Rant!

A brief look at the trending topics on Twitter.

"Harry Potter" was one, so, of course, I clicked. And I smiled until I saw this:

(name withheld for painfully obvious reasons) damn that part when edward cullen dies in harry potter always makes me cry

Anyone who was at the EBC A-Team retreat knows this, so for their sake, I hope they don't read it. But freaking STOP thinking that Twilight has anything to do with Harry Potter.

The only thing the have in common is Rob Pattinson, who, contrary to the popular belief of obsessive 14-year-olds, is not actually a sparkly vampire or even a perfect gentleman. The two sagas are not even in the same genre of literature.

Call Twilight fantasty, but I argue that a more accurate term is "tween romance." All the emotional appeal without the details. Ew gross.

And not that I think J.K. Rowling is on par at all with the Inklings, but the HP series IS on par with Narnia and LOTR, at least in terms of the culture that has grown around it. It just is. It will linger as they have. (Yes, I know the movies aren't as good.)

Ok, I'm done.

Those Boxes in the Closet

Being back in Wichita, for however long, always has an element of emotional strain.

The other day, I compared it to running into an old boyfriend.

"Oh yeah... that's why we broke up."

My actual family and my church family are still amazing and always worth the drive. But everything else (from the lack of pedestrian-friendly distances between anything to the lack of anything fun to do besides spend money) is only tolerable for a few days. But knowing that I'll only be here for a few days makes it almost enjoyable.

The puppy, the park, the political friends, Copper Oven breakfast, a Starbucks date, and the obligatory unannounced visit to the Galyardts. That's the good stuff. That's what keeps me from being suffocated by the empty shells of faded relationships.

Mom and I were trying (*ahem* yeah, trying) t0 clean out my old room today. I found a rather sparkly black purse tucked under some shoe boxes. Inside were five intricately folded notes, written in several different colors of gel pen. Wow...

I couldn't help but sit and read through them. Four were from Alli, and one was from Cara. The ones from Alli were all about how we were mad at Cara, and the one from Cara was her trying to figure out who was mad at her.

"Hello, 14-year-old self. Shut the hell up and find better friends."

I'm now fairly certain that, however much I cherish and learn from my memories, forgetfulness has to be a survival mechanism. If I still had any idea what that fight had been about (I really don't!), if I still felt the weight of those experiences, I'd have no capacity to process everything NOW that contains infinitely more value to me and others.

We have to forget. Forgetting must be part of learning. It's something I've always been afraid to let happen, which is why I still have so many t-shirts, pictures, books, notes, journals... but that past self (which wouldn't be bad material for a Project Mortified show) has so little to do with the person I have become.

Being reminded does nothing beneficial other than show me how much better judgment I have of other peoples' character, and how much confidence I have gained. There's proof of both in the incredible people who now surround me.

I guess those aren't bad things to find out.

But if you want to know anything about what I was like before I started living for Jesus, watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and pay lots of attention to Clementine. I'm serious.

-Katie

A Finished Project

*This is from my research blog. Content from that usually doesn't make it to my "personal" blog, but this is cool.*

Tonight, "the d.ethnogs of '09will shamelessly and elaborately celebrate themselves" at the First Annual Diggie Awards potluck night of awesomeness, hosted by the Wesch family. I cannot wait. Our class has really accomplished something, and seeing it all together will be great. It helps that they're all just great people to be around.

Also, Tim and Patrick of Two Seconds Away have posted my video to their band's site, newmusicmonday.com! These guys are big fans of Dr. Wesch and were so great to work with in producing my video.

This is what I have asked them to post along with the video:

Dr. Wesch's Digital Ethnography class is the kind of thing you can't get away from. The ideas we threw around in discussing the concept Anonymity this semester seemed to apply to everything: my other classes, my relationships, random car commercials... life had become research. Researching pop culture does well to blur the line between work and play. In the arena of "play", Tim and Patrick had been faithfully posting their songs every Monday, and I couldn't get "In The Way" out of my head. In my part of the project, I kept noticing how much people needed to be known and understood. That seems pretty basic, but it still fascinated me that the knowing and understanding was sought from unknown people. In the song, that last line, "You see me" repeated as it was came to me as a triumphant declaration that being known was possible. I wanted that resolution in my project, and so built my script around the song.

Then we read a speech by David Foster Wallace in my Philosophy class. He says, "My natural default setting is the certainty that situations like [grocery shopping after a long day's work] are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way."

The rest of the song clicked. It is about breaking the myth that we are so disconnected from one another. And I can't shake the feeling that the way Tim and Patrick's song fit so perfectly with a semester's worth of my research is a little bit beyond us.

So check out the video and let me know what you think!

-Katie