Just as well that the promise I made to myself to try and update every day was just to myself.
With all the fanfic that I've been reading lately, I have started to get an itch to write some of my own--not necessarily fanfic, but just about anything. I have a couple of really good (I think) story ideas, but I'm having trouble translating that to paper...or word processor...or whatever. Add to that the fact that we're so busy in July, and though I really *want* to write, it's hard to find the time and energy.
My body has insisted that it's time to get up at 5am every day this week. I don't get it. Not only that, but all week long, I would swear that it's a day later than it actually is. My brain and my body are messing with me. Not only that, but AUGH, oh my god, could the days go ANY SLOWER?
I'm trying to find a Hawaiian shirt for my mom's wedding, but have also thought that it might be cute to find a dress, but that is turning out to be more difficult. I...no. I don't know why I want a dress, really. I just don't. But I think I found something that will be cute and fun.
I hate packing to move. That is all.
Moving sucks. Moving sucks a lot.
But.
It's also official--we *are* moving, signed the lease yesterday, and the place we're moving into is quite lovely, an independently owned townhouse. No more apartment living, woohoo! Three floors, a nice little courtyard out front, and just a ton of space. I just can't say enough good things about it. The only drawback is that the two non-master bedrooms are pretty small, but there are ways to work around that.
Even better, not only is the place just the coolest thing ever, the owners are also positively wonderful. They're both very nice, and the current tenants had a lot of good things to say about them when we went to take a look.
So, while the packing and moving aspects are just SO not fun, I am so excited to be moving into a lovely new space.
Dad: 'Maybe they should have looked in the trunk'
My heart breaks for the three families in New Jersey who lost their sons. Really. I can't even imagine what they must be going through.
But I don't understand this.
The father of one of the boys wonders why police didn't check the trunk of the car that was right near where the boys were playing. "That was the first place to look," he says.
Here's my question.
Your boys are missing. They were playing in the yard right next to the car. Why didn't *you* look? Why wasn't that somewhere the *parents* checked straight away? Why is it the responsibility of the police officers to do that?
Why blame the NJ police for something that, I would imagine, they figured had already been done before the boys were reported missing?
I don't understand.
Man, today is a bad day. I keep trying to focus my energy somewhere else, to try and make the bad mood go away, something, *anything* to get some kind of positive energy going, but someone out there is giving me the colossal cosmic finger, so I get none. It sucks. It's beautiful outside, nice and warm with a lovely breeze, and I am stuck inside having to deal with work, and people are being idiots, and arrrgh.
And I have to go to class tonight, too, when all I want is to go home and go to bed and just sleep until the crappy mood goes away.
Alas.
Sometimes the world of being an adult and living up to those commitments and responsibilities really sucks. A lot.
This movie has been sitting on my coffee table for about the past month. I put it on the Netflix queue and kept meaning to watch it, but just never got around to it. Today, we finally did.
(The rest under the tag, since it's a fairly disturbing entry--for a fairly disturbing movie.)
The movie itself is a true-life story. During 100 days in 1994, nearly a million people died in the tiny African country of Rwanda--members of the ruling Hutu tribe started a brutal campaign to wipe out the Tutsi minority. Both tribes share the same history, the same culture, the same language, but were essentially split into two groups by the Belgians who occupied the country. So, 100 days, almost a million people, and the rest of the world did almost nothing. Most of us probably didn't even hear about it.
Interestingly enough, we talked about this in my geography class a little bit, when we were covering Africa. My instructor told us about how the Hutu soldiers came into a classroom of mixed Tutsi and Hutu children and ordered them to split up according to their tribe. When they wouldn't, the soldiers killed them all.
The movie itself came out last year, and features Don Cheadle (nominated for an Oscar for the role) as Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who housed over a thousand Tutsi refugees and Hutu sympathizers in the hotel he managed. Almost all of the 1200+ men, women, and children whom he sheltered in the hotel made it out alive.
It's an extremely powerful and very unsettling movie--radio clips from the Hutu forces refer to the Tutsis as cockroaches, an infestation to be eliminated. While the movie never descends into gore for the sake of it, there's enough to bring the point home, to make it really just...
I don't know.
Part of the trouble I had with the movie Black Hawk Down was that it was downright *gory* in places, and I couldn't watch. But with this, I couldn't pull my eyes away. I keep trying to describe parts of it, but I just can't, it's...something that needs to be watched, and something that I just do not have the right words to say. I don't write well enough. I just don't.
Very well done. It's appalling that Don Cheadle didn't win the Oscar for his role, he was amazing. The real Paul Rusesabagina is still alive, living with his family in Belgium, and was a consultant for the movie.
I have never come out of a movie or a documentary so profoundly grateful to live where I do. We might not have had money when I was very young, but I had a roof over my head, we had a car, we had hot water...and we didn't have anyone out to kill us simply because of the color of our skin. I can't even fathom what it must have been like in Rwanda in 1994, or what it must be like in Sudan today.
So, anyway. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who hasn't seen it yet, but fair warning--have company, and don't watch it expecting to be uplifted.