True Grit... ness.

So I've just come back from watching True Grit! I braved the cold (32 degrees is freaking cold in Washington state people) to watch this instead of Tron, which I will watch next week, at the insistence of my dad who paid for the movie and food. :) In all honesty I didn't REALLY want to watch this movie... at all. But the female lead, Hailee Steinfeld, made the movie pretty worthwhile! She was witty and gutsy and... a little unbelievable. Not the actor herself but the character. I mean... I gleamed that she was a headstrong, self educated young lady from a cotton farm or ranch of some kind so how can she not even balk at seeing a pretty violent murder? I'm not talking hangings, I'm talking about a freaking point blank shot to the head in close quarters... but like everyone else I just got caught in her character so I didn't really question the authenticity of someone not batting an eyelash to some of the scenes in the movie. I truly think that this movie is something that is more worthwhile if you read it. I'm sure in the book, though her outward appearance may show that she is unaffected, she is anything but on the inside. And the insistence of avenging her father? I get it in the movie but I think I'll REALLY get it in the book. I mean this girl goes through a hell of a lot of trouble to see to it her father is avenged. This whole movie pretty much revolves around Hailee actually. It's her characters comments that made me laugh and smile and her determination and love that pulled my heart in.

Matt Damon and Jeff Bridges were pretty awesome too but I think Hailee stole the show! :) Agree or disagree?

On a sidenote I thought the ending was... odd. I don't know why though... Maybe because most movie endings are so ambiguous? If I could say one thing about how the movie imitates the book I would say that the ending was very bookish. A quick one or two page epilogue after a suspenseful last chapter...

~Gray's Matter

“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.”
Win Borden quotes

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon

This is a collection of one sentence lines that head a paragraph relating to the sentence. The sentences make good writing exercises! One of the sentences is "16. Things that make the heart beats faster."

Here's an exert of the response to it.

"Sparrows feeding their young. To pass where babies are playing. ... It is night and one is expecting a visitor"(51)

I really liked the exercise so I decided that I'd try to do these as a blog entry... whenever I can. :) It was really interesting coming up with things that were not superficial. It should be fun!

~Netta

"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all." ~Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

ice age 3 in 3d

Yeah...

What to say about Ice Age 3 whatever the rest of the title is? Uuuummm... did not like it that much. And neither did my 11 year old sister. Even the lure of 3d and having things pop up from the screen occasionally didn't REALLY help any. There were some laugh out loud parts... okay there was one for me, but honestly the jokes kinda fell flat though the story line wasn't sooo bad. it wasn't really heart tugging, it was kind of cute, and it was a little funny. All in all I say wait for it to come out in DVD/blueray and do NOT watch it in 3d...

I couldn't find a quote that expressed it so I'm just gonna quote myself

"What the hell. That movie sucked"
Lynetta Gray quote lol

Wow I haven't posted anything in a long time lol

I just realized that I haven't posted anything in a REALLY long time! lol

Well, that's it... just kidding! lol

Well I'm now officially a Senator at UWT! Why you might ask, since I had never been in student government before? You know, I volunteered in the Student Technology Fee Committee approving and denying technology for students on campus, and while it was a lot of hard work and a LOT of time (it came down to 3 hour meetings every Friday and one Friday meeting that took 5...6?..7?...its blurry lol) it was very rewarding. I love knowing more about the school, I love knowing that the free print stations were funded by the students and I contributed to that continuing on for another school year. I loved knowing that I wasn't just going to class, doing homework, that I was doing something productive with my time. Hopefully I can make a difference in the one year that I'll be Senator, keep my A and B average, keep my GPA firmly at 3.6 and above, be able to still be in Hip Hop Dance Crew and GreyHat, keep up with Chinese (hopefully that's not a losing battle, I love the language so much!), and study study study. Oh and lets not forget internships and the like, GAH! (I almost forgot lol) But you know, I think learning to juggle all of my hopes, wants, desires, dreams, disappointments, is what being in college is all about.

Wow. I missed blogging! lol Oh, and ASUWT (my student government) wants me, the only Computer Software Systems Senator of the bunch to start a Wordpress for... actually I'm not sure why they want a blogging server... hmmm. lol That should be fun because I've never done ANYTHING with MYSQL (except in Java and that was... educational), APACHE, or PHP. But hey! I work at a library and I've learned that there are so many resources out there if people would only LOOK that can help you in any endeavor so... I ordered some books :)

“I saw a star, I reached for it, and I missed. So I accepted the sky.”
Scott Fortini



~Lynetta

UW library scholarship winner 2007

So yeah, totally not, blatantly posting a recent blog because its been months and months and months since my last one lol. Anyway I kind of just wanted to post an essay I wrote that won a library scholarship! I was really happy because I really didn't think it would win. I had to read it at the UW Seattle campus and I was shaking like a leaf! lol.

The essay asked how has the library affected/changed you...

"People handle being a child in a military family in different ways. Some embrace it and find the new cultures and the constant stream of new faces and places exciting. Some are resigned to it and withdraw into a shell of shyness that is difficult to crack. Though these examples may be extremes in a kaleidoscope of reactions, I do think one thing holds true:

We have no roots.

I have always felt this way, that my life was missing that one essential something prominent in a normal person’s life. I broke away from the loneliness constantly moving can cause and began to love the places and the people that flew through my life. And yet, I longed to be connected, attached, I yearned to belong to a place. A place with memories that have become ingrained in the very ground walked upon by growing feet, where ghostly shadows of past remembrances would linger in the neighborhood, a home with a room that could have forever been mine:

I have no roots.

I lived in Japan for the first 13 years of my life, and I love it and will visit it one day. But return? My memories and my childhood, those roots that I have so long wished for, are scattered across its land as if carried away by the typhoons that rattled windows and gripped trees:

I had thought I would never grow roots.

But now I think I can feel them, tiny as they are, reaching into this land that bewilders and enraptures me in turns. I am not just a student. I am a part of this campus and I hope, wish, believe that roots are digging into this campus each day I work and love and help. I can feel them digging deeper each time I find myself trailing my hands across the mixture of old and new books and walls, each time I see a thankful smile of a fellow student turned patron that I have helped, each time laughter echoes and rings through the circulation room. Though these roots are small, they are far from feeble, and they will grow and spread and thicken. I will never forget and will never stop thanking the library that has been the tilled ground in which my roots have finally, desperately, begun to dig through. I can finally say:

I have roots at last. "

Yeah, I got pretty personal...

“There are two lasting bequests we can give our children: One is roots, the other is wings.”

~Hodding Carter



~netta

Movie Preview scared me: Teeth and Ginger snaps

I'm a wimp. Yes, I am a humongous baby. lol. I saw the preview for this movie and the first thing that went through my mind was 'No way in hell'. lol. Okay basically its about a girl who is a virgin who has teeth in her vagina. I guess she goes on a sexual rampage after the trauma with her gynecologist but I have no idea. Some people think the idea is stupid but I think its crazy (in a good way)! XD And I mean isn't that why we watch movies? Because it wouldn't happen anywhere else? I bet the blob seemed stupid to some people, or the invasion of the body snatchers, but there still good movies! Anyway here's the trailer, or one of the trailers *shrugs*

Teeth



There's another cool movie that I actually DID watch named Ginger Snaps. Its about two sisters that our outcasts until one gets bitten by a werewolf. The older sis gets bitten (I think) and starts to change and we get to tag along for the ride! Its funny and gruesome at the same time because her changes are chalked up to growing up to the people who don't know she's a werewolf and I thought it was a not so subtle comparison of womanhood and being a maneating werewolf. But maybe that's just what I see? lol. Yeah I know it sounds lame but it was actually really original, I even watched Ginger Snaps II which was also good. But anyway here's the trailer to show why there good instead of my bumbled description lol.

Ginger Snaps I



If you like Ginger Snaps I you'll like Ginger Snaps II, especially if you want to know what happens after the movie! XD

“Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile...initially scared me to death.”

Better Bender

~netta

First Freshman class of UWT (TCORE101)

Well, I just realized that maybe I should have chronicled the momentous event of being part of the first UWT freshman class... okay you got me, I was bored. XD For those who don't know UWT is the University of Washington in Tacoma. Its a relatively small campus that, I think, will only get larger. Pros of the campus: The teachers that I've had so far are awesome! Always willing to help, i.e. "E-mail me if you have problems, stop by my office anytime here are my office hours". The classes are small so the teacher knows your name (which is a double edged sword most of the time)! Now that I've experienced smaller classes I can't imagine my college experience being any other way. The library is awesome (Not just saying that because I work there... lol), and there are so many things to help you succeed. I mean, this place REALLY wants you to do well. O_O Cons: Well I can see that parking will become an issue sooner or later, I mean the Tacoma dome can only handle so much! There's no dormitories (though I heard we might get some) so its mostly a commuter campus. But otherwise I am sincerely grateful that I've gotten into this school! It was mostly a fluke, I just searched for a college closest to my house and applied to it. lol. (There's probably more pros and cons but... what can I say? I'm lazy. *shrugs*)

Anyway my first core class was TCORE101. It was a humanities and writing course with an overall theme of self and landscape. Yeah, I know, mass confusion. But it was definitely a different experience. I guess I see it as high school being about the books with no self reflection, and college applying what your learning to yourself. This class was a joint writing and art class. The writing was okay, nothing new for me or anyone who took AP English classes. Analyzing literature and whatnot. The only really new assignment would be when we had to write a paper analyzing a passage against a picture. That was something I had NEVER done before in writing. But the art! OMG the ART!! lol. I have never had to take an art class like that. Instead of 'hey draw this' the professor was like 'draw something that represents you'. And it wasn't just drawing, it could be painting, performing, anything that was considered art. I even made a miniature carving of my furniture (too long of a story to explain here but I got a good grade!). I consider that class to be my first 'real' art class.
Anyway that was my first core class, though they probably tweaked the core classes since the first freshman class were the poor unsuspecting guinea pigs...

Oh, funny thing. First day of core class we had to make big white kindergarten looking name tags to wear. Yeah, embarrassing. Like a humongous sign saying 'WE'RE THE FIRST FRESHMAN OF UWT AND CAN'T REMEMBER EACH OTHERS NAMES!!'. Didn't really help me feel like a mature college student.

It is not easy to be a pioneer - but oh, it is fascinating! I would not trade one moment, even the worst moment, for all the riches in the world.
Elizabeth Blackwell



~Lynetta