Find me on Facebook!

Finally. After what seems like a decade of friends urging me to join facebook, I've given in to the addiction.

Check out my random ramblings: Jinnene loves facebook

Film Reviews: It's On!

The time has come to publicize my views regarding what I care about most: film. Check out my film reviews and movie-esque goings on local to Chicago at Jinnene's an Examiner. This will be way fun!

Ethiopian Toddlers Should be Fatter

I simply have this little plea: can't we turn those little Ethiopian babies away from remaining so skinny? Sure, they don't have food. But can we do something about getting them some? If things that I threw away, like bananas weren't so perishable (god, they brown so quickly!), I'd find a proper Ethiopian PO Box and send the unconsumed goods on over. That won't work. So maybe I'll send some spare change? I don't think cold currency travels very well in envelopes. Sigh. Maybe I'll join some hunger relief effort. We must be able to do something. Those little babies on the ads for helping hunger...their little arms are just too little. May the Ethiopian toddlers fatten up...somehow.

P.S. Goodness knows, our United States toddlers can manage to skimp on food and such. Maybe we can organize some international parties...where the fat U.S. kids can share their teddy grahams with the gangly Ethiopian cutenesses.

Velvet Petals

Roses open and close so quickly.

Our only choice is to inhale them while in bloom.

Twilight and Faint Hearts

It's not the fact that vampires are gaining steam these days in popular culture with the intensity of some superhero juggernaut. That can't, I don't believe, be the reason why Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga continues to sell by the millions of copies, and even more millions of DVDs. Well, not the only reason. Or rather, not the most important reason. The most important reason; the only reason as far as I'm concerned is simple, abstract and--as concepts go--largely overlooked in the minds of people theses days: True. Love.

I finished this saga, which, over four books, amounts to at least 2,300 pages, in roughly 10 days. Yes reading fiction is a passion of mine to say the least. But even for the most avid reader who does indeed have a life--and responsibilities--outside the page, this is an intense experience. Certain days I would put in ten hours of reading time, only breaking to go to the bathroom, to answer my phone (if it was important enough), to eat, which often I did while I was reading, god bless popcorn--easy clean up, and to exercise.

Many long runs I took along Lake Michigan while I processed this arresting story, often tear-filled runs. Not tears of sadness, not at all. Tears of joy. Tears of unexplained emotion, emotion that has no singular name due to its kaleidoscopic complexity. Tears of overwhelm. Of intrigue. Of disbelief that someone could dream something that seemed, to me--a passionately, yet private writer, nothing short of genius. I should have to write Stephenie Meyer a dedication in one of my own public works someday, should I become so blessed to publicize a piece that exudes a fraction of emotion that Meyer's series offered to be decoded by me.

So what's the big idea? The big idea is true love, and it cannot be overlooked, as I mentioned. The characters that begin in Twilight have such an intense love for each other. An inexplicable force, like electricity, that draws them in to the other, without understanding why. Such force that allows them to gaze into each other's eyes in pursuit of understanding the complicated workings of their counterpart's soul. It's beautiful. But beautiful is not a good way to describe how I processed this story. My experience was far stronger than anything I would describe as beautiful. Sublime. Maybe that better covers it.

There will be a time in my life, perhaps sooner than later, where I will take the opportunity to attempt to capture words that bring what I went through over this 10 days to life. That's not why I write today, however. I write today for two reasons. One: to tell you that true love is not a belief to be trifled with. True love is not a thing to be ignored, swept under the rug of 'that's just myth--the concept of a mate for a soul, that's merely'...dare I even utter the bastardized word: 'ideal.' Shudder.

Ideal. Ideal is a concept that you choose to paint for yourself. Much like integrity, or passion, or independence or love. You choose to illustrate for yourself what ideal might be to you. Meyer's flawed hero, Edward Cullen, who chooses to live only for his true love, might be simply ideal for person x or person y or the other person. But to me, or to you, someone like Edward might be something more like...a possibility. Maybe the only possibility. The only thing to believe in. Do we have such low opinions of our race that we settle for anything less than what is ideal? An answer that I also shudder to think of.

And the second reason I write in this moment: to pledge. I do pledge, throughout my writing career, however many lifetimes that will span, to live up to the standard that Stephenie Meyer has unknowingly, I am certain, laid down. I choose to believe in what she portrays: a love without doubt, caring and compassion without falter, the power of the imagination, believing in one's own abilities, and the list goes on. This pledge extends into the future. And since this page is public--technically, though I could count my viewers on my big toe, know that I do love you, by the way, for viewing--I vow to dedicate, in some part, whatever initial success I may have as writer of fiction to Stephenie Meyer. Because, even though I have been preparing for whatever may come to me my entire life, and possibly lifetimes before, many answers for how to proceed were not clear to me until I picked up this saga.

Pick it up yourself.

The Bore that is Babies

I just think it's important to let people know, those people who have babies, or those who are thinking of having babies, or who have played children's games (hopefully when they were actually children) whereby they pretended they were parents and whatever more: if you have a kid, even one, you will become irreversibly boring.

I take that back. Maybe not irreversibly boring. Sure, when your kid, or the last kid if you have more than one, goes off to college (hopefully before the age of 24), or leaves home in search of a traveling circus (hopefully for you at age 16), you'll have your independence back. Then you can get back to basics: the beauty that is yourself and thinking of nothing but it. But then again, by that time hopefully you won't be so old and deteriorated, that you'll need a servant to see to it that your ass gets wiped.

I digress. Now, back to the importance of knowing just how fucking boring you're about to become as you consider you or your female significant other's impending gestation; a launching period into the land I like to call boring boredom biggie bore land. Why such a bore you are to be if you have vomit-smelling kiddies, you ask? It's simple really: upon the birth of an identity-sucking infant that you so badly wanted, you lose all ability to talk about anything really...EXCEPT the fucking identity-sucking nipple sucker him (or her) self.

It's true I've seen it happen time and time again. Happy frolicking young adults. One day skydiving. The next day talking about how much their little Steven took a shit. And if that's not enough: what color it was, how runny it was. How many wipies it took to return the ass to something that resembled a baby's ass, as opposed to a war zone of turds. Ah, the aroma.

What else? Get around with a bunch of post-baby chics, and here's what they say. "Oh god, my labor lasted 23 hours. Yeah, I had an epidural for shiz," (I editorialize there with the terms--'for shiz,' is too slangy for new parents, who now are turned over to the land of G talk: "Is it n-a-p time? Oh you want your ba-ba?"). Yawn.

Funny how the divide between baby goers and baby noers becomes nothing other than a great divide. And more funny that the former mentioned goers don't get that. "Why don't my single friends want to hang out with me?" they wonder. Oh how they wonder. For my part, I'd rather talk about what I'm doing to avoid STDs and what hot new dance night I just encountered as opposed to pink bunny blankets.

If you think about it: single people don't envy their non-single parent counterparts. Yet non-single parents die to have the single lifestyle. Well no shit! Babies make you boring. And parents, god bless you for doing it all. We need you. But it's important to know that you're boring as hell. Don't fight it.