Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

I left something out on the "things to be pissed about" list - I have an ear infection. Another one. Hadn't had an ear infection in a decade and then wham, two in one summer. I don't understand.

Anyway. It hurts. And if it's not hurting, it's itching. I'd rather have three days of Chinese water torture, personally.

(And I'm still pissed that they killed Gabriel. Even if it didn't "really" happen. It did. Because I sat there, and watched his neck snap, and felt a violent pain in my gut. The boy has the most beautiful eyes, and a bone structure that all mtf transvestites would envy. He is one of those men that, like Frank Black, or Spike, I just want to hold. Kiss their forehead. Put them on a shelf in my closet. And the like.)

The movie A Far-Off Place was on. I saw it when it was in theatres, years ago, and a few times since. When she was younger, Reese Witherspoon was given good roles. Like in The Man in the Moon. What happened? The girl can act. Why all the dumb blond roles, then? It's insulting.

Anyway. I had a point. I love movies like that, even now. Movies like that, and Alaska, and Fly Away Home. Movies made about teenagers that don't include a single school dance! They don't make them anymore, I realized. They just ... don't. And that pisses me off. A lot of things piss me off today, but I think that might piss me off the most.

For fuck's sake, even Clueless - as pop culture-y as it was - was intelligently written, and had a point. There has always been crap in cinema, but the crap quotient has risen to a frightening high in the past few years. All of it aimed towards my age group. (And, well, a little younger.)

Personally - I am insulted.

Personally - I'm having a "down on American culture and most Americans" day.

I've been watching the Discovery Channel a lot. I figure if I have nothing better to do than to watch television for half the day, at least I can educate myself in the process. It was a good idea. I'm enjoying it. I've learned lots about Alaska, and grizzly bears, and the human brain. And there was something on about the storm that The Perfect Storm was based on. God, I hate oceans.

I should like them, I think. They have the same flat vastness that I adore in deserts. In the daylight, I even like oceans. They are sort of pretty.

But they scare me. They are deceptive. There is nothing deceptive about deserts, which is what I love about them - what you see is exactly what you get. Oceans are different. Everything is so hidden beneath the surface, including the depths. They give an illusion of safety, of calm. But I can never forget the possibilities, what there is beneath - I can only imagine drowning. Disappearing. Being swallowed up. A flat hugeness exhilirates me; a deep hugeness terrifies.

I don't know why.