Parental Controls

I was thinking last night and wondering to what extent are we affected by our parents' histories? I don't mean how they fucked us up by making us go to Sunday school every week, or be in marching band, or whatever other inane disciplines and neglect was laid upon us. I mean how connected are we to the course of their own lives and the choices they made that directed them?

You are not your Father. You are not your Mother. You are not obligated to rebel against them or model yourself after them, nor are you doomed to repeat their mishaps. You have the choice to accept who you are. You have the strength to become who you choose. At some point, I think, one has to stop letting the lives of their parents haunt them -- if they do. Not for everyone, but I imagine for many it's true.

Why Disney's Beauty and the Beast is most accurate

Too often in Romantic comedies we're presented with a jaded, independent female lead who is too smart and witty for her own good...until Male lead comes along and falls in love because of her intelligence and hard nosed independence. Alas, this is not how real life plays itself out.

But take the story of Disney's Cartoon musical, Beauty and the Beast: Belle is hot, and it's all her suitors care about, everyone considers her to be a total freak for liking to read books rather than drool over the best looking guy in town who happens to be a complete retard (this turns out to be pretty true to real life). Belle is intelligent enough to see through the retard's phisod and everyone thinks she's all the weirder for not being interested. This stuff actually happens. The townspeople lament Belle's oddity of intellect and resent her all the more for not even trying to fit in. Afterall, ideas come from reading, it doesn't provide well for group think.

Belle is relegated to falling in love with a man cursed to be hideously unattractive. Consequently, because he doesn't know her rep and they're removed from the stereotypes that ensconce them she can be her sweet self around him, and he falls in love too.

When Harry Met Sally...uh uh. You've Got Mail, definitely not. If you want a film true to life, pop in Beauty and the Beast.

The Office

Shortly after I got in this morning one of my cube mates excitedly called my name. Since he can't stand his job and is an artist during his off hours who finds himself too good for the menial tasks he's agreed to perform, and doesn't usually talk to coworkers, I was surprised.

After I went over to him, he proceeded to show me a large, and hopefully dead cockroach that presumably had crawled out over the weekend into our Monday morning area of full view; it was right in the middle of the entrance to Rob's cubicle.

Word got out quickly on our "team" and the boys called over their friends from various floors and offices to get close, look and take camera phone pictures.

Eventually my boss came by (after the hulabuloo was over) and noticed the thing. He bent down (and maybe this is why he was promoted into middle management and the rest of us have not been), used a piece of paper to scoop it up, and then threw it in the trash can reserved for recycled paper next to the nearest printer.

But not before suggesting that the roach could be Rob himself, transformed, and this is why he would not put it down the toilet.

Later on in the day, another voice excitedly called my name. Kevin Jotted into my cube saying, "Marisa! You know the roach that Gregg put into the trash?"

"Yeah."

"Well, it's not there anymore!"

"So then...it really was Rob."

"No, seriously it isn't there!"

"I don't know Kevin, you're always screwing around, I really don't believe anything you say."

"Come look!"

"All right."

We walk over to the trash. "I'm afraid to look", I say, "What if it's there and it flies up in my face and kills me?"

"Just look."

So, I cautiously take a step closer and slowly look in. It's there and the second I see it Kevin startles me with a little shove that makes me squeal like six-year-old and jump back for dear life.

M. Fox...might have had some work done.

Photo from 2004. I couldn't resist posting this since it has caused at least a 45 minute debate b/n me and my soon to be publisher.

Food and Sex

Beth: So food and sex?

Me: Yeah

Beth: Which one?

Me: I don't know...it's hard.

Beth: You had to pick one for life...but you would still live, regardless

Me: Food. I still get to masturbate, right?

Beth: Yeah

Me: Food.

Beth: What if you couldn't masturbate?
Me: Sex

Also

I want to give a shout out to "Michael Jackson Guy" in Ann Arbor MI, you must be hurting now man. You took over one of the two alley ways in town, kept your boom box loud and did your thing. I hope you keep doing your thing.

Okay

I didn't know if I was going to make a comment about this because it's EVERYWHERE and everything you ever needed to know or wanted to know has already been said.

But I realized something in writing an email to my cousin, where I explained that after an obssession with Elvis movies at around the age of three, I moved on to MJ at around six or seven. I REALLY thought I was going to marry him. "Darrick had this poster on his wall of Michael with ET...which doesn't make sense, but it was a popular image and he was really young and still black, maybe one nose job in, and I just died when I saw that picture. It gave me stirrings every time." I then went on to explain that after my Dad went to work my mom would turn on MTV while she cleaned the house -- against his approval, he didn't want us watching it.

Some of my earliest memories include Madonna in that pink "material girl" dress (what little girl wouldn't go apeshit over that?) And Michael Jackson. I can still see one of his videos and remember how old I was, where I was living, who my friends were etc. Something that I can't say for Madonna. Or really any other artist...

The landscape of my life would have been different had this person's talent not existed, or been shown. For one person to have an impact like that on so many millions of people is noteworthy and awe inspiring.

And I leave you with the photo that provided my young self with my first tinges of heterosexuality. Thanks Michael, for everything.