It's Not Poetic When It's Real

I know, this is yet another serious topic, but  it's on my mind and I need to speak about it. This is not a rant. This is something entirely different.

Lately, many people have been talking about a certain girl who killed herself recently because of bullying. Her name was Amanda. Amanda Todd.

You all know where I'm going with this now probably, but let me continue.

You can look up this girl's story on Youtube - if you do, you are a lot less cowardly than me, I absolutely can't stand that kind of stuff and I can't bring myself to watch her video - but it explains why she killed herself.

Long story short, the girl made one mistake. A foolish mistake, certainly, but nevertheless she only made one serious mistake. And no one ever forgave her for it. She tried to continue on, but everyone - bully is not a strong enough word. It's disgusting what they said. They told her to kill herself. They told her no one loved her. Everywhere she went for sanctuary, the vicious comments followed her. And after she was beat up by a group of them, after her father found her in a ditch, she went home and she drank bleach in an attempt to end her life. She was rushed to the hospital and she lived.

Instead of taking this as a warning sign and trying to make amends, the people told her to try again. The vicious words continued. And eventually, when she couldn't take it anymore after many ways of trying to distract herself, she hung herself.

She is gone from this world. She never got another chance. She ended her life believing that no one loved her. It's absolutely horrifying that this happens in the world that we live in.

This girl never got a chance to make it up. She never got a chance to live her life - she had so much potential. I never knew her but I know she did, because everyone does. And now she'll never get a chance. She'll never get married, she'll never find her calling, she'll never..... live. And it's not her fault, not really. She was trying to escape. It's the people around her that drove her to it.

She had no one.

I just hope that she finds more peace wherever she is now than she ever did on Earth.

But I respect her because she had the courage to put her story up where everyone could see it. Because though I like to tell myself otherwise, we do need to be aware of this. Only by awareness can we ever deal with it.

I am spouting realities here that I myself am in denial about. I am surprising myself right now.

The thing is, suicide is never something to be taken lightly. It bothers me when people say things like "Oh, if this happens, I'm going to kill myself." And I admit, I'm guilty of saying things like that. I did. But I don't, not anymore. Because it's real. It's not showing dedication or commitment to anything. It is ending one's own life, because hope does not exist anymore. You don't turn to suicide when you just happen to have had a bad week. Because it will get better. It always gets better. And it may take a while. But it does get better, I promise. Meanwhile, find someone you can talk to. Talking makes it better. I know - when I'm feeling bad I have plenty of people I can turn to, because I'm lucky. And they are lucky because in return they know that they are always welcome to talk to me, and they do. If not a friend or parent, there are hotlines that I would urge you to try. Sometimes it's even easier when you don't know the person.

The reason I'm blogging about this issue is because it is very close to me. I have two friends in particular, who both suffer from depression and bipolar disorder, and anxiety I think also. Last year, one of these friends would get drunk with her friends, and then try to kill herself in her drunken state - thank god she never succeeded, though she still cuts herself. My other friend, for as long as I've known her, has always said that suicide and cutting was a coward's way out, and it was selfish - and I tended to agree. She would say that you needed to be strong, you needed to build a mental backbone. And I respected her for saying these things, because she had horrible horrible issues and I had absolute respect for her and for her way of thinking. And then, about two weeks ago, she told me that she had attempted suicide ten times in the previous two weeks. I was in shock. And I cried. Because I love this girl. She has been my closest friend for years now, and she has told me more than once that I saved her. Have you ever heard that? That you saved someone? It feels like nothing else. And then she told me about the attempted suicides. And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that things had gotten that bad. I couldn't believe that she thought no one loved her, and I couldn't believe that she was serious. Not only was my best friend trying to remove herself from this world, as if she were a stain on the Earth, but I had failed as her friend. And people try to help her, they tell her - beg her - not to do these things. And she pushes them away with annoyance, saying they don't understand, not believing that anyone could care about her that much. Her friends, including me, ask her how they can help - they want desperately to help her. I don't know what I would do if she succeeded. And she says that no one can help her, and changes the subject. She treats it like it's nothing. She sees a therapist, and she's been to the mental ward of the children's hospital. None of it seems to have shown any significant improvement, and I don't know what to do anymore. She won't let anyone help her. So I sit at home, praying for her safety with tears in my eyes, because that's all I feel I can do.

Do people understand that once they make the decision to kill themselves and they actually succeed, it's not a second chance at life? Because it's not a second chance at life. People get a second chance at life in the life that they started. But ending the life you started doesn't give you another one. It doesn't work that way. And I am frankly baffled that suicide is such an issue in this generation - sure, we feel depressed at times. Of course we do. We're human. But that is not an excuse. We were all born to become something, like I said. It doesn't matter what - writer, mother, wife, whatever. We can choose what to become. But everyone on this earth is meant to become something. And I do think that if we cut ourselves off midway through life, we never truly become what we were meant to become. If the journey is cut short then how can we truly get to the destination?

My point is that if people would simply give their lives a chance that a second chance would probably reveal itself eventually. And I understand that I can't understand. I've never been told to go kill myself, I've never made such a critical mistake as Amanda Todd did. I've always had people who love me. I've been lucky that way.

But I also know that nothing is made to last. It may seem like forever and a day until the people who oppressed you and made you feel so horrible are out of your life. But I promise that it will happen. You just need to be patient and wait. And I promise you that if you do, you won't regret it. Because living is good. The human experience is good. Because we need to know what sadness is to appreciate happiness. We need to know what hatred is to appreciate love. It's all part of the human experience.

Suicide.... and I feel wrong saying this in the light of Amanda Todd - but it is selfish. Selfishness is human, of course. But suicide is very selfish. Because nothing you do only affects you. You cannot isolate an action so that it only affects the ones you want it to affect. If you kill yourself, thinking that no one will be affected by it, you are wrong. Can you imagine what the parents of Amanda Todd are going through right now? In fact, this whole community has been shaken to its core because of Amanda Todd's tragedy. It didn't only affect her, not only her family. This whole community knows about it, and this whole community is shaken and some are sobbing and some are angry and some are being on the opposite end of hatred because they were the foolish ones that said those things to her. It's not just her family, it was everyone around her. And it will be the same with everyone. Because everyone knows someone, and that someone knows people - don't you see that people are made in chains? When one chain link shakes, so does the whole chain. And when one chain link disappears, the chain inevitably breaks, and it may take a very long time for it to repair itself.

That was all I wanted to say. Death is awful, but suicide is the most horrifying thing I've ever heard of. So, without further ado, a poem I found online that I find....... insightful. Scary, but insightful.

And as it doesn't belong to me, here's the link.

This has all been on my mind and I had to write about it. Thank you for reading, because unlike most of the other posts, this one is actually meaningful to me. If you read this, thank you. Just thank you.

God Is Not A Magician, And Jesus is Not a Zombie.

If I could be serious for a moment, which I never seem to be on this blog. I do have some serious opinions, but if I mention this to anybody it's really not going to mean anything.

As I've said, I consider myself a fairly religious christian individual, in spite of my regular frustrated cries of "Jesus Christ!" and "God damn!" or "What the hell....?"(these are all flaws that I've been trying to work on, but they're also fairly deepseated habits that I feel bad about everytime it happens).

I believe that God created the world. This is what I believe in. I have no hatred for people who disagree with me, though I do get ruffled feathers if someone shows contempt to my beliefs.

But I need to clear things up for people who think they understand christianity, but don't.

The story is that mankind condemned themselves to death/hell when they ate the apple from the tree of knowledge - the tree God said not to eat from. God said they could eat from any tree except that one. They ate the apple, and before that moment they had no understanding of wrong. Wrong did not exist, they were literally living in a heaven on earth. But when they ate the apple, they saw the possibilities of where wrong could happen. They noticed they were naked and for the first time in their lives, they felt shame. God punished them, but they knew He would. They had condemned themselves, you see, to sin.

Now, the hard part of that piece of the story is that God is eternal. He knew that they would eat from the tree. So, why did he let them? What was the point?

Because, goodness and love, truly committed goodness and love, cannot exist without a knowledge of their opposites.

Mankind condemned themselves to this.

But, God loves the people. He had animals, but he made people with souls, and he loves them because they are his children. So, he told his prophets that he would send a saviour to save people from their sin. And two thousand years later, Jesus, his son, was sent to save us. He taught the people what the church was doing wrong - (ahem, and two thousand years later the church is still discriminating against gay people) and hung out with..... the "wrong crowd" I guess, because God loves EVERYBODY. The sinners and the saints.

And then, as God said he would, Jesus saved mankind, because he died on the cross. The punishment for sin is death. Jesus died. He didn't only die for the people before him, but for everyone who would live for eternity. He felt the weight of every sin that was commited by every person who ever existed or would exist ever. That is why he cries out "God, why have you forsaken me?" Because he felt the separation from God. He took the sins from us and laid it on himself.

Then he rose from the dead and continued to teach three days later. Because God is cool like that.

And it's because Jesus died that we as people are offered eternal life in heaven with God - because heaven is for people without sin. And if Jesus took away our sin, then we can get there, but only if we believe/accept that that did happen.

I'm not stating this as fact, just saying that this is the actual story that christians subscribe to, and this is how it works. Because lots of people seem to get the wrong impression about what christianity is about.

It's about the values. God FORGIVES everyone. God LOVES everyone. Are you seeing a continuation from my philosophy post? It's about believing that there is always someone who loves you, and there is always someone who is there to help you and save you.

It is NOT about discriminating against other people because of their life choices. It is NOT about starting arguments about how the world started, or calling other people idiots or any of that crap that goes on. That is a wrong interpretation of the Bible that for some reason many people recount as truth.

This is what I believe. Again, I'm not saying it as fact, but it's what I believe and I respect you if you believe something different. I have no reason not to.

I mention it because last summer I was experiencing a lot of doubt in my religion. It seemed to me just as hokey and ridiculous as it does to lots of people. But the speaker (Strider) said something that really brought me back to belief.

"If people are just animals, like other animals, then that means that we have no real purpose." And I believe that. If we were not created to be something different, then what is our purpose? We don't have one.

I do believe that every person has a purpose. If you take religion out of this for a second, I still believe that every person has a purpose. We have ambitions and thoughts and talents. We were all meant to become something, but we can decide what that is. We. Are. Meant. To become. SOMETHING. Everyone is. Which is why I feel it is such a waste when people decide to throw themselves and all their potential away. But that's a different thing altogether.

I need to believe everyone has a purpose. I need to believe people have individual purposes. My life has been dedicated to the idea that I have an individual purpose and I need to follow that purpose with all my heart, even before I became religious. THAT is why it struck such a chord with me, and that is why my doubt, while not completely disappearing, did decrease significantly.

And I like to fancifully think that God was telling Strider what to say then. Because it did strike me. Hard. It spoke to me on a much more fundamental level of self. That doesn't happen to me everyday - it hardly happens at all, I think too much and I've usually thought what people are saying before. Not this time. I was actually stunned for a minute. But I agreed immediately.

People think they understand christianity - the ones who sneer at it snidely and say things in a contemptuous tone of voice - but they don't. Heck, I've been christian for at least three years, and I learn things all the time.

And even if it isn't true - even if there is nothing, and we're all random groups of particles floating in a random universe with no purpose at all, even if everything that ever happened in history happened for no reason at all, just by chance, I still prefer to believe in God. Not because of the rules - as I've said, even if I break them, Jesus has taken my sins away. But because it gives me hope. It fills me with love for people. It makes me happy. Religion is supposed to be a source of love, peace, hope, fulfillment. It's a philosophy, surely, but it's also a kind of sanctuary. And the fact that others have gone and butchered this idea, making it a source of hatred and rage, disgusts me. Because that's not what religion is supposed to be about, and they are misinterpreting it in the most idiotic way I can possibly think of. The life lessons christianity teaches are actually valuable. But you need to transpose some of the scripture, especially the angry Old Testament, to modern times, that's all.

What frustrates me is that people see religion in political news and think they understand it. But religion is not supposed to about politics (which is why I don't subscribe to the catholic church - there are a lot of politics involved in who becomes the Pope, who is supposedly the closest one to God, although anyone can be extremely close to God in my opinion). And you need to actually hear what a religion is actually about in order to judge it truly.

I write this because the misinterpretation or christianity frustrates me, and the misunderstanding of it. I'm tired of it.

I'm done now.

Peace.

In Which I Realize My Utter Lack of Subtlety

Grandma: Megan is obsessed with a bald fifty year old man. Obviously she doesn't go for looks.

LATER

Dad: Colin Mochrie...?! Why can't you be like a normal kid and like stupid singers with horrible music?!

LATER

Mom: Megan, just ease up on your crush on Colin, okay.......

LATER

Dad: My daughter idolizes a fifty year old man.....!!!

Me: I don't idolize him.....

Mom: OH PLEASE.



HAVE I BEEN MAKING IT THAT OBVIOUS?!?!?!?!!

Oh well. Hey look..... Colin. That's new.

ARGH MY LIFE HATES ME AND ALSO MY MOTHER ENJOYS CRUSHING ALL MY DREAMS.

Drew Carey, Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, Brad Sherwood, Jeff Davis, Jonathan Mangum, Heather Anne Campbell and Laura Hall are all performing in Vegas tonight.

And Mom won't take me to Vegas.

IT'S LIKE THE WHOLE GANG PLUS AWESOME PEOPLE LIKE JONATHAN MANGUM AND HEATHER ANNE CAMPBELL. TO SEE THIS WOULD BE A FREAKIN' DREAM COME TRUE. 

WHY CAN'T I JUST LIVE IN LIKE A VAN FOLLOWING THEM EVERYWHERE. 

And you know what the worst part is?

RYAN AND COLIN TOGETHER AGAIN!!!!!! ARGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I HAVE TO MISS ALL THIS AWESOMENESS JUST BECAUSE MOM WON'T TAKE ME TO VEGAS. *sobs* WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

First I miss Colin Mochrie live in Calgary. And I thought that was a big deal. 

BUT RYAN AND COLIN AND DREW AND BRAD AND JEFF DAVIS AND JONATHAN MANGUM AND HEATHER ANNE CAMPBELL AND THE ONE AND ONLY LAURA HALL ALL DOING A SHOW TOGETHER?!?!?!!? THAT'S A BIG FREAKIN' DEAL.

*goes in a corner and cries*

WHY WON'T MY MOM LET ME GO TO VEGAS?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!

Pretty In Pink: Movie Review

Cause I review movies from thirty years ago. Don't judge me.

Honestly, I was expecting to be blown away by that John Hughes movie magic. Well, I wasn't. It was kind of mediocre.

I guess at that time, John Hughes was kind of the "magic director", where everything he made was pure gold (Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, etc.). But I really had trouble with this one.

First of all, a short John Hughes general analysis (not just for this movie, but in general). John Hughes seems to enjoy experimenting with breaking the rules of screenplay writing. For instance, a fairly well known rule is that you NEVER address the audience/camera. Because that breaks the reality of the movie. Well, not only was Ferris Bueller all ABOUT addressing the audience and talking to the audience, he also did the same thing in Sixteen Candles (right before the King of Nerds starts making out with the popular party girl, he looks at the camera and says "THIS is getting interesting") AND there's even a short little nod to the audience in Pretty In Pink (when the girl at the prom is inviting Duckie over to her, Duckie looks at the camera incredulously, then looks back at the girl).

Another fairly well known rule is not to stereotype characters - characters should be three dimensional, not one-sided. But the John Hughes SCHTICK is to stereotype characters. In the Breakfast Club, you had the jock, the princess, the rebel, the nerd, and the weird emo girl. They of course fill out and dimensions are added by the end of the movie - that's kind of the whole point of that particular movie - but in other movies, not so much. In Sixteen Candles, you have the stuck up rich kids, the awkward nerds, the weird asian kid...... and a lot of them never fill out.

A lot of John Hughes movies seem to like putting "normal characters" (usually played by Molly Ringwald) in a sea of stereotypes. I think it's supposed to be because to that character, they ARE stereotypes - it's not reality reality, it's the main character's reality, and I THINK that's what is trying to get across. John Hughes uses that device to hit the audience over the head with the moral of the story.

But Pretty In Pink kind of bugged me.

First of all, a short synopsis of the film:

Andie is kind of a poor girl, living on the wrong side of the tracks. She makes her own clothes because they can't afford to buy her clothes. She has a deadbeat dad who doesn't have a job and her mom left them when she was quite young, but her dad still loves her mom even though he hasn't seen her since she left. Andie's best friend is Duckie, who she's known since they were children. Duckie is in love with her, but doesn't know how to tell her. Andie's other friend is the girl who works at the record store she works at, and she's gotta be I guess around thirty or forty in that movie, but they're still friends. Andie goes to a high school where the poor kids and the rich kids are all separated in different social groups. She likes a rich guy called Blaine who actually likes her back. They go out, but are shunned by both their friends because the rich kids hate the poor kids and vice versa. Feeling pressure from his rich friends, Blaine blows her off after he asks her to go to prom with him. Then Andie goes to prom anyway, escorted by Duckie, then somehow makes up with Blaine and Duckie finds another girl at the prom and somehow they all live happily ever after.

It was better put together than I made it sound.

The thing is, Blaine was supposed to be the love interest, but he's actually a really blah character. He's a really boring person. The only interesting thing he did was somehow send her a picture over a computer chat - which back in the eighties was not easily done. Besides that..... I mean, one minute he's saying "You know what, this could work. This will work. We can do this," and the next day he's avoiding her in the hallways and not returning her calls, and then he's all sad because she got mad at him. Uh, HELLO? YOU blew HER off, not vice versa!!!! Gosh de gosh, as my french teacher would say. And there's this part at the end where he delivers this one-liner to his friend that's supposed to be like sticking it to the man or something, but it's actually really lame.

It was actually kind of awkward for me, because Duckie was the best character in the entire movie, and I realize that it would have completely screwed up the moral of the story, but the whole movie I was rooting for Andie to end up with Duckie (even though the moral of the story would have changed from "Social class doesn't matter" or something like that, it would have changed to "stick with your social class because relationships that cross that line don't work out") but Duckie was actually such a better character than Blaine! Not just because he was funny, but because he was just all around the better man.

For instance, Andie and Duckie had a fight about Blaine because of the whole social class issue, but Duckie forgives her and escorts her to the prom anyways. Then when Blaine comes up and apologizes to Andie, and Andie's looking back at him, she looks pleadingly at Duckie. And rather than Duckie getting mad at her again, he says "You came to this prom alone." And he lets her go to him.

Duckie was also hilarious, and Andie was almost constantly mad at him, but he's awesome. For instance, he's trying to figure out how to tell Andie he loves her, and he starts like singing a song really loudly and dancing around Andie's room. And when Duckie got thrown into the girl's washroom by the guys he pissed off that were bigger than him, at first he's about to run out of the room, then he stops and looks around. "So, this is what it's like in here? What the heck?! Look at all this stuff! We don't have this stuff! Doors on the stalls! A candy machine! (pointing at the tampon dispenser) I'm not leaving until I see the principal in here right now! This is ridiculous!"

And Duckie was the character in the movie that was the most developed. You see him goofy, you see him angry, you see him in despair. He's a character that you can actually understand as a human being. You'd think Andie would be the most developed character, but it was Duckie. And he doesn't get the girl. Come one.

But the thing is, I am prepared to believe that Blaine actually had some character development, but that all the scenes that DID develop him just ended up on the cutting room floor (even though they kept in Duckie's random irrelevant musical interlude that has nothing to do with anything). It seems to me that John Hughes focused a lot more on Duckie than Blaine. Which would be fine, if Duckie were one of the main protagonists. But he's not, in fact he kind of plays the part of an antagonist through a bit of the movie. Blaine should be one of the main protagonists, but he's boring and not very likeable. So it's a very unbalanced movie that way.

What me and my mother decided was that Blaine was actually probably supposed to be kind of an intellectual rich kid - he did the cool thing on the computer chat, and he was an heir to a large electronics corporation. He's also rather awkward, like he doesn't quite fit in with the cool kids, but was thrown in with them because of his social status. All these threads were there, but they didn't serve any purpose to his character. They were just..... there. And as a result, his character simply didn't make a lot of sense, and was generally unlikeable (though he does have one or two charming moments).

Another thing that didn't make a lot of sense in that movie was the catty rich girls. Sure, Andie's clothes were handmade and weird and such, but it's kind of implausible that the main rich girl would go out of her way to insult her - it would make more sense if she just didn't care, if they sort of ignored each other. But the rich girl actually went out of her way to insult Andie, whispering insults to her in Calculus even though she didn't even know Andie's name, and then acting insulting to her while she and Blaine are there, and being insulting in gym..... she just seemed to go out of her way to be catty and nasty to her, which seemed weird because it would just make more sense if they just sort of didn't care about each other.

There were just a few pieces in that movie that were kind of lazy and strange. Kind of a mediocre movie, all in all. I give it 3/5 stars.

There, my longwinded review.

Thank you for your time.

It's Entirely Too True

Found this while surfing Tumblr.

It was too true for me to not screenshot.

Seriously. It's so true. Made me laugh out loud. xD

I Understand This is Totally Obsessive, But it Makes Me Happy.

I have two folders on my desktop. One is labeled WLiiA Screenshots. The other is labeled Not Whose Line. Still Epic.

I'm going to give you a peek into the latter, just because I really want to show someone because it makes me so very happy inside.

I saw this ad on the top of Youtube and was like "Wait...... what?"

Thought this was funny, with the Whose Line and Improvaganza all down my Reccommended Videos. 

This is made of I don't even know fgdagadkladsgas.

I dare you to deny the awesomeness of this exchange.

It was too good to not save.

I believe this was after Colin had persistently complimented Craig on being an extremely attractive man. 

Talking about upping the ante once the crowd starts getting tired of the old two men kissing improv trick - improvised Shakespearean gay porn, live on stage!

Craig: Well, maybe Ryan's avoiding your call, Colin.
Colin: That's not possible. I'm adorable. 

After Colin got the audience awwing when he was talking about his wife and son. 

My friend Jacey's Wattpad status! I was so proud. :')

Brad Sherwood: Twitter's voice of reason, tolerance, acceptance and equality. He actually goes on Twitter and preaches about homosexual equality. He's actally made of awesome. 

Before the 100th episode taping of Whose Line. Apparently they kept the studio freezing cold. 

Love Colin's "Is failure contagious?" look at Drew. 

I realize I already posted these on here, but SERIOUSLY. COLIN USING A GUN. WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL. 

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

It's funny because I actually do this now and if I were using alcohol I would be so incredibly drunk. 

Not as good, but still funny to consider. 

Turns out I didn't give you all the Colin on Corner Gas in that one post! There was the one bit at the end where he's talking about how cool reading is. xD

..... because I can. 

My two favourite Whose Line boys. I love it. 

Another exchange made of epic. 

The picture that went with Jeff's post about Ryan Stiles peeing on corn. 

WHY IS THERE NO FILM OF THIS ANYWHERE?!?!?!?

I know it's sad, but it struck me. 

A FRICKIN' MOCHRIE OF FRICKIN' STILES. REMEMBER? THE ONE I FRICKIN' MISSED?

For some reason I just love this. 

HE HAD HAIR AND HE LOOKS SO FRACKIN' ADORABLE. 

I honestly don't know what to say about this, but ohmygod. 

I love whenever that happens. 

The voice of reason. 

It's hilarious. 

Sicko fantasies. You have a way with words, Colin. 

COLIN AND DEB ACK THEY ARE SO PERFECT TOGETHER I'M GOING TO DIE FROM ADORABLENESS. 

COLIN AND DEB AGAIN OH MY GOD AWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I realize it's mostly Colin. I admit, I have a huge crush on him. There I said it. Good thing no one reads this blog anyways.