Tinkerbell > Twilight

Since starting my new job at the video store, an interesting perk has come my way: free videos. Yeah, baby--as in I can rent for free up to three videos of anything I want to watch. Too bad movies don't interest me much anymore. Ho-hum. Oh, well, you can't argue with free. So, I started off my video watching consumption with an unexpected pick--The Tinkerbell movie.

That's right--Tinkerbell, because for all my grrl gamer, football loving, Half-Life shirt wearing, Master Chief worshiping bravado a part of me--a very closeted part of me--likes girlish things like flowers and fairies. And there's nothing wrong with that, dammit. If boys can be respected for liking cars and Three Stooges comedies, girls should be allowed to indulge their ultra feminine hobbies in peace without their boyfriends tooting 'fairies are gay' every five minutes while the damn Tinkerbell movie is on!

Okay, even I have to admit that a grown woman watching the Tinkerbell movie sans small children in the room is a little bizarre. It may be permissible for adult women to still like fairies, but Tinkerbell? I should have grown out of the Disney branding by now. But try to give me a break. Enjoying a Tinkerbell cartoon can't be anywhere as bad as reading all the Twilight books, being a thirty-five plus year old woman and thinking Edward Cullen is the most ah-mazing guy on the planet.

Just to prove my point, you never thought there were that many old crows crotch throbbing for the Twilight movie to come out, but there they were that Saturday in the video store, averaging about one in four customers--that's including the wrinkled farts bugging you to help them find Vicky, Christina, Barcelona--in their daughters' jeans, asking for the Twilight movie--and to buy, not rent. And if you think these birds are buying the movie for their daughters, you would be wrong, Joe. This retarded movie has major fans in the forty and over club. I overheard one woman suggesting it for another customer's ten year old daughter. You should have heard this dumb cow going on about the romance and the falling in love and some other bullshit. "The book is so much better," she said. As if this bitch ever read a book in her life, if she thought that mash up sloppy sentences constituted anything close to literature. The mom of the ten year old didn't know what to think. She's stuck having to pacify for the whole weekend this board kid who's probably seen everything in the store except Madagascar 2, the movie she really, really, really wants to see. The mom looks over at the daughter and asks if she wants to rent Twilight. I'm close by, dusting off about a hundred copies of Role Models and looking right at the kid's dejected face. She's a little kid, for fuck's sake. She doesn't want to see fuckin' Twilight; she wants to see a dumb talking animal movie.

As for me, at the end of my work day, while trying to erase from my head the echoes of withered voices asking me for 'that one Dustin Hoffman' movie, I decide to enjoy my time off the following day with some nice relaxing fluff, and pick up the Tinkerbell movie. I like the color palette; the story isn't very demanding either. It's about Tinkerbell learning to be proud of her tinkering talent. So her job may not be the prettiest girl at the ball. It's still an important one and it's her own special gift. Normally I give these storylines a hearty 'pfffft,' and Tinkerbell would be no less deserving the same cynical reaction if not for the cool fact that her talent was in engineering.

How neat is that? Wrapping a conventionally unglamorous job like engineering in the fairy motif. Ten years from now I wholly expect female engineers to keep Tinkerbell models on their drafting boards. See, girls! You can be pretty while designing a propulsion engine.

Of course, J, had to impose his male-centric witticisms on this delightful little story, at one point demanding to know when Peter Pan was going to show up and say, "Hey bitch, get in my pocket. I need a pocket fairy." But even after I told him to get lost, I couldn't help but join him in inflating the Peter Pan scenario, and offered a scene in which Peter and Lost Boys are all sitting around doing lines of pixie dust.

So that's how they learned how to fly.

Hey, hey! Just got a new job!

That's right--I'm out of the CVS and into another and, perhaps, equally repugnant form of corporate serfdom in a dreaded video store chain. At least I get to shill video games, something I can really get into with any small measure of enthusiasm. I don't like the idea of having to sell promotional plans to people. I hate store clerks who keep asking you time after time if you're interested in entangling yourself into whatever convoluted contract the company's pushing. Whatever. As long as I can quit the graveyard shift, I'll be happy. Or, I hope I will. I'm pretty sure I'll have to work weekends, and that's going to suck hard. Anyway, I'll keep a positive attitude and work until my book is finished.

When wiil things get better?

Okay, it's time for another one of my moody posts.

I'm despairing--not for myself, but for others, for this whole country. It looks as if this economy is not going to turn around any time soon; in fact, its continuing plummet may last for years. If things don't start picking up before 2012, people may lose confidence and move toward the other side--you know, to those guys who got us in this mess in the first place? If so, then we're right back to square one: a fellating of the free market fantasy and ludicrous trickle down philosophy in the form of lax regulation, more unnecessary tax breaks for the wealthy, and more lobbyist influence in Washington. And we'll be that much further from the search for renewable energy and the goal of universal health care.

This administration is far from perfect, but I believe that it is trying its best and is not taking anything for granted. But we got to do more on our end too and not just sit around waiting for government to solve the problem. I only wish that I knew what could be done.

What the hell happened to me?

I remember this girl ten years ago. She was lively, fun to be around, and always full of hope and optimism about her future. Ten years later she's become a miserable and wretched person, who lashes out at all the important people in her life and sees life in general as a pointless, meandering excursion through disappointment, uncertainty, and failure.

Is this what it means to get old?

If so-God! Let it end now. I exaggerate. Of course, I don't won't my life to end. Even with all the heartache and let-downs with which I'm now suffering, I remain ever the insufferable optimist. In the general view of things, I've decided that life is good and that there are always brighter days ahead. The problem is a let all the the tiny, short-lived hassles drag me down way more than I should. Though foul moods never last longer than the discomfort which provoked it, all those little pissy moments of mine add up; and it doesn't matter if I'm right as rain when the weather clears, because I would already caused my loved ones and others unnecessary emotional strain. It's a selfish way to respond, which is the reason my boyfriend has just given me an ultimatum: either I straighten up my attitude or we're finished. Our little talk was no surprise to me. I had known for years that I was due for one considering how patient he's been with me while other men would have booted me long ago. Though it hurt to hear some of the things he said, I'm glad he said them. The tough love pulled me out of my fog of self-entitlement. At first I thought he didn't love me anymore and just stayed with me out of obligation, but if that were true I don't think he would have said anything to me.

In any case, it's true that I have to stop complaining about me life, which is pretty good compared to most. I absolutely hate my job; that's never going to change. But what can change is my attitute. I'm working on my book--my 'bad' book, really--and though I haven't made much progress on it, if I keep working at it and keep my spirits up, I can be done with it in no time.

Oh, and what the heck is a 'bad' book? I'll get that at some other time. What's important right now is is that I right it and get my head straight. I still have a lot of life to live yet.