World: shattered

Not actually. But who here knew that Henry from Fringe and the guy from X-Men: First Class were different actors? And if you did, why didn't you inform me?? Now I feel silly.

More movies, more life, etc.

Watched two lovely movies today while recovering from my semi-busy weekend. Love and Other Drugs was sad and I cried, but at the same time I liked it. I adore Anne Hathaway, and want to be her when I grow up, pretty much, and Jake Gyllenhaal, in case you haven't noticed, is HOT. So there's all that, and their chemistry was wonderful, and yes, I'm glad they didn't cop-out with a happy ending, but at the same time, I love happy endings, so.
Easy A, meanwhile, was a perfect romantic teen comedy thing (I struggle with movie genres), and now I like Emma Stone, whereas before I was just "meh" and Woodchuck Todd is awesome and I would like him in my life. Also, the humor in that movie was awesome, and her parents are my favorite things ever. I want Stanley Tucci to be my dad. Not that I don't love my dad, but Stanley Tucci is awesome. Maybe he can just be my uncle or something.
Camp is this weekend, after a short stop at Mackinac Island for a gathering of my mother's sisters. I'm a little bit upset, as I'll only be there for a day before being driven down to camp; the beaches in Michigan are amazing. Oh well; I suppose technically my camp is in Michigan too, so the beach there should suffice. At the very least it'll be better than the beaches near where I live.
I can never remember how much I've talked about camp on this thing. A lot? A little? I know I talk about how excited I am for it semi-regularly, and also that I've mentioned that I get nervous for it, but I don't think I've fully explained why. To be honest, it mainly has to do with the other counselors: because they all essentially go or went to the same two high schools, they all know each other from outside of camp, while I only know them all from camp (/very rarely from before I moved). And so they're all semi to very comfortable with one another, and since I've been a fixture at camp for some years I don't have any of that "introduce the new person to people" thing going for me, and I always forget people's names, and in general it's all just sort of awkward, because as I've mentioned I have a very strict social hierarchy and difficulty talking to people above me which makes introductions and small talk awkward especially with guys and oh my lord this is such a bad run-on/long sentence. Whew.
SO yeah, there's all that, but I really do think that the fact that camp pushes me out of my comfort zone helps me in my day-to-day life at high school. I really do believe that as awkward as I am, I would be so much worse if I didn't go to camp. So that's a plus. Also, I really do enjoy it, as a whole. I always semi-dread it going in, thinking it's going to be super bad, but I come out really excited for the next year, so obviously something's going right.
Yup, that's about all for now.

I really need to come up with something better to write for titles than, "Stuff"

I am really having difficulty remembering Harvard - it's only been two days! It just wasn't terribly distinctive, so unfortunately, the only thing that really stands out was the awkwardness of the information session. Though I do remember having the impression that it was prettier than I'd thought it would be.
As for MIT, well, it wasn't ugly as I'd feared, though it was quite ugly. In this case, the info session went a long way to, if not winning me over, then at least making me consider MIT as an option - mainly because the admissions officer and most of the tour guides were a lot more normal than I'd thought they'd be.
I've been hearing that everyone that visits Brown loves it, and let me tell you, it proved true for me. Providence was pretty and not too small, Brown itself was equally pretty - it was pretty much what comes to mind when you picture college.
Yale is really pretty and in a semi-European style, though its surrounding area was the most industrial of the four, if that makes sense (also, of the four, I think you'd be most likely to use the blue light system at Yale).
On our final night, my dad and I went to see Super 8. I enjoyed it - the kids were great actors, it was a good mix of terrifying and funny, the plot was good, if nothing to write home about. It was really recognizable as a J. J. Abrams film - the beginning reminded me so strongly of Fringe, it was ridiculous. Surprisingly, I think having followed Fringe made the ending actually a little anti-clmatic; there are just so many horrifying things in Fringe that Super 8's monster couldn't even really compete. But distanced from that, it was really good, and it still manage to make me silently mouth, "Oh shit oh shit oh fucking shit shit shit."

Falling Skies and college tours

So I'm watching Fallng Skies, and I have to say, this might be a new show to add to my list. Of course, it completely depends on whether or not TNT will have videos up online later for me to use to catch up, because I'm going to be at camp for the entire month o July (!!!), so I'd need to have some way to catch up.
Questions I have because I missed the first hour or something: do we know why the alien thing had a robotic shooting machine that followed it? Do they all have those? Why was a small-ish child brought on the scouting/food mission (that kid was like 12...[later: HE WAS 13 BOO-YAH])
(My commitment has been established mainly, sad though it is, because of the presence of a pretty face, namely that of Drew Roy. What else is new? Though it is slightly intriguing on its own merits as well, if a little reminiscent of, well, every alien/apocalyptic doom movie ever made. Also, thank you for having this hot guy date the badass chick and not the touchy-feely doctor/nurse/Catholic/obviously flirting with someone else's guy girl. Seriously. I have no problem with religion, just don't try to pick up guys with it. Please.)

Anyway, beyond my obsession with hot guys that I will never ever meet, and probably wouldn't date even if I did meet them, we (as in my dad and I) are checking out colleges on the East Coast. Solely Ivies/"Ivy Plus" schools (I just looked up that, no I didn't know it off the top of my head, not that you care) this time: Hahvahd, Yale, Princeton, Brown, MIT. (ALSO someone recently said that Stanford was an Ivy. I would just like to take this time to mention that I was right, and it's not. HA.)
We'll see how these go...to be honest, most of these schools are fairly similar, in the end. I'm going to have some severe dificulties when I have to decide where to apply, and, more importantly, go. I know I need a school with a semi-strong science/math department, I know it needs to be at least over 2000 people, I know I don't want to go to a po-dunky town in the middle of nowhere, and that I want to go to a school on a coast or Chicago, with very few exceptions - that is to say, the South/Southwest/most of the Midwest are pretty much completely out off the question. That still leaves a ton of schools, and I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA, excuse me, that was rude, I'm sorry, I just am feeling the stress a little. Also, an alien just jumped out on the TV, and it freaked me out a teeny bit.

Aaaaaaand thus concludes our boring update into the trials and travails of a hormonal, self-obssessed teenager. Why you bother to pay attention to them at all is beyond me.

...and my shows are back

And so, back to watching Pretty Little Liars, and it's reminded me why I watch this show: for eye candy and a sense of terror. Because honestly, plot holes are so common, I'm surprised the characters aren't falling into them; there is no basis in reality here. Also, the handling of romantic conversations and relationships is so cheesy and ridiculous, I can't help but laugh.
Also, also, after all you've been through you don't keep 15 different copies of that video, all of which are hidden in various places and whose locations are known only by yourself and one person, who is different for every one? Well, that makes you stupid. Also, why you still haven't told your boyfriend (who already knows what you did to Jenna) EVERYTHING that's going on, is beyond me (ex, THAT HIS HOME HAS BEEN BROKEN INTO).

Miscellaneous topics.

So forgot to mention, last weekend was our state Ultimate tournament.
I missed the first half of our first day and our first three games due to SAT testing, so I wasn't nearly as wiped as some of the other girls. This is only the second year we've had a girls team, and our numbers are low - so low, that between me and the four other girls who couldn't be there from the beginning, our team only had one sub! So props to all of them for not dying. Also, no surprise, we lost all our games that day.
The second day we had way more people, but it was so much hotter. No breeze at all. We managed to win one (of two) games that day, so yay, not last! That's about how well we did last year too, and considering we have significantly less people on our team compared to most of the other girls teams (meaning less subs), I think we did okay.
We got to watch the open teams' final championship game after we were all done, and it was amazing. Those guys throw super far, make the sickest catches, and can run the entire field length in no time at all. Most of them played nearly the entire game, and yet they still were so fast. Also: one guy's arm was popped out of his socket and he was back on the field two points later. Seriously, it's such a fun sport to watch when the teams are that good.
Um, other news? We're almost done with school. THANK THE LORD. The first two days of this week were especially god-awful as well, because there's no air conditioning in the classrooms in the building, and it was at least 100 degress F on Tuesday.
Graduation's tonight. I actually hate graduation with a passion. We (the band) have to be there to play Pomp and Circumstance on repeat for honest-to-god, I kid you not, at least 30 minutes. Probably more, I just don't want to get overzealous in my estimate. (Don't worry, I'll count tonight). The tuba part of that piece has no rest after the first four measures. We play some other stuff too, listen to some amazingly boring speeches, and then have to sit while the ENTIRE senior class is handed their diplomas, just so we can play the Recessional at the end. There's over 500 of them!

On a happier note, I finished Driving Lessons today! I love Rupert Grint, he's adorable.

SO we saw X-Men

And by "we", I mean my family and me, because sometimes we have family bonding ley's-go-see-a-movie times, and I always go because hey: free movie.
So anyway: it was good. I liked it. Let's talk about it.
First off: I've never actually seen a full X-Men movie. I've seen enough clips of the other movies to understand the jokes made about the various characters, and to be able to  identify them all, but not enough to know who would turn out "evil" or "good", or to understand any major plot lines hinted at in this movie. My mom, on the other hand, has seen some of them, and so she explained some things; however, there might be other stuff I completely missed.
SO: my thoughts, in some kind of semi-coherent order (HA, just kidding, not at all).
(Also, half/most of this won't make any sense/be funny if you haven't seen it. If it was ever going to be funny at all.)
-First movie with Kevin Bacon I've seen! WOOHOO. Actually, I feel pretty proud of that.
-So, not only does Little!Erik have to go through seeing his mother die, he also has to live with the guilt of killing two men by CRUSHING THEIR HEADS with their metal helmets (I mean, assuming he would feel guilty, which I'm not 100% certain of, which we'll get to in a sec, don't worry). AND he has to deal with the fact that he didn't even try to kill the man who actually shot his mother, i.e., Shaw the evil scientist.
-Baby!Xavier is not the greatest actor when we get into that awkward, "I always knew there must be other people like me. Different." scene, but that scene was just really awks in general. Also: "You'll never have to steal again." Okaaaaay then...
-Only thing I could think during that whole CIA thing was "You're going to get caught, leave, leave, leave, leaveleaveleaveLEAVE NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN." And then they didn't even see her. Let down.
-Hank is TONY, yay! And he's nerdy, how adorable! And he has monkey feet, like me, only more extreme!
-Only thing I could think while they were recruiting Angel was: "You realize they can see you through the windows right? Like, seriously. Close the curtains.
-And then they recruit Henry the Cab Driver from Fringe! Of course, he would be the one to die, too. I almost cried during that scene.
-FLYING WITH SOUND SOMEONE FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THIS.
-The scene with Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence was just really, really awkward, IMO. The age difference! Not okay! I literally could not watch it (yeah, I have some problems with sex/implied sex scenes. But it's only when they're SLOW sex scenes, you know? It's just sort of weird to me. I feel like I'm invading someone's privacy.)
-James McAvoy is always so tragic. Just looking at him makes me a little sad. For more than one reason...and this is the perfect place to segue into one of my other comment time thing-ys, namely, the hot people in this movie.
HI MICHAEL FASSBENDER
HI JAMES MCAVOY
HI GUY FROM HANNAH MONTANA MOVIE

Anyway, moving onto slightly *deeper* and *more reflective* comments: something I actually wanted to discuss a little more in-depth, and thus refrained from commenting on before was the extreme amount of violence within this movie. In general, I don't have a moral issue with violence in movies (ex: I really enjoyed Inglorious Basterds). However, in this movie, there were multiple scenes where the violence disturbed me for vairous reasons. First: the inn in Argentina where Erik/Michael Fassbender just straight up stabs some guy in the hand repeatedly. And then shoots a bartender, who, for all we know, is completely innocent of any sort crime except attempting to stop some apparent psycho from stabbing someone in his inn. Which I think is a sort of reasonable thing to try to do. So you know: as hot as you are, Michael Fassbender, there's something seriously wrong with your character. Like, I literally cannot comprehend how anyone could do that - just cold-bloodedly sink a knife into someone's hand multiple times. Moving beyond this scene, there's also the one where the facility where the mutants are is attacked; it's pretty much horrifying. The whole, "let's transport people so they're really high up and then DROP THEM." And the smack. And the stabbing with the tail - I just don't understand how anyone could ever join with people who literally massacred that many people, and in that manner. I don't care if you think you're more advanced or whatever - would you be okay killing that many chimpanzees? Gorillas? I wouldn't be able to. And then there's the scene with the coin. Watching James McAvoy screaming, because he can feel the pain of it through Shaw's mind was just horrifying.

AND finally: I would be remiss if I did not mention the epicness of the trailers which preceded the movie, which involved Cameron and 13 from House, Kate and Ana Lucia from Lost, Ryan Reynolds twice, and Tom Hardy aka IAMES FROM INCEPTION, WHO I LOVE.
(Seriously, there were like twenty minutes of commercials. (My parents kept track of time, because that's how we roll in my family) Let's see if I can name them all: Immortals, Green Lantern, Battle: Los Angeles,  The Change-Up, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Transformers, Warrior, and Real Steel. BOO-YAH.

More YA stuff.

So, we have a minor uproar on Twitter, prompted by this article in the Wall Street Journal, in which the author pretty much says that YA is the equivalent of those horrifyingly violent video games that are ruining our youth, with its intense depictions of "damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds." It also contains this gem: "Self-destructive adolescent behaviors are observably infectious and have periods of vogue."
As in, cutters cut because it's "cool".
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I really have very little to say that hasn't already  been  said, except this: I almost find that side thing most offensive: "Books for Young Men/Books for Young Women"
Really? Is there a reason some of these books are under this? That's a rhetorical question - I've read some of those books, and there's no reason they'd be more suitable/preferred for girls or boys.

So in conclusion: