Teej's Secret Box

Have a wonderful (and safe!) Halloween!

To celebrate the event, my roommate decided to deck up the cats with some costumes. Enjoy the pictures.

Mroyr.

Edit:  Oh yeah, need to show you this one:

Life is not easy as a deaf person with very little connections to the Deaf community.

As part of my job, I travel far and wide, and ends up being out of town during the most interesting social events during the week.  I am in my 30s, and the vast majority of my peers are married and busy raising their children.  They are especially close to their family due to the harsh way of the culture within the Deaf community.  Anyone who lived in a small town, and/or is part of a small community would understand very well what I meant here.  Within a small community, news travel so quickly and get corrupted just as well.  If someone was sighted with a person that is not their significant other, the rumor mills would go into overdrive to the point where they end up being seen as fornicating with each other.

After years of experiencing harsh judgments, many of my peers would withdraw from the community to focus on their tight circle of friends and families.  I have done the same thing.  However, I do have the desire to meet up with my peers, enjoy a good quiet evening with them either playing poker, watching an open captioned movie, or even dating.  But this brings a new problem:

Where are all the deaf people?  The teenagers are all over MySpace and Facebook.  The elders are all gathered at the weekly Senior Citizen groups.  What about adults my age?

There are those dating sites, even one geared toward deaf people.  However, most of them are so sparsely populated, with absolutely criminal pricing that does not encourage memberships ($29.95 for a month if I want to contact only one person?)  There used to be chat sites online, yet they appears to be dead and they tends to be populated by folks hundreds of miles away anyway.

What about blogs?  They are good to read, and sometimes to respond to.  One of the best around is DeafDC.  They are not quite a social engine, especially when there are some serious political discussion going on.

There is one option — the Deaf Professional Happy Hour here in Phoenix.  However, I may find myself in Chicago that day, which is a huge bummer.  There is also the deaf theater — great to meet up with old classmates, but they are all usually busy cleaning up after the show to hold a conversation.  Finally, there is the annual social swing — great to meet up with old friends.  I wish this would occurs more often.

So I turn to you, my readers with a plea:  Where are all the deaf adults on the Internet?

Yes, I am using a thesaurus.

There appears to be a disturbing trend lately at least here in Long Beach of women who have a defect with their olfactory organs. Perhaps it is the aura of the fire last week that created the defect. The fragrancy of burnt cedar was definitely overpowering. But to excuse their effluvium masked as a claimed boutique of essence on the stench of the fire is inexcusable.

Okay, I have abused the thesaurus quite enough there.

Look, if I am able to smell your perfume in an empty elevator, you used too much. If I am able to smell your perfume walking down an open air field without seeing any humans in sight, you used too much. If I am able to take the stairs, and smell your perfume through the fire door on a floor I am climbing, you used too much. If I am able to smell your perfume while waiting at a stop light with my windows halfway down, you used too much.

Are you so traumatized by the tale of Hansel and Gretel to the point where you must find an alternative means for people to find you instead of the unreliable breadcrumbs? I do not think they really say, “I am woman, smell me roar!”

Please, when you pull out that perfume, use the absolute minimum as possible. Plus get a man’s opinion (preferably a gay man, not a guy who’s trying to figure out how to get in your pants, and is willing to lie all the way up and down if he thinks you’ll spread the legs wider) on your choice of perfume. Once you find the right perfume for yourself (and honestly, sometimes you just should decide to do without, especially with a good deodorant), use it sparsely.

I do not want to smell you when I can’t even have the pleasure (or displeasure?) of seeing you.

Please note:  This discussion (not quite a review) contains spoilers for the movie, Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del fauno (Espanol)).

* * *

I was able to watch this movie over this past weekend.  Upon the conclusion of this movie, I went digging to see what conclusions other viewers may have for this movie.  From what I have seen, the vast majority of viewers hold a conclusion that contradict with what I have seen.

This México movie, based during Franco’s mopping up exercise after the Civil War in España (Spain) is sometimes called a fairy tale for grow-ups.  Those who claims as such failed to realize that the original Nursery Rhymes are quite devoid of “Happily Ever After” type of ending — preferring to dive into a moralistic tale full of consequences.  This movie is so powerful in its story-telling that it moved Björk, a well known musician, to write a song, Pneumonia.  It is clear that Björk came to the same conclusion as I did.

You see, Americans are too used to a “Happily Ever After” type of films.  Even the American’s version of Fairy Tales Storyteller,  M. Night Shyamalan, fall victim to the need to have such type of movies especially with ‘Signs’.  To confront such a depressing film without this said “Happily Ever After” conclusion, audiences across this country seemly grasped to Ofelia’s “heroic return to her parents” fantasy as reality.

But the true conclusion is much more horrific.  She died dreaming of happiness in the middle of a brutal world in where she lost both of her parents.  The brutality of the world is shown in stark reality.

An overzealous captain and step-father, Vidal, is seen as abusive toward his staff, and destroying his enemies whenever he could.  Torture and mutilation are common tactics in interrogation.  Instead of accepting a mistaken identity, he berated the guards for not investigating more closely before bringing the accusations to him for his own brand of summary justice.  Wounded enemies are shot at point-blank if they could not or would not share their information.

Ofelia (or perhaps Ophelia — a famous character in Shakesphere’s Hamlet with the same type of struggles) lost her father, a tailor, during the Civil War, and is confronted with a very pregnant and very ill mother.  Both were transported to be with Videl, who demands that a son be born near his father, despite the dangerous terrain due to resisting rebels.

The death of Ofelia’s mother, the battle, and the destruction of the home base of Videl, and more weaves a cruel world where Ofelia is living.  Add to this a voracious desire for books of a fantasy nature — and a story is spun.

The movie opens with a narration and ends with narration.  The story claims of a girl, a princess who ran out to seek what it is like above ground, and was blinded by the light to the point of losing her memory, and dying.  The father longs and expects her soul to return in a different body.  Then you see that it was a story being read by Ofelia.  The seed was fed of an attractive alternative universe, where her father (who have long passed) is waiting somewhere for her to return — a real father, not that evil step-father she is confronted with.

At the ending, as Ofelia lay dying due to a gunshot wound inflicted by her step-father, she fantasized of returning home as a princess, not only to her real father, the King, but also her real mother, the Queen, seen only under heavy garb and makeup.  They all congratulated her for succeeding with her three tasks.  But as you see, her real self is there, dead albeit with a smile.

Everything she went through was either a complete fabrication of her own imagination, or an extension of such.  She was warned many times to end the fantasy and to enter the real world by many people, especially Mercedes — an incredibly strong woman, and friend to Ofelia along with being a spy for the rebels.  She failed to seperate the reality with the fantasy that was born out of the loss of her father and the marriage by her mother with Captain Vidal, fed to her by fairy tales books.

There were a few oppositions to this conclusion with a few evidences provided.  What of the mandrake who were “clearly alive” and the fact that her mother appeared to be better?  Very simple:  The mandrake was only alive in Ofelia’s eyes.  The stress of discovery of the root drove a healing mother to death due to excessive exertion, which is something that was repetitively warned of by the doctor.  It was even at a point where Ofelia was banished from her mother’s side as Ofelia’s antics harmed her mother’s health.

I can not yet explain the chalk wall, other to say that her escape from the room was NOT through the chalk door.  If one would pay close attention to the chalk left on the table for Captain Vidal to discover, it was clearly unused.  Somehow she was able to sneak out of a guarded room (although the guards were nowhere to be found, perhaps deciding to go out and clean up the aftermath of an attack on the base.)

She died with a dream.  However, the question is whether it is better to be Ofelia or to be Mercedes?  One who sticks to a fantasy and die due to this — or one who gave up the fantasies, and yet is confronted with a cruel world where she constantly fight to stay ahead?

This is a fabulous movie, one of the best I have ever seen.

I am experiencing the South California Fires.  Actually, I am experiencing the after-effects of said fire.

One of my fond memories from the tender young age is roasting marshmallows over an open fire.  Sometimes, there would be certain type of woods added to give the fire a much sweeter smell.  Wood grills also produce the same smell, and is all common at cub scouts camping trips.

This type of smell is exactly what I smell when I arrived here in Long Beach for work this week.  This, after experiencing an incredibly strong turbulence while going over the mountains on the way down on approach to LGB.  The sky is hazy, with dust particles landing over everything, including the rental car.  Walking produce footprints in the sea of orange-gray tinge.  Sunsets creates a bold orange facade, a boon for artists around.

I was able to determine that I am highly allergic to dust, with the entire Monday spent sneezing my head off.  Claritin does the job well enough for me to be functional the last two days, although my body is already giving hints that if it wasn’t for that, I would be a mess.

We are not even experiencing the full brunt of this firestorm — San Diego and south into Mexico, countless people are affected, including people I have worked with, and known.  I do hope they are all safe and sound, with minimal issues from this inferno.

To the arsonists fanning the flames:  It won’t be long before you will have eternal flames.  The lives you have harmed, not only humans, but also animals, will be too great to be ignored.