since feeling is first

I have always loved poetry.

With a fiery burning passion, 

and one of my all time favorite poets in the world

is e. e. cummings.

I adore e.e. cummings

Today, I discovered one of his poems 

and fell in love with it.

.  .  .

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis 

.  .  .

 

Real or Not Real?

So, remember that awesome super early premiere I got to go to?

Well, I just got back. 

It was incredible.

Really, truly, that's the best way I know to describe it.

The acting was amazing, the detail exquisite, the cinematography breathtaking

Just incredible. 

It made you laugh, weep, scream, gasp, smile, and make you feel like you could never smile again. 

And it gave me a lot to think about.

My Dad has been very adamant that he does not want to watch this movie, and until tonight I didn't really understand why.

Reading about the brutal slaughter of 22 children was heart-wrenching enough, but actually seeing it was horrifying.

Seeing people younger even than I am, brutally killing

- and worse- 

enjoying it 

made me sick to my stomach. 

But almost worse than seeing a defenseless 12 year old boy hacked apart by an ax, Cato torn apart by Muttations, and poor little Rue skewered by a spear that she couldn't even lift on her own;

was seeing how eerily similar the civilization in this fictional world is to the one we live in. 

Give us a few hundred years and a Nuclear Holocaust and we could easily become Panem. Let our society continue with the path of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and we'll have a Capitol before you know it.

And if you think about it, really, what is The Hunger Games other than an especially brutal Reality Show?

How is it that much different than Survivor,

The Bachelor, or even Jersey Shore?

We watch people do nothing but hurt each other physically and emotionally, and we enjoy it.

It makes me sick.

My Dad told me that he didn't want to see The Hunger Games because it portrayed a world that he really didn't ever want to live in. But if you really think about it, maybe we already do.

 

Hungry Games

Ok, I know that all anyone has been thinking about/heard about for the last six months is The Hunger Games. 

And if you're a lame person, you're just sick of it already.

If this is the case, just stop reading now and save us both the trouble, because The Hunger Games comes out 

Tonight

At Midnight!!!

{BUT}

 I am basically the luckiest of all the dogs

even the super adorable ones that get pampered and babied their entire adorable dog lives, because I

wait for it....

.....

....

GOT TICKETS TO AN EARLY PREMIERE SCREENING WHICH MEANS I GET TO SEE IT TODAY AT SEVEN O' CLOCKS!!!!!  

Are you jealous?

It's ok if you are.

Actually I would kind of prefer if you are.

Because I'm kind of conceited like that. 

I am just so freaking excited y'all.

In T-6 hours the lights in the theater will be dimming, dramatic themey music will start playing, everyone will simultaneously gasp and then go completely silent, and the world that I have come to love, hate, fear, and feel like I am a part of;

full of characters that I feel like I know as friends

The girl on Fire

The boy with the bread

 will come to life. 

I am excited, Real or Not Real?

Real.

Oh, so very real.

 

Promiscuous Prosthesis

So, a little while ago I was home in Ogden just chillin' with my family, and my little sister Annika told me a hilarious story.

She's 14

14-year-olds say the darndest things.

She and her little 14-year-old friends were having a 

deep intellectual conversation

about the cinematic masterpiece Moulin Rouge.

One of them had never seen it, so they were explaining to her that the movie was about a man who fell in love with a prostitute.

The friend, after hearing this, said:

"Oh! so she had a wooden leg?"

Apparently, prosthetics and prostitutes are the same thing.

After I heard this, I nearly laughed my head off.

No joke.

They could have called me Nearly Headless Brittany.

The End.

Happy Feet

I know that you are all quite possibly sick to death of me talking about swing dancing, but

{TOUGH NUGGETS FOOLS}

Because here comes a video of my team's performance in Iowa.

We are called Swingcopation

And we rock.

Enjoi.

http://youtu.be/ml4odlvp-mM

(I would have put the video directly on here... but the Youtube was being stupid and wouldn't let me)

The End.

Heartland Swing

Last weekend,

Was the funnest weekend of my life.

As I mentioned before, my swing dance team headed to Iowa for the {Heartland Swing Festival and Collegiate Jitterbug Championship}

It

Was

AMAZING!!!

We left Thursday morning bright and early at 5:30, and spent the next day and a half driving to Iowa. You want to hear something crazy about Wyoming, Nebraska, and Iowa?

They all look the same.

It's all flat and brownish greenish and boring.

Sometimes there are trees, 

but mostly there's just grass.

We got into Iowa Friday afternoon,from the time we got there to the time we left, the only time we ever stopped dancing was to sleep.

Workshops taught by INCREDIBLE professional dancers went all day long, and then there were dances all night.

Literally. 

There was usually a dance that lasted until midnight, and then there was another one after that that went until three or four in the morning! 

Learning from the professionals was an amazing experience

I love dancing, and I do it whenever I can,

but these people- dancing is their life, it's who they are;     and learning from these people that are so passionate about what they're teaching is just incredible. 

I learned so much this weekend and I met so many amazing people!

There were dancers there from all over the country!

Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Colorado, Arizona

so many people, from so many different places

all brought together by something they love. 

I've been to a lot of different kinds of dances in my life, and none of them will ever be as fun as big band swing.

At other dances, people are too focused on what they're wearing, who they're with, how much better of a dancer they are, and who they're trying to impress- that they can't appreciate any of their experience.

Swing dancers only care about the music and the dancing and just having a great time, spending an entire weekend in that atmosphere was incredible and it made me wish that I could just stay there and dance forever. 

Alas, I have this thing called a life, and a job, and homework, and had to bring myself back to reality.

I tell you what though, 

the things I learned, the music I heard, and the people I met

I won't be forgetting anytime soon.

Thank you so much to everyone who made my weekend truly magical,

I'll see you all next year!!