The Devil's Carpet

This pretty 1980s-tastic movie (recommended by the boyfriend) really made my night last night. It's all posted to Youtube, in 10 parts. There are all sorts of gender issues inherent, combined with horror, fantasy, and fairy tales, which of course make it excellent. The Path, a recent horror game, must have been based on this movie. I also highly recommend it; it's about $5 on Steam.

I decided it was time for a new e-mail address, for a few reasons, most of them revolving around my having had the same handle (toric13) since I was 13, and thus it's getting a bit old, and needing gmail for its features such as a calendar which syncs back and forth between my iTouch, etc. Thus, please update all your address books to:

victoria.crowell@gmail.com

I'll still try to check ye olde Yahoo sporadically, but mostly it's going to be out of commission.

Do any of you with iTouches or iPhones have the Nike Fitness Club trainer? We can be fitness friends!

I realize that it is very difficult for families to accept that their children are old enough to be "let go," in the sense that they are free to make their own decisions, establish their own personal boundaries, and ultimately live their own lives. This seems to be a very difficult task particularly for my mother. We still seem to be in that teenage stage of butting heads over my personal life to a degree that frankly, at 21-years-old and three years out of really living in this house, I'm very swiftly losing patience with. Perhaps one of the biggest problems is its state of ambiguity. My mother does not insist upon having her way on everything. She tries to be quite liberal and forgiving, while still seething underneath. This leaves me in a constant state of fear as to when the schizophrenic trap will spring. For instance, I own a cell phone. When I am home from school, I often go out to eat with friends. On the days my mother is home, she sometimes wonders where I am. Rather than simply call and ask, which she sees as an invasion of my privacy, she rants to my dad wondering where I am, then waits until I am home to yell at me about how she didn't know where she was. She still refuses to simply call, even though I told her that it is perfectly fine; I'm never anywhere I'd have a problem with her calling, and if I'm at work, my ringer is off.

It has grown particularly bad, however, with her constant suspicion about everything I do. It all started a while back, and I've blogged about it in the meantime. One of the most striking examples was the night that she called me as I was driving to my ex-boyfriend's, and, in spite of my many protestations that I really was not having sex (and still haven't!) she insisted that she, "Didn't care what I did, but I should just be sure I used protection" while I also knew full well my mother's intense feelings about sex before marriage. As I said then, her insistence that we were beyond the talk of "don't have sex before marriage" to "just use protection" already meant that she had judged me. It happened again last night. As a 21-year-old, I am now legally able to drink. My parents do not have any protestations regarding alcohol, as long as it is consumed in moderation. Last night, I brought home a six-pack of beer. This morning my mother and I have this exchange:

Mom: Where did this beer come from?
Me: I got it last night. You can have one, if you want one.
Mom: Since when do you drink?
Me: Since I am legal, and when I was in France, since it was both common and legal there.
Mom: -in an accusing tone- It's not a habit, is it?
Me: Yes mother. In the three weeks since I have turned 21, I have not only managed to become an alcoholic, but I did so while working 10 hours every day and getting home before 6:00 every evening.

Mom and I had another discussion about it on the way home from church today. I forgot what she said, to start, but it was yet another comment where she assumed the worst about me:

Me: You see, this is the problem. You always assume I'm doing something wrong, which I would understand if I warranted it, but I've never -done- anything wrong. I've been a good kid. I haven't done -bad- things. You assumed when I was with Michael I was out sleeping with him. You assume that now I'm an alcoholic. It really doesn't help your point, because it almost makes you want to stop caring enough to go do things like become an alcoholic, since I'm going to be blamed for doing things no matter which decision I want to make.
Mom, with a perfectly serious face: You don't want to be an alcoholic.
Me: ... Mom. You realize that that was a facetious, hypothetical statement, right? That I wouldn't -actually- become an alcoholic out of spite or whatever, that I was simply making a point?
Mom: … I do now.

I know my mom is trying to care. She assumes that by telling me things like, "Don't drink too much" she is really helping me. Unfortunately, she does little except to present it in the most offensive way possible, possibly because my mom really is just that paranoid after so many years of my father lying to her. And that really is what it all boils down to. If there is anything I have had plenty of time to reflect on last semester, it is that families are complicated. This complete present situation all has ties to a million other interactions with and between my parents, and most of those boil down to the simple fact that my position within the family has always been ambiguous. Last semester I had to see a counselor for many reasons, but basically I was incredibly depressed, to the point I couldn't recognize myself anymore. I will hopefully get around to writing a different entry about this someday, as it has been on the docket for a long while. One of the things we looked at together was the genogram I made for my family life class. As most people who have been reading my journal any length of time know, my family has been full of conflict as long as I can remember. My parents have always screamed at one another, and on multiple occasions my mother and I left the house for a few days. In these conflicts, I was always the arbiter, the one in the middle. I would try to reason out the issues, which to my young mind seemed the simple solution. When they would start yelling, I'd start yelling, too, trying to solve the problem. And when they had screamed so long they couldn't do it anymore, I was the one who had to listen to my mother and father rant about how much they couldn't stand this or that. At the time, I was trying to help with my interjections. The solutions always seemed so simple to my logical, external mind, but now I realize just how much it has impacted my life. I suppose it was then, most notably around 13, when my mom was using me as a bouncing board to help her decide to get a divorce or not, that I became totally independent and cut myself off from them. I was there to help them, but I couldn't and didn't know how to relate to them anymore, especially when, frankly, they needed me for the comfort and support that I was needing from them. My counselor said it is not at all uncommon for that to happen to only-children in high-conflict families; they become independent adults very quickly, too quickly. She pointed out, however, that the price I've been paying is my notoriously inability to let anyone help me. She asked me, when all of this was going on, who was there for me, and I was absolutely flabbergasted when I realized I didn't have an answer. I wrote about it in various journals and blogs, but really, the answer was no one. Perhaps my memaw, who would at least remove me from the situation on weekends. So, really, I've been playing the adult role a long while. This functioned, while I was still dependent on my parents for what little financial support they've given, permission, and the like.

Now that I'm older, however, I have literally put my own self through college through my own works, as well as have the means to remove myself from the situation. They haven't likewise tried to remove the last elements of their control, which for my mother is largely a function of guilt and bossiness. I know she is angry and feels isolated because she doesn't know me as well as she likes or that she can't be a part of my world at Centre. She is angry when I am home, and don't spend time with her. I'd like to let her in, but I can't as long as the minute I tell her anything, I am judged in an overbearing fashion, as if she is a teenager, trying desperately to prove she is my parent. Also, frankly, a part of me is still angry, too, that she wasn't there for me when I needed her; I had tried to support her through her own troubles, but I realize now, the fact I was having to do that as an 8, 10, 13, 15, 18-year-old means that she didn't, and still doesn't, have the emotional resources to likewise support me. It's in how she still thinks so selfishly, like a teenager herself, how she still resorts to screaming and nagging, if it will get her attention. She's still, in many ways, immature herself. The only problem is, I can't and won't support her in the same way anymore. I want to find new ways to show her I care rather than enabling her, but so far none of them seem to be breaking through the rubble of my family's communication breakdown.

Though I must say it's interesting to realize that, in an entry about my parents allowing me to grow up, I have the equal sensation that I've somehow been trying to let go of my parents also, and allow them to likewise grow up.

Someone make the 32 gig Ipod Touch not $399. Right now.

Edit: I settled for the 16 gig. It is my new baby.

Things Tori is doing this summer:

1. Working Upward Bound: helping underprivileged high-schoolers get ahead in school during the summer, with the goal of them going to college, same as last year. It's a very rewarding program and one, most of you may remember, I was in in high school. That starts today, and goes on for the next 5 weeks, the last week being a week-long trip to Memphis.

2. Research with Dr. Beaudoin: Or more accurately, making content-based websites to interactively teach college students world history by their own explorations of primary sources on the internet. Once we make the website, we're trying to do a write-up for a journal.

3. Dr. Weston's Theory Camp: Every summer, Dr. Weston has students come into a morning cafe talk session about a particular book. This year's is about how professors quantify "excellence," a fairly relevant topic considering my chosen field of work. It should be very interesting.

Otherwise, Thursday is my 21 birthday, on which I immediately leave to chaperone high schoolers on a Thursday-Sunday weekend trip at Murray. Bah, so is life.

In a conversation about having children:

[19:06] Brayzandaran: I used to not want them.
[19:06] Brayzandaran: Then I got over my whole daddy complex thing.
[19:06] Brayzandaran: And now I want to be the father I never had.
[19:06] Brayzandaran: Also.
[19:06] Brayzandaran: I want to be able to play D&D with my family.
[19:06] Brayzandaran: So minimum 3.
[19:07] Brayzandaran: (wife + 2 others)

Also, from history class today:
"Your papers should be like kilts: long enough to cover the material, short enough to keep it interesting."

It would be funnier if it weren't so accurate. Also, Nazi history on Wejew? Interesting.

Finals Week begins with Reading Day on Wednesday. I have the best schedule ever. Thursday morning I have the first one and Friday the second. Otherwise I have my revised seminar paper due the Friday after finals week is over and an open-book essay final that I have to write in any of the days between now and this upcoming Friday, which I will most likely begin Tuesday night or tomorrow night. I will be finished with finals, apart from revising the paper, a full five days before everyone else.

Best. Finals week. Ever.

Edit (05/11/09): And it just got better! Thursday morning final is now an open book take-home exam.

Today I dropped my 5th gen Ipod on the pavement walking to the gym. Despite its being in an indestructible case, I guess its cranky 3-and-a-half-year old heart decided to give out. Now I get the sad Ipod icon and it tells me it has no battery power, in spite of it being fully charged when I left. This leads me to believe that the battery is either A. disconnected or B. kaputt. Neither would surprise me, as Ipods are notoriously known for having terrible battery issues. The problem is that I no longer have a warranty on the Ipod, which means if I get it fixed I will have to pay for labor and, if it requires a new battery/other parts, the parts themselves. I can't imagine this would be very cheap, though I'm interesting in hearing about the cost from any of you who have had similar issues.

Which leads me to my next question. This summer, I will make quite a good chunk of cash. Is it worth switching over to Zune and just buying myself a whole new one? I've been looking at Zunes and I really think they'd work well with my system. Itunes is buggy and my laptop has media center, which would be very amazing if I had all of my music programmed into Windows Media Player, which at the moment seems a ridiculous waste considering I use Itunes for my Ipod. What do you guys think?

Edit: A friend popped mine open. Turns out the cord connecting the battery back to the hard drive is split, or so they think.

Postsecrets Throughout History! Props to anyone who can explain the New York Hilton one.

Whoever can find me an MP3 of this song from Bad Channels gets lots and lots of brownie points. The band only very recently, after many years, released an Itunes-only CD:


Edit: All hail beyonder, King of Obscure Music.

Tonight was the annual zombie D&D game, also known as our free-for-all game. I made a true neutral human barbarian based on my favorite character from Left4Dead, Francis. I had to leave a bit before the end, but as my character was bitten and I left the sheet with the DM, I hope to hear he changed and attempted to massacre the party tomorrow. His list of dialogue includes:

( I hate LJ-cuts. )

The rest of the party: an orthodox Jewish hypochondriac, a door-to-door salesman, a cleric of St. Cuthbert, an emokid, and a very empathetic pirate-ninja.

Quotes:
""I'm goinna memarize Schmendrick's magick-ul supa glue a few moa times fo tomorrow, okay gois?"
"You need ninja stars of David!"
"I dunno, it's just like a normal priest journal: I had a pretty good sermon today, I had a pretty good sandwich today, I had a pretty good nap today."

Yesterday Deutschklub drove to the Hofbraeuhaus in Cincinnati for our yearly German meal. There was bratwurst, kraut, and spaetzle. There was dancing on a table to the chicken dance, played by the live "German" band. There was beer for my over-21 friends. There was sighing and shaking of the head in dismay by our (native) German professor. There was a song dedicated to him in return.

Nothing about this can go wrong.

Tonight I go to a jazz concert which my ex, who dumped me, is playing in. I see the ex's grandparents, a lovely couple, for the first time since the breakup, and they ask me to sit with them. The ex's father is also there. Halfway through the performance, the ex's father leans over and says, "Multi-talented. Bet you wish you hadn't gotten rid of him now!" I am stunned into silence, and he continues to lean over every 30-45 seconds and make comments. "I take it it didn't happen that way?" "Have I hit a nerve?" "You know, you have a year to get him back..." "I thought you guys were just friends..." "See him playing those drums? Looks like he's good with his hands." FML

Cohabitation in America is different in at least one important way from living together in Europe. Here, people with a lot of schooling are more likely to marry than to cohabit, while less educated people are more likely to cohabit. In Europe, matters are reversed. There, the better-schooled people are more likely to cohabit, while the less schooled are more likely to marry. I do not quite know how to explain this difference.
- James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem, pg. 7

What do you all think?

On an unrelated note:
Dr. Weston: “The primary users of civil unions, in spite of being designed for same sex couples, are heterosexual couples. There was apparently a great push for an easily breakable, sort of “marriage lite.” Kind of like a Facebook marriage.”

Holy crap I am so downloading this when I get back to my room.