It’s time to change your feeds, gang! We’re all moved in at BackseatWriter.com (even though we still have a few pictures to hang and such). So, with a bit of sadness, I’m bidding adieu to Atypical Musings officially. All the articles, thoughts, pictures, and most of the comments from this site are on the new site, so fear not. However, if you commented on the last couple of posts, you may want to re-post that comment at Backseat Writer.
As they say, it’s a wrap. See ya over at Backseat Writer for many more atypical musings!
After a dinner of homemade chili, cornbread, and tortilla chips, my gal pals and I decided to kick back and spend our Saturday evening watching a movie. What movie did we choose? The Changeling starring Angelina Jolie, of course. Here’s what we knew about the plot going in–Angelina Jolie was the main character; she was nominated for a ton of awards for her performance; she plays the part of a mother, whose son goes missing and is returned. We also knew that the foundling was not actually her son; he was a replacement.
What I wish I knew was that the movie had long drawn-out scenes of nightmarish violence against children, a public execution, and the inner halls of a mental hospital. Instead of enjoying the movie, being enthralled by the plot, or the acting, I am stunned stupid. For me, watching this movie was a horrible experience. I’m not even sure how to write a proper review.
And, yes, even though I’m almost 30, I thought, “My friends are going to think I’m so bizarre if I want to turn this movie off. They’ll be so disappointed because they wantto see it so bad.” In retrospect, I realize how foolish I was (how foolish I am). I mean, my friends already know I’m bizarre, right? That’s why they’re my friends. Next time, I’m going to walk away from a movie like The Changeling (even if Angelina Jolie is in it).
When a movie (or album or book) gets a lot of buzz, I want to check it out. I want to be part of the cool kids culture club and say, “Why, yes, I have seen that movie. Didn’t Angelina do a marvelous job in her role?” At the end of the day, buzz is just a lot of annoying noise.
If you like this movie, I think that’s OK, too. Lots of people can watch flicks like this and block out the disturbing parts; I’m just not one of those people. I think The Passion of the Christ is graphic and disturbing, too. It all comes down to taste, and that’s really what any more review is–the reviewer’s opinion based on his or her preferences. The Changeling taught me a lot about the importance of being honest about my feelings with my friends, why I should take the time to read the blurbs on the back of DVD cases, and finally, sometimes hype and buzz are just four letter words.
I admit that I’m a bit of a news junkie…OK, a lot of a news junkie. And this whole trillion dollar budget deal of President Obama’s has me a bit freaked out. Then I checked out Fox News’ “You Decide” blog, which just made things worse.
It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around $3.6 trillion dollars, so Fox News put it in terms that are easier to translate::– If you spent $1 million an hour, non-stop for 24 hours a day, you wouldn’t run out of money for 411 years.
– If you took 3.6 trillion one-dollar bills, and placed them end-to-end, that line of bills would reach from Capitol Hill to the sun and then back to Capitol Hill and then back to the sun — and then almost all the way back to Capitol Hill again.– Or try this: 3.6 trillion seconds ago, our ancestors were using stone tools and Neanderthal men still roamed Europe.
Then article also adds, “University of Maryland economics Professor Peter Morici has a different way of looking at a $3.6 trillion federal budget: ‘That’s one out of every four dollars produced in the U.S. It’s 25 percent of the GDP,’ he said.”
One our of every four dollars? Are you kidding me? How on earth are we going to pay for this massive budget? How will half of the national debt be paid off by the end of President Obama’s first term with this kind of spending?
And is it just me or is anyone else freaked out about it?
I’m getting married!!! OK, not really…but it’s a good hook, huh? Because know you really want to know what I’m writing about, don’t ya? Well, a marriage is happening. It’s not technically a marriage, but it is a “technical marriage”. What I mean to say is Atypical Musings (my blog) and Backseat Writer (my ultra-cool other site) are getting married! The two sites are merging into one in the next week or so.
Since my life is much busier these days, I’ve found it difficult to do all the work needed to maintain a site staff at Backseat Writer and focus on my own writing career and Atypical Musings was suffering. After much fretting and prayer, I decided to combine the sites and allow current writers to guest post.
For those of you who read Atypical Musings regularly, be prepared for more book and music reviews as well as interviews with musicians and other interesting folks. It’ll be a rockin’ good time for all. For readers of Backseat Writer, you can expect more personal columns from me about life, faith, news, politics, my dogs, and whatever else pops into my head. I hope you all like the change and will continue to read my writings.
So remember to CHANGE YOUR RSS FEEDS because this site will become inactive once the new snazzy lay-out for Backseat Writer is complete. I will continue posting on Atypical Musings until Backseat Writer is complete.
So while I’m not getting married at least my blog is. And, sadly, there won’t be any cake either.
P.S. The RSS feeds on both sites will be a little bizarre until the update is complete. Sorry about that!
Since it’s still selling like hot cakes, I decided to write a review about Water For Elephants, which I enjoyed immensely. Enjoy!
If you ever wondered about life in the early days of the traveling circus, then Water for Elephants is for you. Of course, you don’t have to be a circus enthusiast to enjoy Sara Gruen’s best-selling novel, which weaves together an old man’s recollections of his days with Benzini Brothers Greatest Show on Earth. The biggest show happening around Benzini Brothers, which is actually run by a bloke known as Uncle Al, isn’t the one under the Big Top.
The story’s narrator, Jacob Jankowski, accidentally jumps onto a circus train and finds himself amidst a color cast of characters when he is employed as the circus’ veterinarian. There’s Walter the “clown midget” and his terrier with whom Jacob shares a room and Camel, an old man who takes Jacob under his wing. And, of course, Jacob meets a beautiful young performer named Marlena who shares his love of animals. Marlena is married to Jacob’s boss, the bizarre and mentally unbalanced animal trainer, August.
Through the course of the book, college-educated Jacob loses his innocence and “becomes a man” through weird rites of passage. Having never lived the life of a “poor man,” Jacob adapts well to hard labor and the dirtiness that exists behind-the-scenes of the circus. Though Jacob constantly finds himself battling his inner desire for Marlena, his anger against August for his poor treatment of both people and animals, and with the harsh realities of a Depression-era circus. As the plot develops, Jacob and the reader learn of deplorable practices like red lighting (throwing the grunt workers off the moving train at night) and encounter the seedy happenings among circus folks including massive consumption of illegal alcohol and acts of sexual deviancy.
One of my favorite protagonist’s is Rosie, an elephant acquired by Uncle Al from a circus gone under. Rosie’s human-like manner is not only amusing, it’s endearing. She is cruelly trained by August to perform with Marlena. However, Rosie is especially fond of Jacob who cares for the animals in the menagerie, including Marlena’s horses. Jacob and Marlena build a special bond causing August to become suspicious, and for good reason.
When writing this book, Sara Green did her homework researching early circus life. Therefore, Water for Elephants teaches as well as entertains. Wildly amusing, thoroughly intelligent, and strangely touching, Water for Elephants is a must-read, even if you never wanted to run away to join the circus.
Beauty. The word summons up images of lovely ladies decked out in finery, fields of flowers, and glorious sunsets–not gritty train tracks, rust stains, old buildings, and abandoned shopping carts. Of course, beauty is the eye of the beholder, and since it I’m the one holding the camera, I try to offer the world glimpses of what is beautiful (or interesting) to me.
Last week, I happened upon a mass of abandoned shopping carts in center city Allentown. I was intrigued by the color, the way the sun reflected off the metal, and the amount of shopping carts housed in this old parking lot. Since I was cameraless (a rare happening indeed), but went back on Saturday, which was a bright, sunny day to take some photos. Armed with my snazzy point-and-shoot (Canon PowerShot) instead of my amazinly beautiful Canon DSLR, but I thought the images turned out great anyway. So here goes. Click on the photos to see them enlarged.
This is a close-up over top of the shopping carts. No editing or cropping whatsoever on this image.
Here’s a side view of the carts. I added a Photoshop effect to the photo to give it a dark, almost hand-drawn effect.
I like the framing and balance of this pic. It’s one of my faves.
I put a sepia tone on this pic to give the image an antiqued, yet bright feel. I also used a distortion filter.
Have any of you checked out WEtv’s new show “Little Miss Perfect“? It’s a look at the (often frigtening) world of children’s beauty pageants. I caught the show last night and found myself horrified and amazed all at the same time. I’m going to say it up front–pageant moms scare me. It seems like these women will do anything and everything to make sure their child is crowned the winner.
I flipped on the show just as young Ashley’s mom talked about reactions she gets from non-pageant parents. “I guess you would think we’re doing something wrong if you have an ugly child,” she said with a straight face. Of course, I snorted with laughter. Yeah, everyone who thinks it’s silly to spend $1200-$1500 on outfits for a pageant where little girls prance around wearing too much make-up has an ugly child.
See, I have no problem with little girls, teenagers, or adults competing in beauty contests. I don’t think they are horrible events that objectify women and ruin the women’s rights movement. There are scholarships and other rewards for winners of beauty pageants. I don’t particularly like them either because they do seem to value beauty above everything else (even with the talent and question portions, an ugly girl wouldn’t have a shot). What troubles me is that the beauty all seems so fake.
Fake tans and hair pieces and glizty make-up and glittery costumes all give these little girls a look that is truly out of this world. I mean, seriously, why on earth does a 9 year-old need to wear a wig? And more make-up than Joan Rivers? These girls are beautiful without all that other junk, so why hide the natural adorableness behind a mass of curls, frills, and false lashes?
The mothers of pageant participants argue that the little girls like it. I guess they do, but then again, most 6 year-olds like wearing make-up and dressing up like princesses. Some of these little girls started competing in pageants at the age of three! What happened to the good ol’ days when a kid could be a kid?
And there were times when the girls on last night’s episode–Ashely and Brandi–clearly were not having fun. One of the girl’s kept messing up her dance steps for her talent routine. Her mother “encouraged” her little girl by yelling, “You’re gonna do it until you get it right.”
The girls didn’t really seem to care if they won (of course, their houses were already overflowing with trophies and ribbons. One mom was even making a quilt of award ribbons for her daughter). The mothers, however, were frantic as they primped and coached their daughters through the various elements of competition. If these wasn’t a reality show, I would have thought the whole thing was a spoof on the stereotypical pageant mother. I was scared to know they really do exist. Ack! Should you or anyone you know get attacked by a pageant mom, just throw a can of aerosol hairspray in the opposite direction and RUN!
(Then again, pageant directors seem pretty scary, too. Check out the video below.)
Finally! Someone’s got it right. And that someone is New York attorney Robert Applebaum who started a Facebook group called, “Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy.” Say what you will about Huffington Post, but even they gave Applebaum’s cause a little momentum with this article. According to the article and the Facebook group, Applebaum wants the government to consider lending a hand to those of us drowning in college debt, which he says would stimulate the economy.
I wholeheartedly agree! All through our childhoods, we were told we had to go to college if we wanted to make it in this big, bad world. So we work hard, get scholarships, and dream of getting that smooth job that will enable us to pay off our school loans in no time. Except that little fantasty is shattered as we hit the real world. To pay our car insurance, we borrow from our bank account’s overdraft and to pay that we borrow on a credit card and so on and so on–until literally, we are in so much debt, we find there is no way out. Even filing for bankruptcy costs a hefty $2000! We are caught in the stranglehold of bills, shut-off notices, and face more hardship, and is the government offering us a bailout? Not really. I did hear President Obama offering tax credits of $2500 to college students…hey, what about those of us who already did the college thing?
Besides, some of my loans are federal loans and my grad school loans are through a lender that’s a kissing cousin of Fannie and Freddie Mac–if the banks and other financial institutions get a bailout because they can’t pay their bills, what about the rest of us? Why should we have to pay off our debt if the richest of the rich don’t seem to have to do the same? I want change I can believe in, too…and most people just want to scrounge together enough change to pay bills and maybe do their laundry.
I applaud Robert Applebaum for his fine Facebook group, of which I am a proud member (over 40,000 and going strong). Maybe we won’t get our debt canceled, but at least Applebaum’s got people thinking…and a ton of support from all those former college kids making monthly payments with ridiculous interest compiled upon ridiculous interest.
Like many of you, I watched President Obama’s first prime time press conference this evening. The first thing that caught my attention was the foliage surrounding the podium area, which seemed hilariously out of place. Who sets plants side-by-side creating a grassy box for the President to stand in while addressing the press in the East Room of the White House? Wide angle camera shots made me giggle every time despite the seriousness of the topic at hand. Admittedly, the plant arrangements certainly helped to set the President apart from the press, and gave me something at which to snicker.
The other thing I found amusing was how the reporters asked five-in-one questions like this, “Mr. President, how do you think the crisis in Iran will affect our econonmy? If it does affect the economy, how will you plan to address it? Speaking of plans, what are you doing later tonight? And can you answer the age-old question–briefs or boxers?” Uh, what? Are we talking about Iran, the economy, or underwear? If I tried this tactic with the artists I interview, we’d get nowhere fast. But their answers would be much funnier than the President’s.
Watching the President made me think, “Omigosh! If we don’t get this bill passed, our country is headed into financial ruin. It’ll be worse than the Great Depression…and I’ll have to burn my books just to stay warm.” This is the worst crisis since the Great Depression, right? Well, that’s what President Obama said anyway. Fortunately, for now, the President is mistaken. The late 70’s and early 80’s were much worse, just ask Wall Street.
Something needs to be done–that much seems obvious (although I do wonder what would happen if the economy would rebound if we let it take its course). And while I think building new schools and making government buildings more energy-efficient are both great ideas–they will not immediately stimulate the economy. If the government wants to spend close to a trillion dollars on this project, which it claims will create 4 million jobs, then I think we need to slow down and make sure it’s done right. Let’s not impulsively throw money at problems just because we’re scared. Plus, according to several sources, if we gave the money presented in this bill to 4 million unemployed workers, each individual would be taking home a hefty $300,000. In that case, let’s just give 40 million people $30,000 or 400 million people $3000. That would mean $3000 for every man, woman, and child living in the U.S. (which is roughly 306 million folks). Or we could just dole out $50 to everyone which would cost a mere $1.53 billion dollars.
Hmm…money in the hands of the people or in the hands of the government. I wonder who knows how to best spend it. Obviously, the government because they’re done such a bang up job already. If money is power, then our government is getting more and more powerful as the economy plummets. In fact, President Obama said it himself–the government is the only institution strong enough to shoulder this dire economy. In essence, he’s saying that only the government can save us (*see full quote below.) Our heroes are a bunch of corrupt elitists who spend all day arguing with each other?! Is this for real?!
Look, I don’t know about you, but I’d probably spend my $50 on something silly like a car inspection. But there are people out there that need money now so they can feed their families, put gas in the car to get to work, pay their rent, and so on. These are the people who need to be saved from financial ruin. Maybe I should care more about the ecnomonic maze of investment, but I don’t. I care about my friends in Michigan who no longer have unemployment trickling in. Stop throwing money at the problem and fix the fundamental problem…and if you can’t do that, then send the cash directly to us (we, the people) because we’ve got a few bills to pay.
*(Full quote from the President’s opening remarks:: “It is absolutely true that we can’t depend on government alone to create jobs or economic growth. That is and must be the role of the private sector. But at this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle, where lost jobs lead to people spending less money, which leads to even more layoffs. And breaking that cycle is exactly what the plan that’s moving through Congress is designed to do).
The past few days I’ve been giving my camera a work out (it’s the Canon Rebel EOS xsi I received for Christmas). Since this is my first DSLR camera, I’ve been amazed at the quality and clarity of my images. Not only that, but changing lenses is fun! Today I had a lot of fun with the zoom lens. Next on the “get-to-know-your-camera” agenda is tripod training. But I thought I would share some images from my shoots–some are before the big snow melt and some are after so there will be varying degrees of snow on the ground.
Train tracks in small town PA.
A lonely statue in a snowy graveyard.
Sam the puppy gets muddy at the dog park.
A crow tries to get a better look at the chick with the zoom lens.
This squirrel is making darn sure I won't get his nut!
Amy Sondova is a writer specializing in media writing, including interviews and reviews, as well as blogging. Having interviewed over 30 of the top musicians, writers, and speakers in the Christian media, Amy has also written countless columns, reviews, and articles on various topics including mental illness, self-injury, working with teenagers, and Christianity. She lives with her best friend, Sarah, and has two dogs, a cockatiel, and a betta named General Tso.
::More on Amy::
After a dinner of homemade chili, cornbread, and tortilla chips, my gal pals and I decided to kick back and spend our Saturday evening watching a movie. What movie did we choose? 
I admit that I’m a bit of a news junkie…OK, a lot of a news junkie. And this whole trillion dollar budget deal of President Obama’s has me a bit freaked out. Then I checked out 
I’m getting married!!! OK, not really…but it’s a good hook, huh? Because know you really want to know what I’m writing about, don’t ya? Well, a marriage is happening. It’s not technically a marriage, but it is a “technical marriage”. What I mean to say is Atypical Musings (my blog) and Backseat Writer (my ultra-cool other site) are getting married! The two sites are merging into one in the next week or so.
Since it’s still selling like hot cakes, I decided to write a review about Water For Elephants, which I enjoyed immensely. Enjoy!
Finally! Someone’s got it right. And that someone is New York attorney Robert Applebaum who started a Facebook group called, “Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy.” Say what you will about Huffington Post, but even they gave Applebaum’s cause a little momentum with 
Like many of you, I watched President Obama’s first prime time press conference this evening. The first thing that caught my attention was the foliage surrounding the podium area, which seemed hilariously out of place. Who sets plants side-by-side creating a grassy box for the President to stand in while addressing the press in the East Room of the White House? Wide angle camera shots made me giggle every time despite the seriousness of the topic at hand. Admittedly, the plant arrangements certainly helped to set the President apart from the press, and gave me something at which to snicker.
Amy Sondova is a writer specializing in media writing, including interviews and reviews, as well as blogging. Having interviewed over 30 of the top musicians, writers, and speakers in the Christian media, Amy has also written countless columns, reviews, and articles on various topics including mental illness, self-injury, working with teenagers, and Christianity. She lives with her best friend, Sarah, and has two dogs, a cockatiel, and a betta named General Tso.
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