than a month to rehearse, and I'm going out of town for 7 days on Saturday. Aannnd, my adviser expressed his concern that we're cutting it too close for his liking. Even though he approved of the timeline at the beginning of the quarter. So I'm mildly freaking out about that. Yay!

My little sister is graduating from University of Southern California in a week!!! YAY!!

So yeah. I'm flip-flopping between excited (if you couldn't tell by my over-use of the word in this post) and terrified. This is not a thrilling, exhilarating roller-coaster. Unlike the roller-coasters I will be riding a week from now!

History of the Devil

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, night and day, land and sea, and he saw that they were good. Then God created the fish of the sea, and the birds of the sky, and the animals of land. And he saw that they were good. “I’m getting pretty good at this,” he thought. And he was pleased. On the sixth day of life, God created Adam from the dust, and Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. He thug-nodded at Adam and smiled at Eve and said, “’Sup?” For a while, Adam and Eve were happy in the garden God had created for them. But eventually, as with all men, Adam got bored and had a one-on-one with God. “Dude,” said God, “whaddya think of that Eve chick?”

“Meh,” said Adam. “She sorta looks like a dude.” God evaluated his creation, and nodded in agreement. “Let there be boobies,” he proclaimed, and on Eve’s chest grew a pair of perky, perfectly-sized breasts. Adam looked at Eve and then at God. “Dude,” he said. “You are awesome!” Then he ran over to Eve, who was staring down at her enlarged chest appreciatively, and said, “Our God is an awesome God!”

Then along came the serpent. Little bastard never could tell when to keep his slimy nose out of things, and one day, he convinced poor, innocent little Eve that she should try a bite of the fruit from the tree of knowledge. “It can’t be that bad, can it?” thought Eve as she sunk her teeth into the ripe and juicy fruit.

All the sudden, she felt as if an alien baby had been placed in her stomach to gestate and was now trying to claw its way out! Her back was sore, she was irrationally angry, depressed, and overjoyed, all at the same time, and what were once nice, perky, happy little breasts were now tender and achy, and the bane of her existence. They somehow became too heavy for her shoulders, chest, and upper back to deal with, and she began searching the garden for some vines or palm leaves or something to support her.

And thus was the first brassiere invented. As far back as 2500 BC (Before Coverage), women were wearing mamillare, or “breast-holders”. These corset-type contraptions were open in the front down to the waist and provided little to no actual support for any woman with above a B-cup. Because Man decided that “boobies are fun!”, these early corsets were simply for display. By 450-200 BC, the Greeks had managed to design a bodice that performed two functions: it strapped boobs in, preventing them from moving when a woman walked, and it displayed boobs pleasingly for the male eye (read: left them entirely exposed). Alas, as society grew more prudish, men decided that boobies weren’t fun anymore, and breasts were instead wrapped, flattened, or, as in the case of the mythological Amazon warrior women, brutally cut off.

In the 1600 AD (After Decidingboobswerenolongerpleasingtotheeye), some jackass, who was probably French, invented a torture device designed specifically for women. It often required having the lower two or three ribs removed, and it smooshed vital organs so much that women began fainting and even dying from it. It was called a “corset”, and later, when the fainting and dying started, they called it “consumption”. For a few centuries, men tinkered with the corset to make it show alternately more and less booby, depending on the religious fad at the time. And then, in the 1900s, someone said, “I’m tired of having to wait 10 minutes for sex while my wife is being removed of her corset. I want sex now!” And he invented a mini-corset, which went from boob to boob via the back and was supported by straps over the shoulder. Back then, a “brassiere” or “bra” (for so they were called) probably cost about 10 cents. Today, they cost anywhere from $20 to $15 million. Depending on how much money you want to spend on a piece of fabric. Covered in diamonds. That can charge an iPod.


And the moral of this story? Adam started it.

HORSES!! THEY'RE PLEASANT TO BE AROUND!!

My playwriting professor told us about a guy who wrote a play entitled (with capitalization and punctuation): HORSES!! THEY'RE PLEASANT TO BE AROUND!!
It makes me laugh every time I think about it, and I'm not even sure why.

I've some money in my bank account, and so of course the first thing I do, after paying my roommate back for the rent, is take a trip to Barnes and Noble and spend something like 70 bucks on books. And by "something like 70", I mean slightly more than $70. I bought a lot of good books, though! Don't judge me!

So, here is my reading list:
Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink
The Awakening and other short stories, by Kate Chopin
The BFG, by Roald Dahl
The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
Corduroy, by Don Freeman

I am soooo disappointed to realize that the sequel to Corduroy that I purchased is not actually written OR illustrated by Don Freeman, but simply "based on the character". I feel absolutely cheated. And I might even consider returning the book and telling Barnes and Noble that it is cheating to tell someone that Corduroy Lost and Found is a sequel to Corduroy. I was already upset that they didn't have A Pocket for Corduroy, and now I'm just outraged!

Ah, well. On top of all the new books I've purchased, I have several other books that I already own that I still have to read.

Among them are:
Brisingr, by Christopher Paolini (which came out about a year ago, and I still haven't opened)
Doors Open, by Ian Rankin (which Gerry gave me last time I was at his house)
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte (which I bought along with Brisingr nearly a year ago)
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (which I bought along with Wuthering Heights and Brisingr nearly a year ago)
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (which I bought along with The Count of Monte Cristo, Wuthering Heights, and Brisingr nearly a year ago)

I had better get crack-a-lackin'!

I Don't Care if You Don't Read This

Warning: This post is not for entertainment. It is simply so that I can gripe and moan without making other people feel like they have to comfort me. If you don't want to read it, I will not be upset.

I'm lonely. And depressed. And tired. But mostly just the first two. Stupid winter with its stupid lack of sunlight and its stupid coldness. At least if it were summer, or even just sunny later at night, I would not be depressed. I'd still be lonely, but you can't fix all the world's hurts with sunlight!

I sort of dated a guy a couple years ago, and we were very open about sex. And even after I sort of broke up with him, we talked a lot, and a lot of our talking was about sex. It wasn't that we were obsessed with sex, really, it was just that sex is such a taboo topic that you can't really talk about it to many people without being considered inappropriate. So we talked about it with each other. Don't worry, I won't go into details. But the point is, we were flirty and fun and carefree. And I sort of felt like we were moving back toward where we were when we sort of dated. And I was happy about that, even though I sort of broke up with him.

Well, I was texting this ex-sort-of-boyfriend today, I basically said, "Come hither" in my sexiest tones, and he turned me down. And I pretended to pout and said, "Wow, I can't believe how blatantly I was just turned down for sex." And he said, "Haha, just keeping you on your toes." Whatever the hell that means. And I said, "Just keeping me depressed and confused." And he said, "I would rather not talk about sex. It's not your fault. I never said anything, I'm just trying to concentrate on other things in my life."

First of all, I know it's not my fault. I know you never said anything, otherwise I wouldn't be talking about sex right now.

Second, why is it that we as humans have to always cover what we actually mean by saying nonsensical and useless phrases? "I'm just trying to concentrate on other things in my life"? Really? A guy my age is trying not to think about sex in his life? No, what you meant to say was, "I don't want to think about sex with you, Joderita." Give it to me straight, Doc. If you're gonna hurt my feelings, just hurt them. Don't hurt them and then pretend to put a band-aid on them. Empty words make crappy medicine. Give me some honesty and a bottle of hooch and I'll be right as rain.

Which brings us to the real reason I'm depressed: I am friends with so many friggin' guys. And don't get me wrong, I love having tons of guy friends. But it gets depressing when EVERY GUY YOU KNOW only wants to be friends with you. Especially guys that you've been more than friends with. Guys you've only quasi-dated, because you can't seem to attract them beyond that initial stage. It really makes you wonder what the hell is wrong with you. Why do guys only like you as a buddy? What is missing in your personality to make you the perfect friend but nothing more? And don't give me that "You have to be confident in yourself" crap, because I've tried confident, and I'm still alone. Clearly, it does NOT work. You don't have to be confident. You have to be someone else. You have to be able to see a guy and say, "He wants intelligent, quiet, sexy, demure" whatever, and then be able to all the sudden produce the perfect combination of those things solely for his benefit. And of course, no one can change who they are in an instant, so you're left feeling hurt and inadequate.

And I am so tired of feeling inadequate. I don't want to have to wait anymore. I want someone who is looking for me to find me. I'm tired of being patient.

The Secret Garden

Also, I just finished reading The Secret Garden, and it is such a good book! For girls. I mean, guys are welcome to read it, obviously, but they might not identify as much with Mistress Mary. It made me cry a few times at the end. :) I think I will rent the movie and watch it again, since I haven't seen it in years. Also, I want to read The Little Princess again, and some other books. But first, The Wizard of Oz!