Exploring sexy

While driving in to work today, I was listening to the talking on the radio. I rarely take time to listen to the "morning shows" simply because I find them, usually, trivial and boring. Sometimes, they make a severely negative impression upon me, which is what happened earlier today for the following reason.

The male speaker mentions how he is always a fan of Adele and her music and her looks, etc. The female speaker joins in the conversation, talking about self-esteem and how everyone should be proud of who they are and so on and so forth. The conversation then turns to Lady Gaga's newest photo shoot, where she has apparently gained some weight. Now, both speakers agreed that both of these feminine icons are sexy in their own right and then this happened:

Lady Gaga was attacked for still wearing tight clothes, and posing in her underwear, with her weight gain. Whereas, Adele was glorified for finding her sexy in her singing and standing still onstage.

People. COME ON. You are perpetuating the self-hatred by your attacking of people who are expressing themselves for what they are. Lady Gaga has always worn odd, tight clothes that show off either a lot of skin or a lot of shape. Now you want her to stop doing that? Isn't that stepping on what she does to make herself feel happy?
On the other hand, Adele is beautiful for being able to find her beauty in her passion for her music. I am not trying to detract anything from either of these ladies.

They're both themselves, regardless of circumstances, and they have my largest amount of respect for that.

It's been 5 days. Here's what I've to say.

I feel so disappointed when I find myself writing things that are unimportant. 

Every word should have a meaning, every phrase a purpose. Its why I love literature and theatre. I believe nothing should ever have to be thrown away. Nothing should be observed or described for the mere purpose of being observed or described. 

Why is the statement important? Does it add to the overall beauty of the world? Or does it allow some new insight to nature and life? Perhaps it reminds a person of a wonderful memory or a horrific happenstance. Whatever the purpose for describing, it should be evident in the diction chosen. Don't use all the words--use the *right* words. 

To overly describe, in my opinion, is to torture a story. 

Exercise your judgement

I am in the process of trying to get healthy. I am slightly overweight and it only serves to exasperate my angry joints. My knees, wrists, ankles, toes, fingers.... Oh jeez. I can't even list all of the joints that hurt. Anyways, by strengthening the muscles, I'm strengthening the joints and can *already* feel a difference.

And it's only been three days.

I know I've worked out before and never really stuck with it, and I can't tell if it's because I'm getting old (Oh goodness, please no!) or if it's because I never picked a good time. All of these everybody's talk about how they work out at 5 am or as soon as they get home from work or right before they go to bed, yadda yadda yadda. Well, my workout time is precisely around lunchtime. :)

I like it better. It makes me feel more accomplished in the middle of my workday (I bring a change of clothes, a washrag, and deodorant) while at the same time waking me up out of the monotony and giving me an actual appetite for lunch. I can practically feel the calories burning while I eat.

Speaking of eating, I'm not even really dieting. Granted, since I am gluten intolerant, I automatically cut out things such as breads and pastas, but I am trying to focus even more so on vegetables and things. Mostly, I'm taking the idea of grazing. Not really eating full meals, but just eating sporadically throughout the day when I'm hungry. And I can already see the difference in my figure and feel the difference in my body.

AND IT'S ONLY BEEN THREE DAYS.

Now, I've never been one to preach and tell people to "work out", but this experience has won me over a bit. I just wanna say that there is a *right* time for you to work out. And it's awfully rewarding.

ZED: A beginning

I wrote a thing. Please let me know what you think. I want to know if I should continue the story. :)

Quite a few people who don’t believe in an afterlife aren’t really afraid of dying.

I’m one of those people.

Not that I want to die, or anything, but death would mean a cessation of all the problems associated with living. Namely, dealing with other living things. Or dead things that don’t stay dead.

I’m with the emergency ZED squad. We are the ones who protect your sleeping brains at night while choruses of rotting flesh shamble mindlessly around, highly advanced individuals from other galaxies search for our natural resources, and huge terrorist plots are destroyed. I don’t do it to protect you or yours—I do it to protect me and mine.

A common thought is that America is most well-prepared for these issues. This thinking couldn’t be more incorrect—the amount of money that the United States submits to the ZED squad per quarter is pitiful. Strangely, our greatest contributors are France… Go figure why. Maybe they have the most to lose with a world gone berserk.

Regardless, almost every country in the world donates something to the fight, be it monetary, necessary resources or technology, or simply adding force to our growing army. The new fighters show up ignorant, and in huge numbers only to be sent away again by the hundreds, maybe a couple-ten left behind.

It’s always interesting to me to meet these newbies. They either stand at attention, or sulk in a corner, scowl on their faces. Those are the only ones I pay attention to, at least. The go-getters, the giddy puppies, the nervous wrecks—those are a disgrace. I can’t mold them into what I need, much less trust my back to their distraction and fear.

I seek cool.

Calm.

Collected.   

Everyone is a mite timid when the job is explained. I can see the second-guessing behind their gazes, and sometimes plain on their expression. It’s the ones who settle again, accepting the information and ready to take on a task that most are incapable of imagining. Those are the Stealths and I am the commandant.

We don’t call our soldiers by a violent name—we feel it offers the wrong idea to the latter threats of ZED. Extraterrestrials are always a more highly evolved species and, as such, will respond when a threat is realized. Delinquents (our name for human-apocalypse-starters) understand our way of speaking as humans, and we can’t rest on the belief that they are mentally stable enough not to simply break the world at the mention of “soldiers”. So we’ve settled on the title of Stealths. After all, most of our jobs are imperative to remain highly confidential.

We live our lives in stealth, so we might as well affix our titles to it.

Most people wouldn’t believe how busy I am. Jet-setting around the world in search of those with the endless appetite. In search of the next threat to the planet Earth. I’ve gotten so efficient at taking out the hordes that I sometimes feel as though I am single-handedly holding off the apocalypse. Maybe it’s my dedication to the fight. Maybe it’s my lack of fear. Maybe it’s that I have nothing to fear. Living trapped in horror has always been scarier to me than dying free in battle. That’s why I fight.

Creeping

I hate realizing mid-creep that I happen to be creeping. At this point, I'm referring to facebook stalking... but I suppose it works across the board for creepers everywhere. 

Anyways,

So I discover once I am on picture 32 out of 75 that I have been sitting, staring at my screen and an alarmingly large amount of pictures of one particular persons face-- it doesn't even have to be a person I like, honestly. I just get sucked in and don't even realize that I've been mindlessly thumbing through their photo albums. And then I get to a point that I would really love to comment on an old picture or like someone else's comment on that same picture and I find myself thinking

"Oh. But then they'll know I'm creeping.... Best remain anonymous." 

And I continue looking through a couple more pictures silently before being overwhelmed by my feeling of discomfort... It feels almost like spying. But it isn't, cause it's public? 

Facebook is weird. I like it, but it's doing weird things to our generation...

An ability to walk

Walking is step by step. No one tries to teach a toddler how to walk and asks them to skip, or hop, or jump.

I've been thinking recently how artistic achievements (and probably everything else) are gained by not being afraid of taking the first step. Then the second. Then the third. Knowing that you might get too tired by the eighth or ninth step, but that you'll still be farther than at the start. And that's really what's worth striving for-- the want, the desire, to be further than you are right now.

I've recently liked saying "failure is just an excuse to learn a better way."

Don't be afraid to keep walking. First steps aren't always the hardest, but persevere past problems. When you're done, every little step will have made up a marathon.

I have ONE thing to say today. (I know, odd right? I've always got words falling out of my ears I'm so full of 'em...)

But last night, I completed my most recent crochet/knit accomplishment. And it. is. CUTE.

If you want one, hit me up. We'll talk. :) I have a facebook and an e-mail (alexis.evon@gmail.com). 

Refurbishing

I switched up the stuff on my blog a bit-- You might notice a difference in fonts.
d(^.^)b
It makes me giddy.

One little rant today besides that:
Those who are awesome will not always be recognized as being such.
The people who are recognized are rarely as awesome as they appear.
Life is full of shrouded truths. And there is rarely enough illumination by which to judge.

So don't. Don't be judgemental upon yourself or others. The moment people assume they are able to judge is the moment they assume they are better than their fellows. And arrogance is such a nasty trait.

No where to go,

Not much to say.

So I'll leave with this one today:

Be happy. Know that the where and what can always be changed, but this 'when' will never come again. Take advantage of the 'when' given you.

(keeping those hurt 11 years ago in my thoughts and those who hurt them in my prayers.)
Thank you to all who truly protect and serve.

Have you ever felt yourself

slipping further and further into insanity? It always reminds me of when a person slides into a warm jacuzzi-- not a thoroughly heated-up jacuzzi, mind, because that would only serve to shock the senses into awakeness before allowing it to relax.

No, I am referring to the times when your mind drifts off while you are working on something. It begins to relax and stretch in the warm water of subconsciousness. You don't feel it as it fades away, your idle thoughts becoming more and more odd the further your mind dips into the jacuzzi. The slowly spreading warmth eases your brain from the topics you were trying to put off, and illuminates everything with a strange, eerie light. A light that casts more uncanny shadows than it dispels--shadows that seem take up space. Shadows that whisper and plot, their voices lilting and tempting. Shadows that gesture to dip deeper, swim farther, warm up more, and fall asleep.

Not to worry. The shadows've got you

(In the Pine Shadows, Moonlight J.E.H. MacDonald)

My tired, little toes

Today, i was sitting,
typing away
when my toes started to go numb.
As if i had tweaked them
messed up the joint,
maybe a nerve was too tight.
I wriggled one
then tickled another
and tried to feel the sensation,
but nothing got through
the thick haze of fog
which then clarified my fascination.
I'm curious, it's true,
about why they sleep
when there's so much to complete
and they simply
silently answer,
"we are just connected to your feet.
You don't need us to type,
or drink or to eat,
so let us rest, then, while we can."
it would've scared me,
if it weren't in my head,
Or they didn't make so much good sense.

So, I left 'em alone and let them sleep.

Football Sunday

So, this is a quick one today: I got things to do. :)

First off, UHM, Ace makes a hard pumpkin cider (I assume for Fall-times...?). How did I not know of this happening?! For anyone who doesn't know already, I have a really bad gluten intolerance and I am unable to drink beer without getting atrociously drunk and then hung over the next day. So I love cider. And this? Oh, jeez...

Secondly, I found a cool thing about football. Not to say that there isn't much to find, cause I do enjoy the sport as a whole, but I never grew up watching football, so I get to view it as an outsider on my way into the sphere. I gotta say, it's a new perspective on a very strong undercurrent of American civilization. Wearing the jersey of my boyfriend's team, we were noticed and approached at the grocery store. Now, the Broncos aren't my boys-- I'm forever with the green team number 1 (NY Jets, baby)-- but it's cool to have that immediate, almost unspoken connection with people.

I liken it to the fact that I'm a raging geek/nerd. I love my 'Wars (not much of a 'Trek fan....) and my Arrested Development and so many people don't get the references I make or the silly clothing I have that accompanies my odd interests. BUT, when I go to ComicCon..... Everyone notices. And better, everyone already knows what it is.

It's almost like built-in friendships.

And I like it when the world works like that.

Pondering on spirituality

Recently, I've been encouraged to read a particular book by certain quite religious people in my life to whom I owe *practically* everything-- my parents. Regardless of whether I see all angles of their argument or disagree on every level, their patience and understanding in my upbringing has made me what I am, and I owe them respect in return, at the very least.

BUT

I have recently felt a very strong disconnect between myself and the religion into which I was raised. I never once believed that the Catholic religion was hate-filled, or wrong in it's beliefs-- on the contrary. If you actually go back and read the scriptures with an open mind, more often than not, the passage is about the perpetration of love throughout the world. It's not about spreading wealth, and hating different people, or even trying to convert the world to your own beliefs.
The core idea is loving your neighbor, loving your environment, loving the creatures around you, loving your enemies. LOVE. It is the one thing strong enough to change the world over, a lack of which would also change the face of our planet.

Our world is missing Love. Our societies and human relationships are missing the love which allows happiness and satisfaction to exist. Our persons--our own beings-- are missing love. The vast amount of depression which is running rampant throughout the planet is due (in my opinion) to the extensive amount of self-hatred and self-depreciation.
If this is let go, good can filter in--God can filter in.

I should explain--when I think of God, when I think of the picture or the concept of God, I see only love, personified. I don't see an elderly man with a huge beard and an ever-present smile; I don't see a woman, clothed only in her long, flowing hair and flowers; I don't see a multitude of glowing, glittering deities, sitting around the Parthenon, getting drunk.
Rather, I feel the presence of love. Or I feel the absence of hate. I feel confusion, and loneliness, and sadness melt away as I feel encompassed in so much love that I am brought to tears. That is God to me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't believe any religion is wholly wrong and I don't believe any religion is wholly right.I think the key is to grasp the extraordinary concept of loving everything.
Loving yourself for what you are--an extension of God
Loving every other person for what they are--and extension of God, a differing version of the thing you are
Loving the things that surround you--being grateful for their assistance, for their existence, seeing the effort and time that went into the creation.
Loving the nature that is everywhere--respecting it, embracing it, appreciating it, for the fact that it is God's creation, and a reflection of the beauty that is within yourself.

Gathered words.

A few things to share:
1.)
Sometimes when I'm working, my breathing speeds up and my eyes fill with tears, spilling over onto my cheeks or even my hands, busy and fluttering over the keyboard. I'm overwhelmed with a feeling of nothingness. Of boredom to the extent of absence. Of absolute numbness to the world.
I'm not 'sad' necessarily. Just done. Done with pointless conversations and useless numbers. Done with technology and telephones. Done with coffee and lunch-times and the stupid little fan that I have to have otherwise I get lightheaded. 'Course, I get lightheaded even with the fan.

2.)
make a song.
make a thing.
dance a dance,
fling a fling.
make all for yourself
express yourself
be yourself
you are the only  one
like you
in the world.
so be in the world.
make for the world.
sing to the world.

3.)
When you’re sad, the thoughts weigh on me
Making the world and all it’s things so heavy.
I wish I could throw them off of me and you
And make everything like when we were new.

When the world was happy and bright
And we went out every night
And we thought that light
would come of everything.
That was when I felt right.

We make plans together
Or rather I make plans forever
For years away and down the road.
It seems I'll never be free of this load.

Listening

To listen is a very unique characteristic and skill.
Listen to everyone who speaks. You never know what they're going to say.

Or what they need.
Maybe all they need is that one ear,
peeled for the plea
that they've tried to hide
within the words of nothingness.

People speak of nothingness in order to free their mind from the terrible "something"s.

If someone always says nothing to you, try to see why. Or just listen to their nothing. You'll hear the honesty behind their words and feel what is right.
It's human nature to know how to help others. Especially if that help comes in the form of silence and support. Try it: it's one of the easiest things to do,

to listen and love your fellows.
It's terribly underrated.

Weekend-end

Tuesdays are always more poignant when they fall after a three-day weekend. It's got the underlying feeling of a 'Monday' while still being that one-more-day closer to the next weekend. Why do people live weekend-to-weekend these days anyways?

Maybe that should be the point...

If we are supposed to make ourselves live for today, everyday, then it leads me to wonder why society seems to be so focused on Fridays. Why is it that human beings feel it such an arduous task to enjoy the work that they accomplish on Monday through Thursday? I know, personally, I am always proud of my creative work done in my free time (evenings and weekends) but I feel just bogged down and tired out by my amount of tasks at my place of work. Which is funny, cause I don't even have all that much to do. I've got a good job. Maybe it's a bit boring, but if that is my only complaint.... Well, jeez. I count myself ten kinds of lucky. 

Live for today. Be happy with everything. Be proud of the things you do. But be proud FOR YOU. If all of your attempts are to better yourself, then you are steadily bettering everything. 

Oh, and smile. Because it tends to help with the happy.

d(^-^)b

Happy Labor Day!

Today is a holiday from work (huzzah!) and I hoped to have a nice, relaxing day. Last night, we closed our performance of Arsenic and Old Lace and it. was. good. Every last one of the audiences spoke volumes about how much they enjoyed their time spent in the theatre, regardless of the size. And that makes me feel so successful. Everyone kept using the word "fun" and that is truly what I wanted from this show. 

Thanks to all who attended! And my cast-mates are the TITS. Awesome show, ladies and gents. To everyone who didn't make it-- come out next time. I'll keep ya updated.

I had a very intense conversation today. Talking about politics is always interesting and usually volatile, but I encourage all to do everything to keep your cool. It's not worth it to lose it and make a fool of yourself, especially if you are talking to someone that you actually like. Or adore. Whatever the case may be, you will not be happy after you snap at them and hurt their feelings. You won't be happy after you continuously condescend even after the other has specifically asked you to stop. There is a lack of respect there. 

Make sure you share your opinion with respect, is I guess my moral here... As my mother always so eloquently put it:

"Opinions are like assholes-- everybody's got one and they all stink."