bitches abound

I know, I know. It's been awhile ("since I could hold my head up high"). So long that I'm almost tempted to apologize, but I decided early on that I'd never apologize for not updating. F that noize all the way home (whatever that means).

Anyway. Time to get down to business.

This past Saturday I went to an eight o'clock showing of The 40-Year-Old Virgin along with Di, Jackie, and Bibus. Originally the plan was to go earlier in the afternoon, but because Bibus partied at Oktoberfest in Lacrosse, Wisconsin the night before and woke up the next morning at a stranger's house missing not only his ID but his car keys, the movie was postponed.

The four of us met at the ticket counter at ten to eight. Jackie bought a ticket. I bought a ticket. Di bought a ticket. Not necessarily in that order. Then Bibus opened his checkbook to write a check for his ticket and all hell broke loose, because apparently Showplace 16 doesn't accept checks. Both Jackie and I charged our tickets to our separate credit cards, so when we stepped up to foot the bill for Bibus' ticket, our cards were denied thanks to theft protection technology. I cannot even begin to tell you how completely overjoyed I am that Visa protected me from stealing and charging outrageous purchases to MY OWN FUCKING CREDIT CARD.

Meanwhile we've been in line for like ten minutes and the couple behind us in line is getting more and more restless by the second. I apologized to them on behalf of... I don't know. Bibus? Visa? God? God is a fucker, let me tell you.

Speaking of God and what a fucker He is... One day in my 12th grade A.P. lit class my teacher was absent for whatever reason, so on the whiteboard I wrote, "Clams are happy (think "happy as a clam"). Jesus is happy. Therefore, Jesus is a clam." We studied arguments like that in my intro to logic class the first week of this semester. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that what I learned in that class would ever come in handy. But I digress. The next day my teacher said in response to my invalid Aristotelian syllogistic argument, "You DO realize that Jesus is like, my Lord and Savior, right?" Man oh man, I just about died of laughter.

Anyway, Di ended up paying for Bibus' ticket with the last of her cash.

At that point, Di, Jackie, Bibus and I should have gone straight to the movie theater and never looked back, but no, I had to go and fuck everything up. I decided that if I didn't get popcorn right that second I would kick and scream and throw a tantrum right there in front of the concession stand.

And my credit card was denied. My credit card was denied AGAIN. (Actually, when paying with your credit card you're supposed to buy "movie money" at the ticket counter with which to by concessions, but that's not nearly as dramatic and therefore not worthy of documenting in my online diary.) And I hanged (not hung!) myself. I fucking ended my life right then and there.

That's when I noticed that the couple from before was behind me in line for concessions, so I did the right thing (for once) and let them cut in front of me. Let's just say that I didn't have to convince them.

I explained what happened to the gang (or the posse!) and then I literally (literally-literally, not Oprah-literally. I am here to tell you that Oprah does not know the definition of literally, because she misuses the word "literally" all the goddamn time and it pisses me off to no end) collapsed to the floor, buried my face in my hands, and cried out in frustration. Luckily since Di has a heart made out of pure gold, she counted out enough change to buy me a small popcorn. That was the second time in a matter of minutes that Di saved the day.

We got to the theater just in time for the movie's opening credits, which tells you how late we were in getting there now that they show like twenty to thirty minutes of previews before movies nowadays.

The theater was packed, so we ended up sitting fairly close to the screen. So close, in fact, that I was concerned my neck would be sore by the end of the movie. But as it turned out my neck was the least of my problems, because two seats down was a middle-aged couple and - get this - THEIR TEN-YEAR-OLD SON (give or take a couple of years. I'm no good at judging how old children are). It wasn't until halfway through the movie that either Di or Jackie (I can't remember who, but regardless it's unimportant) pointed out to me that the couple had, for some reason that I don't think I could ever wrap my head around even if it were explained to me, brought their prepubescent son to see a movie all about sex. I mean, it's no mystery what the movie is about. After all, it's called The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I don't know. Maybe they figured it was a Christian film condemning sex outside of marriage and at the same time encouraging a life of celibacy? I'm probably giving them more credit than they deserve - chances are they weren't thinking in the first place and that's the entire problem.

I don't know if it was the woman's intent to protect her son or what, but whenever something even remotely sexual was said (which was quite often given that IT WAS A MOVIE ABOUT SEX, HI), she would practically yell, "EWW!" At one point the lead female character told Steve Carell in a sexy voice to take his pants off, and sure enough, "EWW!" I felt like getting two inches away from her face and screaming, "HOW DID YOU GET PREGNANT IF SEXUAL SITUATIONS DISGUST YOU TO THE POINT OF DISTURBING AN ENTIRE THEATER FULL OF PEOPLE WHO PAID TO SEE THIS MOVIE? DID YOUR HUSBAND SLIP YOU SOMETHING?" Well... obviously he slipped her something, but you know what I mean.

During one scene Steve Carell was in his candle-lit bedroom watching a porno entitled Star Nuts, and the woman's son asked loud enough that I could hear, "Mommy, is that like Star Wars?" Jesus!

THEN! Then the woman's cell phone went off and she actually answered and proceeded to have a conversation with the caller right there in the movie theater - but not before apologizing first, as if that made everything all better. It was at the end of the movie, too, so I no doubt missed important dialogue.

I stormed out of the theater as soon as the movie ended, ranting and raving, all the while making sure that the woman heard every word of it. Bibus shushed me, which surprised me. I regretted embarrassing him, but I was just so goddamn pissed off that I wanted to throw myself down the fucking stairs.

In other news, I'm a college student now and I'm living on campus with Jackie, who, on a daily basis, makes my entire life worthwhile.

Case in point - the other day I was plowing through philosophy reading (to be more specific, I was reading Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, but I'll get to that later) and I read the following passage out loud to Jackie: "'The strength which Self-centering' - 'self' is capitalized (that's my own personal commentary there, not Lorde's) - 'women find, in finding our Background,' - 'background' is capitalized - 'is our own strength, which we give back to our Selves' - 'selves' is capitalized." (This is actually an excerpt from Gyn/Ecology that Lorde quotes in her book.) And Jackie said, "Are 'our' and 'selves' two separate words?" And I said, "Yeah." And she said, "Gross." And then I'm pretty sure we made out for like two whole hours.

The reason I brought up superfluous capitalizations in the first place was because not ten minutes earlier I was telling her all about how Lorde supposedly stands for racial equality and yet she capitalizes "black" but not "white," "American," or "European." Her very SYNTAX undermines what she's attempting to get across to her readers. I brought up that point during philosophy discussion and in my TA's opinion Lorde capitalizes "black" in order to challenge the reader's preconceived notions regarding the capitalization of certain words, and that capitalizing "black" gets the reader's attention. But that's just how the English language rolls - it's not a product of racism. White and black aren't capitalized, but American, European, and African are. It's just that it breaks my heart whenever the English language is bastardized, so as you can imagine, my heart is in a constant state of... brokenness.

It's difficult for me to take Lorde seriously because she's constantly getting up in the reader's face and reminding him/her that she is a black (not Black!) lesbian feminist poet. I know that she's probably trying to make the reader uncomfortable by identifying herself that way, but I don't need to be told more than once. There's nothing wrong with my memory. I haven't forgotten. Have you, Audre Lorde? You black lesbian feminist poet, you.