Calm Down, Okay? It's Only the End of the World.

My Dear Reader,

The world just seems to be going crazy lately.

2009, so far, has been extremely disappointing.

People just seem to be dying left and right, don't they? Oh, and I don't know how this happened, but Obama has turned out to be even worse than I thought he would be. I feel so foolish now for thinking that an Obama presidency would, at least, better foreign relations. In a positive light, disappointing me means that Obama (with due credit given to Biden) has actually achieved the impossible.

Amazing.

Did I mention that North Korea is launching missiles at us?

We're in a recession caused by people who bought houses that they couldn't afford, and in response, the government has attempted to fix it by spending money that they [read: we] don't have. Let's chew on that for a second.

Oh, yeah, and now the government will help you buy houses and cars that you (still) can't afford. You can't forget that. And soon, you're going to have to buy health care for your neighbors, so just get ready. I swear, they must think that being a first-world country is way, way overrated.

Besides, being third-world is so much greener!*

Oh, and to top it all off, a certain blogger with a strange real name has been displaying incendiary, brutal honesty. The nerve.

Wait, wait, wait! Get off of that ledge, Gentle Reader! I was just about to get positive, I promise. It's okay; calm down and take one step at a time. There you go, good job. Gosh, you almost gave me a heart attack! What would I do without you, mutter to myself even more than usual? I already freak out the kids at the grocery store. With you around, I can at least pass off as eccentric, which, of course, is important because eccentric people don't get put in straight jackets.**

Anyway.

What I was going to say, before you had your little, uh, excursion, was that despite all of the craziness in the world, and while I've recently been wallowing in a lot of negativity because of how purely awful 2009 has been to me personally (and trust me, even the people who live with me don't know the half of it), I've managed to find a couple of things to be happy about. I will now list them in no particular order:

• 2009 is already half over! Besides, next year is 2010, an election year. We will soon have the power to kick out all of the wackos that decided to turn the housing bubble into America's new lifestyle choice. I think it's time for them to know what it's like to be in the unemployment line, don't you?
• You can now learn all about Ninjormans. (Mormon ninjas. SO much better than regular ninjas.)
• Brooke White just released a new, awesome CD. She is still, like, the coolest person ever.
• Sure, China might put men on the moon in 2020, but I'm positive that if we all collectively poke Obama with a stick (gently but repeatedly), we could get him to send men to Mars before then. Preferably the Mars landing will be timed so that it occurs about fifteen minutes prior to the Chinese landing, at which point, we Americans can turn to them and say, "Oh yeah, and how many times did you say you hosted the Olympics?" Neener neener neener.
• There is a chance that the most powerful leaders of the world will unite against Obama's health care bill, since the socialization of our health care system would mean that they personally would actually have to get treated in their own countries. Trust me, they shudder at the thought. I had a long talk with Sarkozy about it just yesterday.
• Harry Potter 6 was, without a doubt, the best movie of the series. I mean, they even had teenage romantic drama in there and still managed to blow me away. There is still hope in American cinema! Change! [Insert mindless chant here.]
• Twilight fan or not, you can still enjoy this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z22mgGzorDk (The screaming crowd, not the other thing.)
• I have a Twitter account now (thececilyjane), so now you can get offended by my incendiary, brutal honesty every day! I know! Today I talked about getting stuck in traffic, so who knows how wild it's going to get next.

You see, Gentle Reader? Sure, the whole world is going crazy, but if you mix one part optimism with five parts bemused sarcasm, you get an anti-depression potion so strong that even the destruction of modern civilization gets bearable. Even Snape would be proud hold back his usual sneer! After all, a good sense of humor is often our best line of defense.

Oh, and on a closing note, I hope that if you happen to be a parent, Gentle Reader, that you will raise your children to completely ignore politics. It turns out that ignorance really is bliss on that one.

Regards, best wishes, and padded cell-free sanity,

-Cecily Jane

*And BTW, I pretty much want to vomit every time I hear the word "green" now, so I apologize if I inflicted nausea on you. Overexposure. And yes, I see that it's poetic that "green" turns me green. How do they always win?

**And now that you know that staying out of a straight jacket is my number one life goal, I bet a lot of the stuff I say suddenly makes a lot of sense. You're welcome.

Forgiving, Forgetting, Consequences, and Learning from Pain

My Dear Reader,

When I was in high school physics (which, BTW, has saved the world)*, I learned something that I have, at last, found useful: that horizontal motion is separate from vertical motion.

Yes.

Let me explain it to you this way: if you have two ping pong balls, and Ball 1 is dropped straight down while Ball 2 is hurled to to the side as it falls, the two balls will fall at the same rate, landing at the same time. If you don't believe/understand my very poor explanation, please enjoy this animated gif. That's because the forces pulling the balls down are independent of the forces that are pushing Ball 2 to the side--the two forces don't really affect the other, even though it might seem like they do. I would like to venture that this principle can be used as a metaphor for forgiveness and consequences, or in other words, I would like to propose that forgiveness and some consequences are just as independent as horizontal and vertical motion.

It's true that a lot of the time, forgiveness means forbearing certain consequences. For example, forgiving a debt means that you don't make the debtor suffer the consequences of his/her debt. Duh. Those aren't the kind of consequences I'm discussing here. What I mean is this: if on Monday you forgive Sally of a debt of $200, do you honor her request for a $300 loan on Wednesday? If you don't loan the money to her, does that mean that you haven't truly forgiven Sally?

Trust me when I tell you that I have heard about forgiving "seventy times seven" about 490 times. I promise that I understand the concept. But if a child is bullied, and the child forgives her bully, does complete forgiveness mean acting like the bullying never happened? I say no, because I know from personal (and recent) experience that ignoring bullying only leads to more bullying. And ignoring bullying for too long often has the strangest effect of making people side with the bully. Weird, right?

Whatever.

Anyway, I think that you don't have to give Sally the $300 in order to forgive her. The ball will still fall just as quickly, whether it's pushed to the side or not. I think that while you did forgive Sally of her/your $200, completely forgetting that Sally apparently has a loan repayment problem isn't going to help anybody. What if you end up having to forgive Sally of the $300, and then she comes and asks you for $400, and so on? Seventy times seven can get expensive, not to mention that this "forgiveness" can also be described as "enabling." I think it's true that destructive behavior should be forgiven. I also believe that destructive behavior should be stopped. And I think you can do both at the same time, because forgiving someone is independent from that kind of accountability. A woman can forgive the man that murdered her husband and still let the murderer go to prison. Not sending the murderer to prison is irresponsible and wrong.

I find it extremely annoying when someone is behaving inappropriately, and when I tell someone about it, I get a whole lecture on how I'm not being forgiving enough. People who know what's right have a responsibility to stop wrongdoing when they see it, and "forgiving and forgetting," in my experience, can do little to solve problems. It's true that Christ asked us to forgive. It's also true that evil triumphs when the good do nothing. These aren't mutually exclusive. I suppose what I'm getting at is that you can offer someone forgiveness without offering them trust. They are two completely separate animals.

Forgiveness is a gift that you can never earn. If you think you deserve forgiveness, then you don't understand what forgiveness is: a divine consequence of pure love. A purging of negative emotions. A shedding of pride and selfishness. Forgiveness is about feelings. Forgiveness is about staying free from revenge, grudges, and hard-heartedness, and not letting pain taint you.

Trust, on the other hand, must be earned. This is because trust gives special privileges that can easily be misused. Violated trust must be re-earned, often at a higher price. To a person who truly forgives, trust is freely and happily given when re-earned and can be re-earned an infinite amount of times. The lack of trust does not denote the presence of hate or an absence of love, but is a natural consequence of negative and destructive patterns of behavior. Trust is about prudence and good judgement. Trust has nothing to do with feelings, though it may be accompanied by them.

If a wolf comes and kills your sheep, do you forgive the wolf and forget that your sheep is dead? No! You forgive the wolf, AND you build a fence to protect your sheep. You take the situation and you learn from it. Forgetting puts other people in danger and perpetuates the problem.

Purging yourself of all ill-will towards that wolf is healthy. Forgetting means you end up with a flock of dead sheep.

We get hurt so we can learn to be strong, or in other words, strength requires sacrifice. A good ninety-five percent of the pain in our lives comes from other people, people who, according to the Redeemer of Israel, we must then forgive. I refuse to let my pain be pointless. I refuse to invite unnecessary pain into my life. I refuse to stand by and let people destroy me or others. And as I refuse to be bogged down by hatred and revenge, I pledge to learn from my pain and let it make me a smarter, better person. I pledge to let my pain teach me how to not treat others. I pledge to protect myself and others from evil as best as I can. I pledge to stand up for myself and never allow another to destroy my sense of worth. I pledge to give my trust wisely. And lastly, I pledge to continually work on stripping myself of pride, and offering forgiveness to the vilest of offenders.

After all, the only other alternative is destruction.

Regards, best wishes, and a healthy flock,

-Cecily Jane

* Yes, the English graduate did just reference an in-joke among physicists. I used to have a good friend who was a physics (i.e. not physical) education major, and now I can't ever say/type the words "high school physics" (which isn't exactly often, but whatever) without my brain's autocomplete adding "saved the world." It's based on a quote from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. It is also thanks to her that I know several songs about Albert Einstein. People that amusing don't come by very often.

Lessons from House/Business Sitting

My Dear Reader,

This past week, I had the opportunity to help out my aunt and uncle while they took their family on vacation. Essentially, my job was to answer phones at my uncle's insurance agency and then stay at their house and take care of their two pugs. It was a pretty sweet gig, all in all, and it was especially nice to get out of my routine for a while. Here are a couple of things I learned in the process:

• It's pretty strange to stay in someone else's house alone overnight, no matter how many holidays and birthdays you've celebrated there. Even though I knew they were in Florida, I kept expecting them to come through the door at any moment and catch me doing something awkward.
• It's even more strange to be in someone else's house alone when you're going through cupboards and closets looking for an extra roll of toilet paper.
• Pugs snore. Like old men.
• Pugs that are used to a family of five find a single working girl extremely, extremely boring. They kept following me around and looking at me like they were expecting me to do something, like I was a one-woman circus.
• I am not a one-woman circus.
• Commuting is really as bad as everyone says! Even though my uncle's office was about fifteen minutes away, it could take me up to an hour to get there with traffic.
• If you want to make sure that you don't have any gaps in coverage, make sure you call the insurance agent before the day you need it. After all, they're allowed to take some time off now and again.
• No matter where you are, even if you don't know your way around, you can always order take-out.

All in all, the worst part of the entire experience was the constant anxiety that came with the responsibility of taking care of another's property. You have no idea how many prayers I prayed asking that the house wouldn't burn down, or I wouldn't crash the car they lent me, or that I wouldn't make some awful mistake that would throw my uncle's entire business out of the window. I guess the extra responsibility got to my head, you know? Luckily, none of my worst fears came true, and I got through it without any major incidents.

Either way, I bet the pugs are ecstatic to have their house good and full again.

Regards, best wishes, and successful stewardship,

-Cecily Jane

Stupid Writers, Tricks Are for Kids!

My Dear Reader,

Sorry about missing last week's post; I've been in somewhat of a creative slump as of late. I suppose that's okay, however, because all of Hollywood seems to be in the same predicament.

I don't know, I guess I expected more after they came back from the writer's strike. I thought those writers would just have so many ideas backed up while they were standing in picket lines that great plots would be coming out of Hollywood as frequently as idiotic remarks come out of Vice President Biden. Please consider, if you will, the great artistic works that have come forth in recent months, the first two that came to my mind being Land of the Lost and Twilight*. Both movies were highly hyped, but ended up earning places in the Movie Hall of Shame. And both, come to think of it, weren't original stories, but rather adapted from books.

This idea the Hollywood has become unoriginal really hit home to me when I heard a discussion on NPR about how Disney Channel and Nickelodeon are carving a TV niche because they have the most original sitcoms in the business. That's kind of sad, isn't it? Sometime I feel like all of the today's sitcoms are just based off of a 90s sitcom that worked. It's been going on for a long time, but I thought that after the writer's strike, things would get better. I don't think they have, do you?

Sometimes I wonder if the writers tried to pull a fast one on us, thinking that we'd be so hard up for non-reality TV that we'd take anything they threw at us, especially if they distract us with some cool CGI sequences and a few dozen explosions. It's like they were offering stagnant swamp water to a man dying of thirst. Well, I'm not buying it anymore. Unless I buy the accompanying RiffTrax, which would make it all bearable.

And while you're at it, feel free to discuss the worst flops or greatest successes in TV or movies in recent memory in the comments. I dare you.

Regards, best wishes, and healthy debate,

-Cecily Jane

*Trust me on this one. Once you get over the fangirl frenzy, you too will realize that this move is worse than The Pumaman (though the special effects were surprisingly similar). The shot where the particular placement of a stuffed owl made Edward an angel made me belly-laugh for two full minutes. I don't think I could have made it through that movie alive without RiffTrax. And by the way, violently moody men who wear paste on their faces and break into your house to watch you sleep don't really do it for me. And shouldn't do it for anybody.

PC Girl Gets a Mac! [Updated]

My Dear Reader,

So I absolutely had to buy a Mac for my new job. It turns out that you can't really edit video on a PC. Before May, the only real contact I'd had with a Mac was with an old (mid-1990s) model the my childhood best friend had. I remember not being very impressed at all, especially with the wallpaper. (When you're in elementary school, the wallpaper is what really matters.)

I admit that the next time I ever thought about a Mac was my first semester in college, when I had a floor-mate who would hand out Mac pamphlets like they were tickets to the Promised Land. She seriously tried to convert us all.

I was slightly turned off.

However, after my vast experience with PCs, and my month of experience with a Mac, I feel that I have the knowledge necessary to compare the two. In all fairness, I'm going to have to compare it to modern PCs and not the one I own, which I bought in 2003 (and named Eris, after the Greek god of discord). The new Mac, by the way, has been christened Catriona, the Scottish version of Catherine. Here's the list of pros and cons so far:

Pros:

• It's pretty.
• It has an eject button right on the keyboard!
• It starts up and shuts down quickly.
• The monitor isn't separate from the tower, which keeps things simple. Less cords equals good.
• It has a lot of media-friendly programs that come with it, like GarageBand and iMovie.
• I think it deserves two bullet points for just how pretty it is.

Cons:

• It came with only half of a keyboard! Instead of coming with the full, ten-key board that is normal for desktops, it came with the condensed version that come on laptops. I use those extra keys for my job, so I had to buy the full keyboard for an extra $50. Blech.
• No right-click on the mouse! Ahhhhh!
• The Safari browser that comes with it likes to close unexpectedly a lot. Especially when I'm trying to get into my Netflix account. Internet Explorer seems a lot more stable.
• I still have to restart the computer whenever I download something or have a problem! The Mac Guy lies!
• It's a lot harder to install extra memory correctly.
• A lot of the cool freeware I like isn't available for a Mac. In general, it seems like if you want to modify a Mac, you're out of luck.
• I don't buy the "Macs never get viruses" thing.
• The free word processor is lame, as is any of the non-media software. It appears that the Mac is only designed to be practical if you're in the entertainment industry.
• Like, every single program on this thing has an "i" in front of it. I want to beat myself with something. iCal for the calendar? Come on!
• There is no SD card slot! In general, if it's not connectible by Firewire or USB, you're out of luck.

The funny thing is that with all things considered, the majority of it is very much the same. With all of these differences, though, I think I'm still a PC girl. Hopefully I'll get used to the change sooner or later, right?

Regards, best wishes, and sorry this post was late,

-Cecily Jane

The Plain Vanilla Cast of Characters

My Dear Reader,

It's official: I now have a Schwager, or in other words, PetiteSoeur is now 100% married. The reception was incredibly stressful, but once it started, it turned out just fine. And since I that's all I really have to say about it, and since I just inducted a new member into my family, I though I would take the time to do something I should have done years ago: explain to you why I use words like Schwager and PetiteSoeur.

First of all, you need to know that I rarely ask people's permission to talk about them on this blog, and I therefore try to stay away from using real names in order to protect people's identities. Secondly, you must understand that my family is unusually versed in a multitude of languages. Spanish is the language of choice, but German, French, and Portuguese are also studied. Different people in my family study different languages, but six out of eight (or should I say, seven out of nine) have already picked one, two, or four. So it seemed to be fun that when I made up names for people in my family that I would try to reflect both how they were related to me while sharing their lingual background. In the desperate hopes that there are a few people who will read this who will not happen to be kin, I will explain a little bit about all of the people I'm always talking about:

Padre: My father, who learned French in high school, Spanish as an exchange student in Argentina, and Portuguese as a missionary to Portugal. The joke with his nick name, of course, is that in Spanish, you'd only actually use the term padre for a Catholic priest, and he used to work for a Catholic hospital.

Madre: My mother, who learned Spanish while she was a missionary in Argentina. Instead of teaching Spanish to their children, Madre and Padre used Spanish as their secret language when they didn't want us kids to know what they were saying. This inspired both HermanaMayor and me to learn Spanish in order to crack the code. I call her Madre in real life more than I call her Mom, but I'm the only one who does.

HermanaMayor: My older sister, who learned Spanish when she was a missionary to Spain. Yeah, we've got lots of missionaries in our family. It's funny to watch her speak Spanish to my parents, because she uses the Spaniard accent, which to the untrained ear sounds like a lisp.

[EDIT: HermanaMayor just got married, and I therefore name her husband Bil. Get it? Because he's my brother-in-law? It also works because he's an accountant. Bill, accountant, Bil--this is genius, I promise. He also is really good at Madden football.]

PetiteSouer: My little, now married, sister. She's been learning French all of her life, but only last semester did she put her skills to use by studying abroad in Paris. She likes to pretend that we all speak French, too, which can get pretty annoying when Padre isn't around to translate. She's currently in the process of learning German.

Schwager: PetiteSouer's husband, or in other words, my new brother-in-law. He's been learning German since high school, which has come in handy for PetiteSouer, since she has to learn German if she wants to fulfill her dream of getting a Ph. D. in Art History. Yes, they make you take German.

TwinOne: My oldest brother by a mere sixty seconds, who is graduating from high school this week. While he hasn't as yet decided to study a foreign language, odds are that he will once he becomes a missionary next year as planned. At that time, he will be renamed.

[Edit: Since TwinOne has embarked in a Spanish-speaking mission, and because I'm so very proud of him, he will now be known as PrimerGemelo. I'm pretty sure I got that right.]

ZweiteZweitung: The younger of my twin brothers, who has been studying German from the same high school teacher that Schwager learned from. ZweiteZweitung has also dabbled in Japanese, and since he's also planning on being a missionary, his name may change soon.

Youngest: My third brother, who is eleven years younger than I am and too young to have had any formal language training. He's going to be a missionary in about eight years or so, so we'll see where he ends up then.

I hope that clears a few things up. I'll see you next week, and in the mean time, I'm going to try very hard to resist the urge to open PetiteSouer and Schwager's wedding gifts while they're on their honeymoon.

Regards, best wishes, and clarity,

-Cecily Jane

Thoughts from the Week that Started on May 19th, 2009

My Dear Reader,

With everything that is going on in my life this week, I found it nearly impossible to write my regular one-topic, longer-than-my-Madre-would-like post. Instead, enjoy some vignette posts of the things I've been thinking about in the past seven days:

I love my family. I love my crazy, crowded, musical Angl0-Italian side just as much as I love my quiet, reserved, homey Anglo-Irish side. My two sides are so different, but I learn a lot from that, especially when it comes to balance. Being with my huge-and-crazy side these past few weeks has really helped heal the pain of unemployment, and I feel a lot more sure that I have a purpose in this world, even though still I don't know what it is. By the way, I've finally gotten all the cousins who were born when I was at college to remember my name, which makes a big difference.

I would move to California permanently if it weren't for California's economy, laws, and government. Maybe in a few years after things bottom out. I'm the kind of person who has a hard time feeling like she belongs anywhere, but Sacramento is the exception. I love the diversity, the heat, and knowing where things are! 

The only things I like about Oregon are the lack of sales tax and the people who I know there. Everything else sucks. 

After some time and a lot of deep breathing, I've gotten over the new Star Trek movie and how mad it made me. I'm actually really glad that it is doing so darn well in the box office. I also realized how ironic it is that Star Trek: Enterprise, the worst Star Trek series by far, is the only show that wasn't completely screwed up by the new movie. Trust me; it's hilarious.

Editing wedding videos is awesome! I'm really starting to get the hang of it, which is great, because just a few short weeks ago I felt completely overwhelmed. I have to buy a Mac for the job, which created more stir when I posted about it on Facebook than just about anything: eight comments. I've been using my uncle's Mac while I've been staying with him (including when I typed this). I still like PCs better, but it will be nice to have anything other than my 2003 broken laptop. 

Two of my good friends are due to give birth the same day my baby sister is getting married: Friday. It's way too much for my brain to process. Anne Hathaway should star in a movie about this, but I'll only let her if Kate Hudson is banned from the set. 

According to my nine-year-old cousin, I'm really good at talking to kids in a way that doesn't bore them to tears. It was probably one of the best compliments ever.

Okay, so I'm still not over the fact that my sister is getting married on Friday.

Regards, best wishes, and the variety of life,

-Cecily Jane