I am Black....I am Black 'N' Deadly

Livin' On A Prayer...

It has been ages since I began posting in this blog and I think I started this blog as some sort of recipe/ movie review and a dairy to hide everything. But so much has changed…more so me if anything. The reason this post is named after an 80's song is because I love this song and it suits me...at least for now

Lately, well for a while now, I have been living in this bubble, like a dark bubble that has no hole for air and I can’t breathe. What has happened to make me feel like this? Well many things but I’m the reason. I am the reason that I am such in this bubble and why I am feeling so dark. It’s like I am stuck in rut with no way out. Like I’m behind a wall and happiness and love is on the other side and all I have to is climb but for some reason I can’t. Am I scared or am I just stuck?

Some days I feel worthless and I can’t find a way to be of use and it sucks. Sometimes I think it’s better to be gone instead of being here. Like remove myself from the situation and everyone would be better off without me.

So why am I writing this blog? Because I need someone to talk to. I do have someone, a therapist named Chloe who I am seeing at a program called Headspace. I have only had one session with her and she is nice, but the thing I need to do is take step two.

Step two is making the choice to the second session. Step two is the choice to do something about your life. Step two is a scary part but it’s a part that will help you on your way to climbing that wall. Step two is writing a blog.

Why write a blog and tell a bunch of strangers about your feelings or about the fact that you feel nothing and you are worth it? Because it’s even harder to tell family. I mean, I have friends but I only tell them what I want to tell them and I then I lie to the subject off me.

Lying is a whole different ballgame. I lie so often and I wish to stop. Start being honest instead of having to lie to keep myself hidden. Lying creates problems after problems and sometimes I wish that it would just stop and go away but it doesn’t. Lying, for lack of a better word, sucks.

At the moment, I have a million thoughts going through my mind and all I want is for it to shut up. But it doesn’t. It’s like a never-ending bubble of thoughts, things and much more going around and around in your head and its no wonder I’m nuts.

Then the main thought comes back and its saying to me, ‘are you worth it?’ Am I worth the hassle, the worry, the everything? Am I worth it? Chloe seems to think so…my family seems to think so. But it never gets through.

Also why now? Back when I was 18, I was a drama queen. I would do anything to gain attention and now, I’m shying away from it, like I don’t want the attention. I don’t want people to worry about me, I don’t want the hassle. Somedays I think I will be better if I left and never came back, away from everything.

But the problems follow…they will always follow.

Why the blog? Because I need to talk…

Hi guys,

So this week recipe is a salad and It is yummo...Its called the Ginger and Five-Spiced Pork with Cucumber salad.

Hi All,

This Movie of the week is...Dark Shadows!!

Tim Burton is probably one of the best choices to direct a Dark Shadows movie. He's always good at making Dark, Gothic films and everyone's expecting it to be something like Sweeney Todd and Sleepy Hollow. Instead, it has a hybrid of Corpse Bride and Beetlejuice. It begins with decent gloominess but the rest is scattered with groovy soundtrack and colorful images. But that may not be the problem. It's actually pretty good at recapturing the 70's. The main problem is the plot development. It's fun but also disappointing.

It looks promising in the beginning. Tim Burton uses his campy directing style which made the intro intriguing. It get silly when Barnabas returns from his grave. Exploring the changes of his town. It's quite funny and delightful. There's a good character development in this that made it entertaining. Johnny Depp gives a delightful performance as Barnabas Collins. Eva Green is quite menacing as Angelique. Jackie Earle Haley and Helena Bonham Carter are the extra comic relief. Chloë Moretz is always good at bad girl roles.

There's a lot of fun going on, but in the end, the experience feels like something's missing. It could have been an interesting story but it ends pretty lazy. There are couple of senseless twists that aren't consistent. At least there is something good in the filmmaking. The production design is quite decent and sometimes unlikely colorful. Postmodern music are played often which made Danny Elfman's music score hard to notice. But these merits can't fix the film's storytelling.

Dark Shadows is undeniably entertaining and nothing else. There are things that could have been better. I don't think the colorful groovy look is the problem. It just needs a better ending that gives consistency to the story. People can still give it a try for its camp. There's a true vampire here that is nothing like our modern vampires. Dark Shadows is not bad. It's just unsatisfying. It has the color, life, and all but what's missing is a proper plot development.

Have a great week...

Love Selena

Hi All,

Now, as I am an avid reader, I love books and so, this is a new thing starting. This book of the week is "The Host" By Stephanie Meyer.

Aliens invading the bodies of humans isn't a new plot device, but who ever stops to think about the body-snatcher's point of view? The Host gives us the chance to experience this unique switch in perspective: the book opens as the alien called Wanderer (so named because she has lived the life-term of eight different hosts on eight different occupied planets) is inserted into the body of Melanie Stryder, a renegade human recently tracked down and captured by the Seekers. When an alien Soul is placed into a new human Host body, that's supposed to be that: the Soul will have access to the previous occupant's memories, but the body is the alien's to control. Unfortunately, things don't go so smoothly for Wanderer; Melanie has stuck around inside her head, and she is not happy about sharing her body with an occupying Soul. She fights back by filling Wanderer's thoughts with images of Jared, the man that Melanie loves. Wanderer knows that she should turn this information over to the Seekers, but soon she comes to love Jared as well, and rebels against the idea of his possible capture.
 
United with Melanie by this common emotion, and pursued by a Seeker who's convinced she's hiding something, Wanderer strikes out into the desert, following cryptic clues Melanie's uncle left to guide them to a hidden rebel cell of humans. However, by cooperating, Melanie and Wanderer have made themselves untrustworthy to both of their peoples. Fueled by their love for Melanie's human connections, they can no longer stay with the Souls, but the humans -- including, heartbreakingly, Jared -- fear and distrust the alien in their midst. Wanderer must fight for acceptance, not only for Melanie's body, but also for herself as an individual. She must also deal with her conflicting emotions of a developing love quadrangle: her body -- Melanie's body -- remains strongly drawn to Jared, while her Soul is slowly falling for Ian, another of the conclave of humans.
 
I have conflicting feelings about Stephenie Meyer's work. On the one hand, I frequently react poorly to her message, morals, and attitudes surrounding gender and relationship issues, often finding myself anywhere from mildly annoyed to seethingly angry. On the other hand, MAN can she tell an absorbing story. Regardless of my intellectual reaction, I invariably find myself completely sucked into her books, blindly turning pages (in this case, changing CDs), totally oblivious to everything else in my world, but desperate to know what's happening in hers. Objectively, this book could have to be about a third shorter; Meyer is not a particularly concise or elegant writer, never saying in one sentence what she could hammer at for three. Still, once you've been sucked into the story, it doesn't matter: even when not much was actually happening, I never had the impression of the story dragging.
 
 The Host is being touted as Stephenie Meyer's first "adult" novel, although I'm hard-pressed to figure out why this one is Adult while the Twilight series is Young Adult. The narrators are the same age (well, Melanie is; Wanderer is obviously a few thousand years older), there's not any more violence in one versus the other, and sex is actually mentioned less in the ostensibly more "adult" book (although it occurs "on screen" at the same frequency -- i.e., never -- in both). Nor did I find the themes of The Host to be particularly age-specific. There's a meatier moral dilemma here than in the Twilight series, but it's not so complicated as to exclude most teens. Suffice to say, fans of one will almost certainly enjoy the other, regardless of age.
 
While the main issues of identity, body vs. mind, and ownership are handled well (with the exception of a few arguments about whether Melanie's body "belonged to" Jared or Ian, which creeped me out), some of the same issues surrounding relationships and gender relations that plague the Twilight series are prevalent here as well. First, Meyer writes relatively passive women, which is unfortunate, considering that teen girls make up the vast majority of her fan base. Wanderer is stronger than Bella, but she still doesn't have a whole lot of agency, and there's a lingering whiff of "whatever the men think is best" that rankles.
 
Second, and I realize that this puts me in a very small minority: I don't like Edward (from Twilight). Meyers tells us he's this wonderful, perfect, incredible specimen of the male sex and we're supposed to believe it, even when she subsequently shows him acting like an immature, borderline-abusive, incredibly arrogant asshole. The Host has some strong echoes of this; its weakest part is the early stages where Melanie convinces Wanderer to fall in love with Jared. I didn't buy that this process would be as quick and effective as it was, but even once I suspended my disbelief and accepted that Wanderer was in love with Jared, not until the very end of the book did I ever believe that Jared deserved it. But, Meyer says he's perfect, and therefore he's perfect, assholish behavior or not. Since the Wanderer/Jared relationship was only one among several, it wasn't quite so annoying, but there's still a noticeable disparity between what we're shown and what we're told.
 
But, intellectual and feminist disagreements aside, The Host is a vivid, absorbing, and compellingly readable story, told from a unique perspective by a convincing narrative voice. Overall, I think sci-fi fans (who don't mind a hefty dose of romance) and romance fans (who don't mind a hefty dose of sci-fi) are both likely to enjoy this book, and of course Meyer's preexisting fans are going to eat it up. 



Also, sometime in the near future, The Host will be on the big screens with the young and upcoming star Saoirse Ronan playing the part of Wanderer/Melanie. I am curious to see whether the movie makers will live its to potential and follow the book.

Love Selena

Hi all,

Now that my life has succumbed into healthy eating, I will be posting a few healthy meals on this site...Maybe some yummy ones but mostly healthy. This week's recipe is Pumpkin, Goat's Cheese and Herb Frittata.

Hi All,

So this week's movie of the week is...The Avengers!

If you're a fan of epic adventure movies, then this is your dream come true. This is the type of film you fantasized about growing up! It really is the ultimate superhero mash-up and it's done perfectly. The makers of this film certainly understand spectacle but they also get the intricacies and depth these type of characters can provide. That right there assures this instant classic will be thought of as the best as well as the biggest film of 2012. The depth of this movie really did surprise me. Even though the high quality of the actors involved and there previous work as these very same characters seemed to indicate otherwise, I was expecting a wild popcorn movie. I was wrong in thinking it was too much to convey in one film. I couldn't be more pleased because they balanced everything masterfully. Sure, there's the popcorn fun we were all expecting but there's also a definite soul to the film and a smart plot as well. It's truly a stupendous movie regardless of genre.

Marvel did it, they pulled off the culmination of a master plan that's been taking shape for years. They deliver a movie the likes of which we've never seen before and as good of a film that's ever been made in its genre.

There's a reason this grand of a movie has never been attempted before now. How do you fully flesh out, care about and establish this vast group and still deliver a fun, crisp and coherent story? It's extremely difficult to navigate that edge-of-your-seat excitement while at the same time caring about each one of the characters and their struggles. One of the most impressive aspects of The Avengers is that they managed to get each hero their time in the spotlight and their own character arc. Every single main lead steps up and is treated with remarkable intelligence and given room to shine.

I loved that the stakes in this film are ridiculously high and the threat so impressive that there really is a need for these diverse characters to come together. That could have been a stumbling block in terms of story but it's treated just right. It's also a great idea that they chose to introduce all the characters to the audience as if you've never seen them before. Sure, the other films set up and give depth to each character but even if you missed their solo films, you'll still know and care about them in this movie.

It's also wonderful that everything is as big as it should be. This truly is the comic book epic of our lifetime (the fanboy version of Gone With The Wind circa 1939 if you will) and it all shows up on screen. Everything looks GREAT and feels epic. The equipment (love that Helicarrier), the relationships, the stars, the characters themselves and the battles are all huge and as fully mesmerizing as they should be. There are scenes that are emotional and there are scenes that are going to make any audience member scream "BADASS!" and mean it.

I'm serious when I say that the big, explosive moments are as grand as they should be but it's the smaller character moments in this film that really take it to another level. At this point, we've all seen how good some CG action can get but grounding it with a great story and with meaningful quieter moments is what makes a movie good. That's the ace up the Avengers sleeve. This is NOT some CGI video game movie. Cut out the action and I'd still want to see this movie. So, it's safe to say that they are replicating the comic book experience on the big screen. Years of depth coupled with spectacle and advanced fiction is a treat for non-comic book and comic book fans alike. That's is The Avengers greatest power... the ability to entertain all comers!

Have a great week!!

Love Selena

Hi Guys,

So, here is the first song out of the mind of SJB...Its called "Don't Leave Me Hanging"


Hey, I'm looking at the mirror
Once again I see the phone hanging
By the bed
And I'm wondering if I
Should call you again

I'm looking at my reflection
And I'm wondering
What did I ever do that was so wrong
That kept me waiting for you

So Please
Just Please

Don't make me wait
Don't me yearn
Dont make me lose my mind
Don't fall out of love with me
And please,
Don't leave me hanging

Oh, Am I losing my mind
Or am completely sane
Was it wrong to fall in love
With you so quickly

I feel like I'm standing in a crowded room
And I don't know anybody
I feel like I'm going insane
And I feel like I'm dreaming

So tell me,
Am I?

Don't make me wait
Don't make me yearn
Dont make me lose my mind
Don't fall out of love with me
And please,
Don't leave me hanging

So Please don't, please don't
Please don't leave me
I know I'm crazy and
Sometimes I'll drive you insane
But just know that I'm crazy about you

Don't make me wait
Don't me yearn
Dont make me lose my mind
Don't fall out of love with me
And please,
Don't leave me hanging...



Tell me what you think..

Love Selena