Sotto Voce

That's my new Term of the Week. It's one of those modern phrases that derives from a foreign language, directly, so makes you sound super smart when you use it. Bonus! (Italian, meaning "under the voice") The english definition is "in a low, soft voice so as not to be overheard". This is a useful term, peoples!

I don't really have much of import to say. My mom's birthday is tomorrow, and so I get to make a cake. Yey. This past week Matthew, aka the Devil, introduced me to a game called Viva Pinata, which has consumed my soul. I seriously can do nothing but play and obsess over Pinatas. It's a disease, and there is NO CURE, except to get the next pinata on the list and make it reproduce. Excelllllent.

Any game where I can play Creator and produce monstrosities such as Four-headed snakes = totally awesome.

So I, along with others of the Group, saw Pan's Labyrinth tonight. Yup, it's super bowl sunday, and I don't give a shit, and gladly neither do most of my friends. Praise everything that I'm not forced to watch *shudder* sports. Anyway, I saw Pan's Labyrinth on my vacation, so this was the second viewing for me. It really is a fantastic movie, but just in case you don't know what it's like, there are two warnings: 1) It's in spanish with subtitles, and 2) It's very gory and violent at times, NOT a children's movie. But, it's really excellent. I'm a lover of stories, and always have been. Stories are like chocolate for me; delicious and sustaining. There are good stories, and bad stories, and there are also, rarely, True Stories. Pan's Labyrinth is a True Story. Not as in it really happened, but in the fact that it represents life as it really truly is, and not how it should be or how Disney fairy tales represent it. Good people die, and bad people live on, and the little ripples that each person makes in life expand and expand, and can wreak great havoc. It's a beautiful story, and a true one, which makes it all the more beautiful.

This somehow reminded me of one of modern fiction's most excellent books, Wicked by Gregory Maguire. It takes a well-known villain, the Wicked Witch from the wizard of oz, and gives her a life story. It begs the questions "what is wicked? what is evil?" In the end, we're all people. I think sometimes we lose sight of that, that there's a common thread of humanity that runs within us all.

I'm getting all crazy introspective again. It's starting to seem like I'm always this way. I think it's the cold weather...soon as it gets warm again, I'll be too busy absorbing the sun and the heat to think about anything else. How I long for summer...