Not feeling the words today. I would really rather not have to blog today because it means having to structure my time and plan and whatnot and I do enough of that during the week. But I am being treated to a movie by my dear friend William, and so it is definitely worth it, and it’s just my lazy whiny Jagoff side that is bitching about that kind of thing.

We are going to see the latest version of The Jungle Book, the live action-ish version. I have heard good things about it. And I am pretty sure I can go into it with a mostly open mind and not judge it solely by the standard of the original Disney classic that is one of my top three Disney flicks (tied for second with Disney’s Robin Hood).

I wonder if there is singing in this one? I hope not. That would make it harder for me to keep the two distinct and separate in my mind.

I mean, what new song could compete with this?

I am intrigued by the fact that Kaa the snake is voiced as female this time. The original scene has such a potent pedo vibe that it makes me wonder if the gender switch was to counter some of that. If so, then it was futile, as there are plenty of female pedos preying on little boys out there too. And they generally don’t get caught because people want pedophilia to be as alien as possible to them, to locate it as far away (in the hands of random male perverts) rather than face the truth, which is that most molestation is by a trusted family member and women are as likely to offend as men.

Boy, that got real dark real fast!

Let’s return to the relative safety of implied cartoon pedophilia, rather than the real world stuff. Here’s the scene in question.

That scene makes me rather uncomfortable now. It’s so goddamned pervy, to the point where I have trouble thinking Kaa intends to eat Mowgli. Nobody gets that excited and seductive about a meal.

Not a lot else going on in my life right now. It’s great that I will have tomorrow off in addition to the usual weekend. I will take pains to search the upcoming week for boobytraps in the form of homeowkr I have not done or classes I should be preparing for or whatnot. I am pretty sure I am current, but it doesn’t hurt to check.

I know that I have already done my little presentation of one of my script ideas and that it is sitting on my student account, waiting for me to print off enough copies for the class. I haven’t done that yet because I am not very good at keeping things looking nice and clean, and if I had already printed them, they would have gotten all rumpled and crinkled and messed up in my bag despite my best intentions.

So I will have to do the printing the “day of”, so to speak.

Today is going to be a very busy day for me. First the movie, then my birthday dinner, then the BCSFA meeting, then hanging out with the usual suspects till 3 am. I can feel the cramped up socially crippled part of me going “nooooo, don’t make me do that, I need to be able to scuttle back into my hidey hole and hide from the world until the scary things go away at all times!”

But I don’t. I will be just fine. I kinda wish I had more time to sleep, but that’s sort of my default state of being lately, so I am used to it. Besides, I can’t trust my sleepiness. Sometimes it’s legit, and sometimes it’s just a psychosomatic attic insane sleepiness created to give me an excuse to retreat from the world and its anxiety inducing overstimulation and general loudness and scariness and so on.

But hey, if you don’t endure, you don’t adapt. You have to stick with it long enough for you to adapt to the new situation, at which point it will stop being so painful and scary. That’s the real lesson for those of us who have spent time in the prison of our own anxieties. If you hang in there, and do your best to stop resisting the situation and resisting change in general, you will adapt to the situation and, subjectively speaking, the situation will change.

I went through this with Kwantlen. When I first got there, the building seemed massive and confusing, the noise and activity levels were very scary to me, and finding and attending my classes seemed like trying to find my way through a maze made of anxiety and noise.

But I kept at it, and over the weeks the place shrank in my mind, and the hallways seemed less crowded and loud, and what was painful before became easy and normal and good.

And what’s more, I took the knowledge of this process with me into VFS. I was quite anxious at the beginning, and the layout of the department seemed confusing, and my fellow students seemed like they were judging me. But I knew it would pass, and it did. I am going into Week 4 of my 48 weeks at VFS, and it’s all old hat to me now. I am slowly learning to socially integrate with my classmates, and I have a good idea what is expected of me, and so now… it’s just school.

And I am good at school.

One interesting thing about the social integration thing : many profs have told us that the class I am in, Writing Class 52, has gelled socially far faster than any other group they have had. I would like to think I am a small part of that. Despite all my anxieties and strangeness, I put out a gentle, inclusive, and harmonious vibe that makes it easier for people to feel like they belong.

And that’s with me still fairly socially crippled.

Imagine what I will be able to do when I am all healed up!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.