So, I stopped writing in the blog a little bit. The original intention behind this guy was to write every day, and it still sort of is the intention... I just stopped after, what, a week?

But I've decided to renew my blog with renewed vigor, and write more about Pop Culture. And My Feelings.

I've been FEELING sad lately, mostly because I live in a new place, and, although I'm starting to make friends on a slightly larger scale than my sole friend the drug dealer (he doesn't deal ME drugs, I swear), I still don't really feel engaged in life, and am prone to staying in on nights when I should have plans, or even when I ditched plans because I felt tired and didn't know anyone at whatever party, and calling myself a loser. When I stay in, I watch Grey's Anatomy.

I started watching Grey's from the beginning when I got back from Nepal. In the month-and-a-half interim between arriving home and leaving again for Australia, I got pretty depressed. This was mostly because all my friends were off at school, I had no job, I was back at home, and I really really missed living in Kathmandu. I started watching Grey's because I wasn't really inspired to do much else, and I had a crush on Justin Chambers, who is a part of the cast. During that month-and-a-half I got through about a season and a half of this show, as well as about half a season of Gossip Girl, and caught up on a lot of Degrassi: The Next Generation (DON'T YOU DISS DEGRASSI!).

And then I went to Australia and came back and had summer with all my friends and loved life a ton. And now I'm in Arizona and I'm watching Grey's again. I'm maybe a fourth of the way through Season 3.

Grey's Anatomy, for me, feels similar to curling up with a book and a hot tea after getting soaked through by a March thunderstorm. It just has that comforting feel. I don't know if it's because Grey's Anatomy has a very muted range of colors (Hospital blues and greens, white and grey surfaces), or if it's because it's set in Seattle. A lot of the scenes just have sort of a comforting feel to them, you know? The hospital locker room, or the lobby of Seattle Grace at night, when it's dark and rainy outside, or the interior of Joe's Bar all have that same closed-in, warm-and-safe feeling that curling up next to a fire with a novel has.

Plus, there's a formula for the plot of every Grey's Anatomy. Meredith, Christina and Izzy, or some combination of two of them, are always, at some point in the episode, found in some area of the hospital seated next to one another, staring blankly ahead of them at nothing. Another character, or one of these three, seats her/himself beside them and also stares ahead at nothing.

Character 1: (dryly delivers a quip about self or s/o, still staring blankly ahead)
Character 2: (dryly delivers a quip about self or s/o, still staring blankly ahead)
Character 3: (does the same)

And then Meredith always has a certain catchphrase or mantra that she sort of repeats to herself throughout the episode. Like "I'm knitting a sweater." And then she just runs with it.
"McDreamy is having sex, So-and-so is scrubbing in on (insert surgery here), and I'm knitting a sweater."

In this instance, "knitting a sweater" means abstaining from sex/distracting self from misery, that kind of thing.

But the show is also incredibly tragic, all the time. It just makes me want to curl up and cry, which, um, tends to be what I do. But it's comforting all the same, even when I'm like "OMG WRITERS OF THIS SHOW! JUST GIVE IZZY A BREAK!"

...yup.

...So thats how I spent my saturday night.

Tex's French Grammar

My friends from other places keep asking me what Arizona is like, how it is. I definitely heard the best description of it today, from a girl who shares my table in French. She goes "Its really iron-y". And I was sitting there thinking... it's really irony. It's irony.

And then she clarifies:

"It feels like an iron on your face."

Everyone in my French class thinks I am insane because of how much I laugh. I laugh because of this clever seat-mate, and the two other clever seat mates. I also laugh because of Joe-Bob, who is an improbable teaching tool for any French student. Joe-Bob is one of a host of woodland creatures who live on a french grammar website the Professor sometimes pulls up in order to play examples of dialogue relevant to the grammar we're learning.

Oh, ok, here we go. Tex's French Grammar. A brief summary of the hectic lives of French-speaking Redneck Critters:

This web site is about much more than just French grammar. It is also about the epic love story of Tex and Tammy, two star-struck armadillos, and Bette, the sex kitten bent on destroying their love. In addition to this ménage à trois, the cast of characters include Edouard, a pretentious French snail, Joe-Bob, a dim-witted squirrel from College Station, and Corey, a cockroach who prefers getting high and watching the X-Files on TV to doing his French homework.

So, come explore the world of Tex and find the answers to life's important questions: Will Tex's and Tammy's union ever be legally sanctioned? Will Bette ever learn to balance the erotic and the platonic? Will Edouard ever get over his antipathy for Texas barbeque? Will Joe-Bob and Corey ever pass French 101? And will Tex ever integrate the competing forces of his complex Franco-American identity? ... Bon voyage!

The website has a lot of audio clips in which we can hear Corey, Tex, and Joe-Bob speaking French in atrocious, over-exaggerated redneck-Southern accents. Joe-Bob's accent is the most pronounced, and because of this, I want to marry him. Even though he is an animated squirrel. He is just so non-sequitorial (is this a word?) and paradoxical.

In other news, today was the first cloudy morning I've experienced since arriving in AZ just about a month ago. By the time I got out of my morning class, though, it was sunny and bright again. Although, according to some people, the 85 degree weather today was cold. Way cold.

Tomorrow EnvioBio is going to walk around the desert surrounding campus and plant cameras so's we can capture video of the wildlife that go by the cameras and do a wildlife survey! Down here, mountain lions and bobcats eat peoples tiny dogs if they leave them out at night. That's pretty exciting.