Without a doubt, the worst part of screwing up is knowing that, if I want to maintain honesty with myself and in my relationships, I ought to admit my fault at some point or another. I recently learned from Mandi that, according to Catholic Doctrine, a “Mortal Sin” (for which one does penance in purgatory) is any sin which one commits in full knowledge that they are just going to confess it later. It’s a good thing I’m not Catholic, I guess, because I totally committed a mortal sin today: I smoked, and I justified it to myself because, hey, my body, my decision, this is a one-time deal, and I’ll admit it later, so that makes it alright. Right? Right? Not really. I definitely have the Catholic guilt thing down because about five drags into the cigarette, I was so disgusted with myself that I put it out.
I then I returned to my self-loathing pity-party. Due to the fortuitous alignment of the stars, I’m feeling worse than usual, and not just because I quit smoking, so I was more than a little testy today. One of my friends called me on it in a manner I felt was not gracious enough, and I added self-righteousness to my self-loathing pity party. How dare someone question my right to gripe? How dare someone suggest that my problem was less legitimate, than, say, someone who had fought an addiction for twenty-plus YEARS and for whom the side-effects included, say, sudden death, not just shortness of breath and self-pity? It’s more than a little ironic that I began this experiment with lofty goals of self-improvement and self-consciousness, and not even two full days in I find myself reacting thoughtlessly and hastily. Ah well, better to be mindful now than not at all.
I found this clip of the comedian Louis CK on Conan O’Brien talking about how much we take everything we have for granted. Sure, the sentiment has been repeated ad nauseam, but that’s because it’s true!
On to my new Entertainment Section! I have a love/hate relationship with pop-culture: there are aspects of American pop-culture that I absolutely love (like Justin Timberlake) but hate the idea of becoming a screaming fan girl, so I express my love in a disdainful and sarcastic self-aggrandising fashion, coyly inserting the lyrics of a pop song into casual conversation in such a way that I appear simultaneously worldly and aloof. Why not indulge my inherent hauteur by mocking pop-culture, all the while secretly crying myself to sleep because while I’ll never be as popular as Britney, I still have a damn good shot of matching her in the crazy department. So, without further ado, I present my Pop-Culture segment:
I usually attempt to maintain a policy of not judging things without having first engaged them in one way or another, so, today, my policy involved watching two (2) videos of the Jonas Brothers. Now, I have ranted about them before, but I had never actually listened to a song fully, mostly because I hated the first ten seconds and felt no reason to torture myself further. After listening to two songs (okay, 1.5 songs), I can now state firmly and without equivocation that they are no-talentless hacks. That said, I want to eat up Kevin Jonas. He’s so fucking cute. I want to store him in a suitcase like a puppet and take him out for shows with my friends. As long as he doesn’t sing. Ever.
Tomorrow: Why Taylor Swift should be force-fed Shakespeare.
