Pronunciation

This is going to be a rant about something that has always bothered me, but was brought to the forefront of my mind by a recent conversation with a friend (from which no part of this blog post is directly stolen *looks around nervously*).

If I had one wish-And I'm going to warn you, I realize that this makes me a horrible human being- I would not wish for world peace, or an end to poverty or for someone eradicate Nickleback. If I had one wish, it would be for everyone in the world to correctly pronounce Rowling.

Ok, that's probably a lie. I don't know what I would do in that situation. I like to think that I'd wish for something noble, but you always think of yourself as better than you actually are in hypothetical situations like that. So I guess first I would wish for something huge and monumental and for the betterment of all mankind, and if I had multiple wishes, I would put the pronunciation of her name up there.

But in all seriousness.

This woman is by far the most popular/famous living author. She's certainly the wealthiest author to ever live. She successfully navigated not a trilogy, but a 7 part metanarritive epic that transcends the boundaries of children's, young adult and adult literature. Her characters and stories will live in the hearts of thousands for centuries. She single-handedly revived a love of literature for an entire generation. She has been awarded Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur, the highest honor that France can bestow. She is an exceptional philanthropist, supporting charities ranging from Anti-Poverty groups to the children's charity that she chairs, Lumos. All the good that Harry Potter has brought to this world would not exist if it were not for this extraordinary woman.

Why, I ask you. Why, then, has every single American media outlet decided to incorrectly pronounce her name?

It's pronounced Row-ling. Exactly how it looks. Row, as in rowing a boat, and ling.... not Raowling.

What is that even? How as the elusive "a" ended up in there?

I could maybe understand if she was a lower profile author. Or if she had a super difficult to pronounce sir name. Or if her books weren't so darn fantastic.

But none of those things are true. She has reached a level of popularity that no one else has, purely based on a book series. Her name is quite simple, has two syllables and is British. And her books are world wide best sellers, and in my opinion, will be classics 100 years from now.

Is it like some kind of conspiracy? Is our government trying to keep this from us? Is that why no one in this country know how to pronounce her name? I cannot recall the last time I watched an American program where they said her name correctly.

It's frustrating, because whenever it happens I find myself yelling at my TV or computer, only to slowly realize that they cannot hear me. My feeble attempts to correct this country are in vain.

So I have an idea. An evil plan to make sure everyone knows how to correctly say this very simple name.

1. Take over the government: it should be easy enough.

2. Make a movie of the woman herself saying her own name for two hours.

3. Pass a law that everyone in the United States of America must see it at least once in their lifetime.

4. Everyone will live happily ever after.

Now I realize that this whole plan involves me heading up a government regime that is in direct contrast with my own political views, but that's how strongly I feel about this issue. The woman deserves to have her name correctly pronounced.

Dark Magic

Do you ever inexplicably wake up at an ungodly hour, only to fall asleep and then later question if it actually happened?

Usually I forget those incidences, forging ahead past the confusion that is the blur of my 5 AM escapades. Sometimes, it all rushes back later that day, in completely unrelated situation. I'll be sitting in class and think "Did I actually wake up at 4:23, pee and brush my teeth, or did I dream that?" But if there wasn't a centaur playing the ukulele in the corner of the bathroom, or my teeth didn't spontaneously turn into pasta, I usually assume that it wasn't a dream. I move on. I forget it.

But this morning was different. What happened to me this morning somewhere between the hours of 4 and 6 was so bizarre that when it did eventually flood back to my memory, I was actually unsure of it's basis in reality.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 with no blankets. Obviously freezing, I searched the foot of the bed and the floor. My sheets and comforter were nowhere to be seen.

At that point, I was fairly perplexed/disturbed. First off, if my bedding wasn't anywhere in the general vicinity of my bed, there could only be two options.

Option #1: Someone had come into my room, removed my sheets from my body, and took them out of the room. This would involve someone breaking into my apartment. It also involves malicious intent, and a stranger in disturbingly close proximity to me while I'm sleeping. Even though this scenario stars the worst psychopath ever, I'm not OK with any of those things.

Option #2: I uncharacteristically slept walked (sleep walked? Slept walk? Is there even a past tense for that?), took my sheets with me, and neglecting to bring them back to my room.

I was contemplating checking my refrigerator, or oven until I saw something out of the corner of my eye.

Having already explored the ax murderer option, I might have had a minor spasm of terror. And by "might" I mean definitely. And by"minor", I mean not minor in any way.

At the head of my bed, was a horrifying conglomerate of my comforter, my sheets and my pillow. I had apparently been sleeping on it like a pillow.

As a general rule, I don't wake up like that. Never in my 19 years have I ever woken up with my blankets under my head.

Now, in retelling this story, I realized that it doesn't sound as weird as it actually was. But if you will, imagine with me how this would go down.

First of all, it's early. You're sleep drunk and confused. You're cold and you're 47% sure that a serial killer has been in your bedroom. Now you realize that your blankets have somehow, ended up in an inexplicable place.
And the thing is- I've gone through this a ridiculous amount of times- I honestly have no idea how they got there. The only reasonable* explanation I can find for how any of this happened is some kind of Paranormal Activity situation where I'm being possessed by some spirit that has somehow become enraged with comforters. Then later I'll kill Mallory, no big deal.

(*Not really reasonable at all)

Glee

When Glee first started, I'm not going to lie to you, I was excited beyond recognition. I mean, a musical TV show staring Lea Michelle was probably exactly what I would have wished for if I happened to stumble across some sort of magic lamp.
I grew to love that little ragamuffin of a show. It was sweet, quirky, had interesting characters and of course, they randomly broke out into song. My world was complete.

Then the first season ended. And everything went to crap.

I really couldn't put my finger on it, but for some unknown reason, I hated the second season of Glee more than I hate not together Ross and Rachel. It was campy and preachy and the whole thing felt like a poorly written after school special. I had given up on it. I would watch occasionally to see Darren Criss being a boss, but other than that my interest had completely vanished. The little show that could broke my heart.

But then the third season came along, and I thought "hey, I used to really love this, why not see what's in store for the glee club this time around."

And it's amazing.

I cannot express to you my joy at discovering how fantastic this third season is. And in understanding why I love this season so much, I can also understand why I hated the last season too.
Rachel Berry: I think she's the most consistent character on the show, in so much that she's consistently a horrible person. That was a major factor in me hating season two; she was such a huge focus of that whole season. My personal opinion is that, if you create a character who is so mind blowingly annoying that even the characters in the show don't like her, maybe you should try to develop her to a tolerable point. When she was introduced in the first season, I figured that she would undergo major character development. And while her unrequited love for Finn in the first season distracted us from the fact that she was selfish, shallow and kind of a sociopath, when that died down, all we were left with was an annoying character who you just wanted to shoot in the face. What the third season is doing right is humbling her. As someone who went through the whole MT College auditioning process, when she first oh so boldly stated that she was going to Julliard, I was a little peeved at the writers. But her and Kurt getting their faces melted off by some other arguably more talented kids was an awesome dose of reality.

Quinn: I think Quinn is my favorite character, and something the second season completely screwed up was her development. One of the things that made the first season of Glee so great was Quinns pregnancy and the story line that flowed out of that. Then along comes the second season and they barely acknowledge the fact that she even had a baby. Her character completely went back to normal and as an audience we forget the fact that last season she was knocked up by her boyfriends best friend and was kicked out of her house. That is quite possibly the most aggravating aspect of the second season. Now, the third season is picking back up where the second season should have, dealing with this teen girl who just went through some massive emotional trauma. And I love the fact that they brought Idina Perfecthumanbeing Menzel back to be apart of it.

The music: In watching the third season as it airs and in thinking back to the second season, one thing that sticks out to me as a massive throwback to the first season is the way they incorporate the music into the lives of their characters. In the first season, you just stopped and sang a song in the middle of a scene to express a deeper emotions that words alone just can't. That's what a musical is. In the second season they kept looking for logical reasons for people to be singing, while simultaneously forgetting the fact that there is no socially acceptable reason for people to break out into a choreographed song and dance, and in that they made themselves look like idiots. I realized that this past week as Will began to sing Coldplays "Fix You" to Emma. There was no explanation for why he should be singing that to her, except for that his emotions overflowed into that song. Like I said before, that's what a musical is. That's how the songs in the first season worked, and I really hope the third season continues this way.

Overall story line: Before this third season started, I made some pretty strong arguments that Glee should have been a mini series. As someone who watches a lot of TV I can say that I believe that the first season of Glee really was awesome television. Then we get into the second season and it just felt like they were grasping for anything to make it interesting. Yes, bringing in Darren Criss was a smart and interesting move, but apart from some minor subplots, the whole thing was just a glorified after school special. There was no driving force. There was no need to prove to the school/world that this show choir/TV show could be more than what everyone thought it would be. Maybe it's West Side Story, or the college auditions or just the general sense of impending adulthood which gives this season a overriding purpose. Whatever it is, I like it.

Glee has somehow managed to jump the shark, and then unjump it one season later. I don't know how that works. Do you have to drive the boat backwards? Does Henry Winkler have to be involved? I should ask Ryan Murphy, because I'm super curious. It probably involves voodoo dolls, ritual chanting and Lea Michelle's blood. Because, let's face it, she's obviously not human.

This week

In March of 2010 my parents split up.

When I was three I had a kidney infection that all the doctors thought was leukemia for a really long time.

Senior year I spent two weeks glued to the couch because I had mono.

In one week in late July early August 2010, My cousin was born 4 months early had very slim chance of survival, my grandfather was hospitalized and another cousin was hospitalized for skateboarding down a hill onto oncoming traffic.

I've spent weeks heartbroken, depressed and lonely.

Please don't think that I'm trying to be dramatic. I'm trying to give some perspective so that when I say that this week has legitimately been the worst week of my life thus far, you don't think I'm being theatrical or hyperbolic or clever. This has honestly been the worst week of my life.

I won't go into details, because if you don't know the whole situation than you probably don't need to know, but Monday I received news that someone that I love more than life itself was in serious danger. I'm stuck an hour away with no way of getting to that person until Saturday.

On Tuesday, I experienced the worst sickness of my life as a reaction to that news. I've never actually had a my body react to my emotions that forcefully before. I could not breathe through my nose, my throat was sore, I had the worst headache of my life and I spent two hours in my bed shivering under my covers quite literally unable to move. I had mono last year. Tuesday was worse.

I have a paper that's worth 50% of my English grade due on Tuesday. Along with a substantially less weighty, but equally as unignorable (not a word) paper for an different class and an exam due tomorrow.

And last night I did not sleep. At all. I was writing a paper till 2, but then Mallory(the roommate) and I started talking about some pretty deep stuff until we realized that it was 5:23 and attempting to sleep and get up for school a few hours later would be more detrimental than helpful. So I've been up for the past 32 hours, literally running solely on caffeine. I'm going to use that as an excuse for how terrible my writing has been/is going to be.

This week has been awful. I'm tired, I'm stressed, on 24 different levels and I cry at the drop of a hat. If there has ever been a week for me not to get spit on, this would be the week.
But no. I totally got spat on.

Walking back to my apartment from my last class of the day, a person physically spits on me. And not a regular spit. A tobacco spit.

First can I just say how disgusting that is to even be chewing tobacco in the first place. I mean, if you're going to be feeding a nicotine addiction, smoking is like 75% cooler. And you are 99.9% less likely to spit on me.

This is how the whole thing went down:
Walking, walking, walking, walking, not paying any attention to my surroundings, walking...

I hear a weird, bubbly, high pitched sequel-y noise comes from out of no where.

I feel some light pressure on my left pant leg.

I feel moisture on my foot.

I realize what happened.

I really had no response to this. The guy looked at me like he was genuinely sorry, but didn't say anything.

I couldn't either. First of all, I was in sock that it happened. I mean, I've never been (unintentionally) spit on.

I would say that I was proud of myself for exercising grace in the quad, and not using any and all of my combative sentences, or favorite curse words, but really I didn't have anything in mind to say. I just kind of stared at the guy. And for a second, it was almost like he could tell that my week had been one thing piling on top of the other.

I'm not really sure if that's what was going on in his mind, or if his naturally relaxed face is one of concern and empathy much like mine is one of anger and dissatisfaction, because I turned as fast I could and walked away.

Because I was crying.

Like, I said, drop of a hat.

It wasn't so much that I was upset that I got spat on, as it was the complete and utter symbolism in the act. He had spat on me. School had spat on me. Life had spat on me this week. And not a regular, mildly gross flemmy, but all together in-retrospect-not-that-bad spit, but a spit filled with all kinds of nasty stuff, that comes with addition and death and I guess in this case loosing your jaw. Isn't that was chewing tobacco is supposed to do? I'm not really sure.

But yeah, that happened.