you can shift now.

<---   this is me.

<--- this is my car. decorated by ten year olds.

 <--- this is my boyfriend, jacob.

<--- this is his car. well... one that looks like his. i found this one on google.

my car, whose name is sam (and that's a GIRL sam), is a 2003 ford focus. my car has a six CD changer in the dashboard, awesome windshield wipers, a really big trunk, and is an automatic.

jacob's car, whose name is algernon, is seventeen years old, has crank windows, barely functioning airconditioning, scary seat belts that move by themselves, and is a stick shift.

my dad drives a stick shift. when i was little he had a car exactly like jacob's (but one year newer and a lot nicer) and i always watched him shift gears. when he got my car when i was twelve, i kept waiting for him to shift gears with the emergency brake and i never figured out why he never did.

he told me that driving a stick is a very good and valuable thing.

in my other blog, i wrote about i drove jacob's car to his friend alex's house and i screamed and cried and it was absolutely terrifying. i came home from allegan super duper proud of myself and told my father that when the time came for my brother to take my car to alma, i could drive his car to IPFW to learn how to say 'hablo espanol, donde esta el bano?'

last weekend he let me drive his car to my cousin's house, which is about two miles away, to see how i did city driving. and i was like, fo sho, i got this in the bag, i am SO down, i did this at jacob's, it was GRRRREAT

and i stalled. and stalled. and when i finally got going after sitting through three lights, i kept popping the clutch, shifting into the wrong gear, stalling some more, and i eventually completely stalled the car out trying to pull onto my cousin's driveway. then i left the clutch in and we rolled into the middle of the street.

today, i drove jacob's car from carroll high school to my house and didn't stall. i then drove his car to steak n' shake, drank a fantastic milkshake, got stopped at four lights, and drove on the busiest road in fort wayne. i didn't stall a single time. i only stalled once in the way home.

i'm not entirely sure what's up with this.

i'm thinking that since jacob's car is ancient and seasoned, the clutch is nicer. maybe i secretly love algernon and he secretly loves me. maybe i'm just more comfortable with my boyfriend than with my dad.

but something is totally up and i need to figure it out before my brother comes home to steal my car. because once that happens, i'm shit out of luck if my dad's car hates me.

he calls his car little red. this reminds me of little red riding hood. THAT reminds me of my intro to lit analysis my first year of college. little red riding hood got raped in that class. a lot. and she menstrated a bunch, too. no, no, not in the actual story, but in the symbolism.

when my dad calls his car little red, i cringe. because all i think of is devouring innocence and periods.

i WILL find what's up with this, and eventually, i'll drive a stick shift, all by myself, to spanish class. but by the time that rolls around, i'll be half fluent.

that's a long time from now.

today.

today is my twentieth birthday.

when midnight hit, i got extremely excited for about two minutes, realized i didn't ACTUALLY turn twenty until six thirty-six am, and went to bed.

when i woke up at ten, i didn't feel twenty.

but then again, i'm not entirely sure that twenty has a feeling. i'm not really sure if age truly does have a feeling.

what did sixteen feel like? it felt like a day where i went to church, had a birthday cake, and wore a new shirt.

what did eleven feel like? it felt like a day where i went to molly's house and we spent all day baking a super delicious birthday cake that didn't really turn out to be that delicious.

what did eighteen feel like? it felt like the last day of school and stomach pain from eating too many cupcakes in orchestra.

what did twenty feel like?

twenty felt like tweeting more than normal, having my boyfriend visit me from michigan, having my best friend ride his bike to my house to give me a gift, wearing a cute skirt, and eating a golden snitch cake. it felt like going to target and getting a little kid shower curtain. it felt like a good, happy, warm day with my best friend, my boyfriend, and my parents.

it felt like a wonderful day.

it did not feel like an age.

what does seventy-five feel like? to my grandpa, that feels like riding his bike seventy-five miles.

so i'm thinking that i don't think that twenty has a feeling. sixteen didn't, eleven didn't, eighteen didn't, so why would twenty?

this isn't particularly depressing to me, only decently intriguing. i like the idea of being able to feel a number, almost being able to feel something tangible. i really like this idea. in fact, i think i love this idea.

it's not plausible, feeling a number like it's a tangible thing. but i can hope for it anyway.

i had a great birthday. :)

mfalme simba.

nyants ingoyama bagithi baba!

that's obviously not english. it's not swahili, either, like i used to think it was.

no, that's zulu.

it took me a long, long time to figure out how to pronounce that sentence. i spent an hour and a half driving on the highway listening to it and trying to sing along. over and over and over. and when i could finally say it, i felt like a real badass.

if you can't say it, it's okay. but i'm pretty sure you've heard it before.



this is, hands down, my favorite movie EVER. it's bordering on an obsession. scratch that, it IS an obsession. so i have to blog about it.

first of all, you should understand just how bad this obsession is.

in my bedroom, on my desk, i have a teeny weeny white TV. it's old enough that the screen bubbles out. it doesn't have one of those fancy digital boxes, so it doesn't have a single TV channel, but it has a VCR. i went in our basement and found the lion king on tape and fed it to my hungry VCR. i haven't yet figured out how to loop the VHS yet, so i'm still in the stage where every time the movie ends and the credits are done (the credit music is so good i have to listen), i just rewind it. and then i start over.

i will watch this tape between one and eight times a week.

in my car, i have a six CD changer built into the dashboard, and i have to say, it's my favorite thing about my car besides the fact that it takes me wherever i want to go. in slot four of this CD changer, i have the lion king broadway original soundtrack. ORIGINAL. my father acquired this because the actress who plays nala, heather headley, went to my high school, which is pretty neat for fort wayne. the soundtrack has extra songs that don't appear in the movie, and most of those songs are in zulu and don't have a single word of english.

those are my favorite ones. except of course, i just can't wait to be king. because that's the greatest song ever.

looking up lyrics and translations for these songs, i discovered that the language spoken in the soundtrack and the movie is zulu, not swahili. the names in the movie are swahili, though. except scar. i guess if you're a brother-murdering nephew-exiling lion who turns out to be a terrible king, you don't get a cool african name.

i've been trying to figure out my fascination with this movie for a while. i'm not the only one who's fascinated, because the lion king is the highest grossing animated movie ever, and has been voted, consistently, the best animated film ever made.

i'm thinking most of it, at least for me, is the music.

i don't want to hate on other disney movies, and i especially don't want to hate on alan menken, because that man is my disney music hero. but the lion king didn't use alan menken. they used elton john and tim rice for the songs and lyrics.

i secretly love elton john. i will admit to that. you can laugh at me, but elton john is legit.

when elton john and tim rice get together, magic happens. you get that awesome feeling when you press play and the sun rises at the beginning of the circle of life. even though i've seen the lion king at LEAST fifty times, i still get that intense warm feeling when the movie begins. tim rice and elton john making songs together does that. good music, good lyrics, good movie.

the score is ridiculously moving. some of it is african sounding, some of it isn't, but if you hear just about any part of the score, you can jump up and down and say, HEY! THAT'S FROM THE LION KING!

the score, as i found out, was written by hans zimmer. you know, that cool guy who does all the hardcore music in batman and pirates of the caribbean. yeah. that guy.

he looks like a major creeper to me.

but that's okay, because he writes damn good music. and he's listed in the top 100 living geniuses. i'm not sure exactly what constitutes a genius anymore, but if he can write music like that, i'm okay with calling him a genius.

i honestly believe that when i'm older and have children, i will still love the lion king. i'm really hoping that my kids will like it as well so we can watch it together. and we can listen to the broadway sountrack in the car. my family still does, and my parents are fifty, i'm basically twenty, and my brother is twenty-one. but seriously, last sunday when we drove to manchester to visit my grandpa, we listened to the lion king soundtrack the whole way, and was sang along. i think my entire family has a thing for disney.

even though i really hope that my kids love the lion king, i hope they don't love it as much as i do, because my obsession scares me.

lion king is magic. it's timeless. it's the lion king.

nyants ingoyama bagithi baba! (a lion is coming, father!)

this is the first day.

today is the first day of my summer goal: to blog every day during the month of june.

apparently april had a 'vlog every day in the month of april', but this is just me deciding to blog every day in june because i'm cool like that. i even made an extra folder called 'this is my blog folder.' inside of it is a document with a list of possible things to blog about everyday. my favorite item on that list is 'whatever the hell i feel like.'

so this is the first day.

i read a wikihow article on how to blog since i'm pretty terrible at it. once i got past the part about picking a blog site and making sure that i have the correct layout, the article actually discussed the idea of blogging. it told me to blog often and to blog about interesting things. nobody wants to hear about how you went grocery shopping and ran into nancy. that's for your twitter.

i got a twitter last night. i'm still afraid of it.

the article said that blogging every day is best, and your blogs shouldn't be too long and rambling. they should be interesting, concise, and be an extension of yourself. it also told me not to worry if nobody read your blogs for the first few months, it takes time for people to realize you have a blog worth reading. if it's worth reading.

i really don't think anybody reads this, and since it's june today, i've had my blog for five months. i haven't blogged every day. in fact, i've blogged about eight times during those past five months, and most of my blogs have been long. perhaps they're interesting. i'd like to think that my blogs are an extension of myself. i did blog about serial killers in march, and that makes me feel decently cool.

it was mostly this article that made me want to blog everyday in the month of june. it's a challenge, and i'm determined to win. june is the busiest month of my life and generally always has been.

JUNE INVOLVES:
my birthday.
my job.
my IPFW spanish class.
my back brace.
my physical therapy to hopefully rid myself of the back brace.
and now, my blog.

so this is the first day.

i'm pretty sure i just blogged about blogging, and that's honestly on my list of things to blog about in my 'this is my blog' folder.

when i look at that folder, i get a thrill of excitement. it's quickly followed by a shot of anxiety. blogging is serious business.

rain, tires, and guitars. in fifth gear.

so, i have this extremely detailed life plan. right now it's looking something like this.

have the time of my life at alma.
become fluent in spanish and graduate with a fancy michigan teaching license.
move my butt to arizona.
get a really sweet apartment with a little kid shower curtain.
buy a cello.
teach kids how to speak spanish and understand charles dickens.
be awesome.

i can honestly say that if anything deviates from this plan, i'm doomed. because i am so terribly set on it. and i know how pathetic and out of reach that fact is.

i left out the part about marrying matthew gray gubler. because that's just not feasible no matter how much i wish it to happen.

(who WOULDN'T want to marry this?!)

so. this weekend, not via the impromptu route, i drove to allegan michigan to visit my boyfriend jacob and spend two nights with his family. i stayed in their guest house because frankly, his house is just a gigantic asthma attack waiting to happen. that billboard that you see with the gold fish and the little kid saying he feels like a fish out of water? that kid knows what's up. anyway, our weekend, with me staying in their guest house, was going to be flawless. we were going to watch the life aquatic, hang out with his friends, cruise around kalamazoo, play frisbee golf, and go swimming. that sounds like a hell of a day to me.

well, the life aquatic part worked out just fine. but i must say, it is the most terrible fantastic movie ever made (and not just because it has matthew gray gubler speaking ten words and getting slashed by a pirate). if you like movies, you'll hate it. i adored it in all of its horribleness. the only horrendous thing i found about that evening was the fact that my back completely wrenched out and i had to sit with my back pressed into a gigantic ice pack and we ran out of popcorn entirely too quickly.

the flawless saturday began with me completely oversleeping, finding a wolf spider in my bathtub, and demanding to shower at jacob's house. i feel like the wolf spider is an omen about my summer. especially because my brother is missing my twentieth birthday to study their creepy crawly behavior.

anyway.

jacob insisted that i drive his seventeen year old stick shift escort to alex's house. i've driven a stick shift three times. the third time resulted in jacob's car getting towed (but for free, thanks to my friendly AAA card and the nice lady on the phone who called me miz hollenberg), so i was not game for this. once i got to the main road and was sure i was going to stall, it started pouring. and it was cold. and i screamed a whole bunch putting that ancient station wagon into second gear.

upon arrival at alex's house, i met jacob's best friend justice, and we stood around in alex's kitchen marveling at knives, talking about harry potter, and lamenting about the entirely shitty weather, which totally blew out our plans of swimming and frisbee golf. i still don't know what frisbee golf is, because here in indiana, we play corn hole. i feel like both of these activities aren't for me. once these plans were squashed, i ran into alex's gigantic dog that was a walking allergy attack and that i swear was going to die right there in the kitchen from extreme old age and exhaustion, and his cat that was passed out in a corner like a homeless drunk. his name is squire and jacob does not pet him. my weekend was off to a strange start.

jacob commenced to drive us to kalamazoo (it's totally real. and fun.) where a guy in a really ugly SUV rolled down his window, shouted something incomprehensible at jacob, flicked him off, and drove away. being with justice and alex made me very adventurous, so i definitely worked that middle finger muscle back. and it felt so good that it scared me. after that jacob missed the exit, we found a new one, and then the car started shuddering. violently. (his car and i don't mix very well, i've gathered.) once we got to kalamazoo, justice stuck his head out the window and found out that the rear passenger tire completely blew out.

we pulled into a lutheran church (prince of peace, totally.) and spent a long time trying to change it. jacob definitely knew how, i spent a lot of time dancing around the parking lot like a ballerina, and alex jacked the car up three separate times. then alex and justice wandered off and jacob and i hobbled the car to pepboys to buy a new tire. from there we met up again at guitar center where i quickly pointed out the most expensive bass guitar in the place. never mind that i have one in my room that i can play, no, i wanted that awesome green one that was worth as much as the college classes i start today.

even after shelling out sixty-seven bucks for a fancy new tire, jacob impulsively bought a guitar. does he know how to play it? no. does that matter? of course not. what mattered was how extremely cool the four of us looked standing at pep boys, waiting to pay for the tire, carrying a guitar in a cardboard box, and me excitedly discussing serial killers with justice. because he just totally doesn't understand how somebody "with cool hair like yours" can really be that crazy about jeffrey dahmer.

after we went to the mall with the new tire and the new guitar and me pining for a ukulele, alex and justice discovered my rather intense fear of escalators and insane love of auntie anne's. and the power of my dr. pepper addiction, because i almost cried when auntie anne's did NOT have dr. pepper for me to get my fix. by this time, it was almost six, my hair was flat, and i had a diet coke. my day was in complete shambles.

halfway back to alex's house, we spun around on a dirt road to meet stephen and jenaya at a taco bell. if you know me, then you probably know my taco bell story. if you don't, it's pretty simple: i'd never had taco bell. i had it on the way home from a marching band competition when i was eighteen. i got home from the marching band competition. i spent all night throwing up that mexican crap into the toilet.

taco bell has dr. pepper. i drank two medium cup's full, and then didn't use the bathroom. on the way back to alex's house, while listening to ben folds from justice's mac, i almost wet my pants.

i got the stick safely back to jacob's. we watched spider man. that was planned. we pirated up, the greatest disney movie ever (besides lion king, obviously) onto a VHS. that went as planned until i popped it into my vhs player fifteen minutes ago and got a big, fat, nothing. except the lord of the rings special on the history  channel that we honestly thought was taped over.

so my entire weekend deviated from the plan. i wish to GOD i'd remembered my camera to document everything, mostly the ballerina dancing in the lutheran church parking lot while jacob jacked up his car for the third time and alex ripped up the already blown out tire with a knife. (justice was cool and just kind of stood around and smoked a cigarette like we were in a movie. a really bad one.) repetition: my entire weekend deviated from the plan.

and i had SO MUCH FUN.

so maybe, this whole move to arizona and teach kids spanish and have a cute shower curtain, maybe if that doesn't work, i'll be okay.

i'm certainly hoping that it'll be okay.  getting lost on the ride home (my GPS is out to kill me!) was okay, too. but i think that's because i was singing "i just can't wait to be king" so loudly that other motorists were looking at me. and i had my windows up.

blog vs. vlog?

so. this is my blog.

i'm not very good at blogging. i feel like you're supposed to blog about a particular subject. like my best friend. he has a blog all about movies and his critiques of them.

so far i've blogged about memory and serial killers and humbert humbert (oh the pedophilia!). i tried to blog about the innocence and illusion of childhood, and when that failed, i posted a bunch of pictures that all applied to my life and i tried to organize them in a decent fashion, only to fail. but i do enjoy scrolling back at the pictures and smiling at them.

i feel like my jumbled up blogs don't make for good blogging. but here i am. blogging.

my next door neighbor at alma, katie greenough, vlogs. it's like... youtube blogging. where she talks at her webcam about stuff for up to ten minutes and then the world can see it. they are extremely comical and heartwarming. (my serial killer blog was definitely not either of these things.) i just watched one of her vlogs, and as usual, it was stupendous. and then i got to wondering about blogging and vlogging.

essentially, they are the same thing, but perhaps a blog is more specialized, or supposed to be. we sit in front of computers, katie far more often than me, and we rant about something or other. she talks about a very potter musical. i try to find words to describe my intense love of lion king and fail. but what's the difference?

i feel like with vlogging, there's so much more confidence. people look at you, right at your face. you speak the words out loud, and once they're out there, hell, they're out there. when i'm typing a blog, i'm hiding behind my words. if i don't like the way something sounds, i can hit backspace as many times as i want. when something slips out of katie's mouth, well, there it is.

as i have just realized, i hide. i don't mean to, unlike my boyfriend. upon this discovery, he said, "i hide in general." which is intriguing, since he's six foot four. i'm pushing five nine if not five ten, and as a female, that makes it hard for me to hide too. i'm not a person to hide even if i topped out at three foot seven and called myself a hobbit. i do a certain amount of exposure just by writing a blog, right? by having a facebook. by having the job that i have. by deciding it's cool to stand in the middle of mcintyre mall and shout MARCO and see who shouts polo. that's unhiding.

so now that i realize that i'm hiding behind typed words in a vlog vs. blog, i feel kind of lame.

i do, however, have the freedom of deception, for lack of a better term. you can call it cowardice. but with my words, i can craft myself into anyone and craft this into anything. i don't call it cowardice, i call creativity. and for the record, i haven't crafted anything in these blogs except a poem that i wrote about spoons, and that was my first post because i didn't know what i was doing, and i still don't. everything in here in genuinely me, and that's the point of a blog, right?

a blog and a vlog.

so... you don't see my face, my facial tics, my speech habits, my increasingly difficult to manage hair. but you get my words and my ideas just the same.

maybe one day i'll get good at this. words! oh the pedophilia, humbert humbert. you will forever scar my soul.

thanks for being in my blog, katie greenough.

at this perfect moment in time.

i'm really in the blog writing mood.

this is probably because i finished that silly lolita paper. and no, my thesis had nothing to do with games. simply artistic fabrication of self-projection.

since i'm in the blog writing mood, i'd figure i'd blog, but i honestly have nothing to write about. i just attempted to write about childhood innocence and illusion, but i think my writing skills are shot trying to conclude the lolita paper, and i'm a little bit too excited for tonight's upcoming RA orientation to focus on much else. that and impending organic chemistry doom.

then i had this idea that i would post a series of pictures that all apply to my life at this moment. things i think about, things i do, things i worry about, things i'm currently enjoying. a big collage of "emily's life at this perfect moment in time... or just moment."

so here it goes.

i feel like this is a testimony to how entirely screwed up my life is, and how much i absolutely adore it. everything is jumbled and doesn't quite fit, and i like that. because when do we ever fit?

just about never.