Unplugged

So.

Okay.

I bust on the metro line to get to work, and of course, on the metro train, what are there? People, right?

Not really. What's on the metro train, are people, yes, but people consumed by ... anything distracting. It's like a picture right out of Fahrenheit 451, everybody on the train, listening to their iPods, reading their iBooks, doing anything to fill the time ... and people thought Ray Bradbury wrote science fiction.

Well, everybody except one person.

Me.

I decided, paradoxically, to ... unplug. I decided to take this time to, well: collect myself before I went into work, and look out the window, and see cars and trees passing by, and look in the car and see people, and see what they are doing.

Me ... and somebody else.

There was a girl.

She was ... maybe ten years old, seated next to her mother, her mother who was engrossed in her iPhone, but she wasn't. She ...

She had long auburn hair, curled near the tips because of this oppressive heat and humidity, bronzed skin, and crystal blue eyes that stared right into your soul ...

... Right into my soul.

She had a decided air. An air of a girl, so strong, so beautiful, so smart, knowing that she was head and shoulders above everybody on the train, in the whole damn country, in fact.

What will happen to this girl, I wondered.

I mean: who's going to be the lucky guy who gets her? And will he be strong enough to handle her, even for one day, when she grows up and comes out into the world?

Or, will she even make it? Will she see the world, and all its absurdity and ... and do what? Know that there's nothing she can to to change it? So remove herself from the equation? A world so set in its ways, everybody obliviously listening to their iwhatevers, trapped inside a train as it speeds off the edge of the cliff, and not caring one whit because their senses are filled with meaningless drivel? Hopeless to change a world without hope?

Or will she play the game? See the world for what it truly is, and laugh at it, and put a boy under her thumb and make him the president of IBM or Microsoft or of the United States of America, and run the country from the sidelines by proxy (because she knows nobody ever listens to a woman)? Or say 'Hell with it,' and build her own empire from scratch, and fight and fight and fight, and force a world to be the way she wants it to be?

Why did I even bother even asking that last question?

And that was the look on that girl's face: why am I even bothering?

She looked around disdainfully at all of us, all so engrossed in filling our time and our minds with trivia, and read us, and the world, and shrugged.

And she saw me. She saw me, seeing her.

So I looked away. I tried not to blush. I 'didn't' look at her again. I mean, she was always in my peripheral vision, so I saw her, surveying the world and its vanity.

And I wondered. Does she wonder what it'll be like for her? I mean, she knows what it is now for her ...

GOD! she's so mature, for such a slim, elfin, young girl, elegantly dressed in tailored blue jeans and bejeweled flip-flops, so refined.

It's like as if she's given up on her childhood, or has had it stolen from her.

So I wondered if she wondered what it was like to be me, at my age, with my responsibilities, and was pining to skip past all this ... 'stuff' ... when she's not allowed to do anything of her own, but she knows she's already far more capable to handle any- and every-thing thrown her way, and so much better than anybody else in the train car.

As you see, I don't wonder what it's like to be her .. I mean, I don't pine for it ... to be a young girl again, going into high school and dealing with all my bullshit friends with their bullshit problems ... homework? what other people think of you?

As if any of that had any weight in the matter.

I don't miss that age.

No: I am missing what that age could've been for me ... where I could've been just a girl, a smart girl, a sweet girl, a beautiful girl, and where mommy could've held me if things got too complicated and I could've been a girl that could've asked mommy to hold me, or mommy could've just known, and just held me, even as I screamed and fought her embrace, and cried and cried and cried at all the meaningless of it all, and the weightiness of it. I could've been that girl who ... lived ... and smiled and was happy, and when she wasn't, cried, and was held.

I miss that. I did miss it, entirely, in fact.

And, ... I think this girl, in front of me, so self-possessed, is missing it, too.

So I pray for her ... that maybe she'll wake up from her ... knowing everything about everybody and seeing the vanity of it all, knowing that she's better than, and so being forced to be better than, because she knows it. I pray that she can just let it all go, some time, maybe all the time, and be a young, sweet, beautiful girl, who can break out into a smile, ... despite it all, or who can cry, in spite of it all, and reach out to be held, and be held, and loved.

I'm talking about the girl on the train ... I mean the girl I saw on the train.

I'm not talking about the girl in the mirror.

Really.

... *sigh* oh, well, ... another day.

Who's that girl?

So we all went out to the 'Taste of Reston' ...

... fun, in the sun, for `phfina equals ... sunburnt.

*sigh*

Is there like a Congressman or Senator I can write? Because I spent the whole time, hopping from shadow to shadow, I swear! But did that provide me any protection at all?

It was like the Sun's condom had a hole in it, if you get what I'm saying!

Insta-babies! Or Insta-sunburn!

Full, full day!

Started with bb taking us all to sbux near where I used to work, and I ordered a green tea frap, and the hot azn chick looked at me, appraisingly, and said, 'Hm, sounds familiar ... do you want a shot of peppermint, too?'

She remembered!

Well, if I didn't want to drag her to the little girls' room and do naughty Rosalie things to her before, well ...

Well, let's just say she got off from an amazing three-hour-marathon sport's fuck, because my nieces were at present in the little girls' room, and let's just say, with their budding curiosity, it would require from me a rather lengthy and embarrassing explanation as to what I was doing to little azn chick with the super hot square glasses (nerdy girls ... So. FUCKING. hot!) on the bathroom sink.

*sigh*

THEN we went to the thing in Reston, and a bunch of stuff happened, including little Iz going on the Ferris wheel with her papa, and me, staying on safe ground with EM, ...

AND WHILE that was happening ...

You ever get the feel someone's checking you out, you know?

Well, yeah. And EM said, 'That man was looking at you.'

About a guy, older than me, who walked by, and I was like, 'Yeah ...'

And she was like, 'Why was he looking at you?'

And I was like *shrug* and 'I don't know.'

EM thought for a while and said, 'Maybe because you're beautiful?' and looked away, embarrassed at her own words.



Maybe.

I wasn't exactly wearing that color: it was more of a lime green with big white flowers printed on my summer dress, and I wasn't too sunburnt by then, but I looked in my reflection in a shop window, and yeah, so I get looks, my skin so pale, and my icy blue eyes with my dark hair, like I just fell out of the boat from Ireland or Russia.

So yeah, I get looks. Yeah, okay: I'm beautiful.

But what does that buy me?

I mean, okay, two girls left me to go marry and have kids, and boys don't stick around, and maybe that's because I'm picking the wrong kind, you know, the ones I wrap in my arms so they cum inside me and as soon as they're done doing that ... doing me, ... they're done with me.

And the girls that don't leave me, ... I leave them.

You know, so I don't get hurt, when they do leave me.

Everybody leaves me ... I can't even keep my baby ... my baby I had for a little more than a month in the womb, and all I had left was some excessive bleeding and the emotional trauma of being a failure of the one essential thing that being a woman is.

And I graduated high school? College?

How?

God, I am a piece of work. I can't even go to a fairground, and get looked at by a guy, and where do I go? right there! I can't even order a drink at sbux without imaging me dragging off the poor lass, having my way with her until after she's done crying out for more, and then saying, 'oh, yeah, what's your name, by the way?'

But if she indicates any interest in me? It's like, I do run to the bathroom, so I can puke my guts out and then make an escape out the back window and break the world record for the one-minute mile, and that's not because I'm driving, baby.

The rest of the day was nice. I got to see a family, a normal family, in bb and his wife and kids going to church, reading the bulletin, going out to sushi and spending way more than what would feed me in groceries for a ... week? ... month? but just basking in the luxury of it all, and watching little Iz drift off during supper so it was time to drop me back off at home, and here I am, back at home, by myself again, ready to drop because it's been a very full Saturday, a good day, out among people, soaking up experience (and sun *sigh* in the shade ... *sigh*), and being with family.

That girl. Me. Who is she?

Just another pretty face, right?

Good night.

Grrl Gamer

Anger issues much, Aisha?

*snicker*

That is all.

Oh, and p.s.: No, this has nothing, at all, whatsoevah, to do with any and all the flames I have specifically hand-crafted for each and every boy (and several girls, too) who have griefed me in game.

Not at all.

After all, Aisha has the anger management issue. Me? I'm just fine and dandy, thank you: cool as a (pickled) cucumber, big, long and purple ... no, wait.

La-di-dah.

Why are you looking at me like that, in that accusing manner?

:p

WHAT'S BEHIND YOU!

(`phfina scampers off)

PIMPLES!?!?!

Okay, so I have a black eye, again!

So I go to my doctor, this Hot Indian Chick, and she's like "Hm, ... head trauma?"

And I'm like, "Okay, whatevs," take the prescription meds and prayed that was that.

It wasn't. My eye got worse and worse. So I go back to my Dr, and she's like, "Oh, ... it's worse!"

And I'm like, "... yeah!"

And she's like, "Here, take more meds, ... do you want to see an opthamologist?"

I'm like, damn straight!

Even though I'm not, but you get my drift.

So I go to this ... Dr. and she's like, no joke, late 50s, 60s even, and she's like: New England, very no nonsense, very pragmatic, very tall and willowy, elegantly dressed, dignified, beautiful.

And she said a lot of things, and I was like, "Huh?" and wiped the drool off my chin and wondered if she wanted my phone number, you know?

But I digress.

And then she said it. "You have a ..."

And she said a bunch of other things, about clogged, get this, oil ducts?!?!

And she said a bunch of other things, but all my brain heard was: PIMPLES!

And I almost screamed: "DO I LOOK LIKE I'M TWELVE AGAIN?"

But I didn't, because she would have given me that withering, mothering, New England look and asked me: "Wait ... you're older than ten?"

Yeah, that kind of day.

And she gave me a regimen of medications, one, taken orally, twice a day that induces vomiting as a side-effect.

Great.

But so, okay, they're called something or other, and it's because I have very fine, delicate, tiny pores that got clogged, a lot of them, all at the same time, and, okay, now listen to me, to prevent that from happening, you wash your eyelids with warm-hot soapy water and then you put hot compress on your eyes, every day.

Okay. So. Yes. I take good care of myself, but it's back to high school for me and my acne treatments ... WHICH I DID ALREADY, BUT HOW COME NOBODY TOLD ME THIS AND NOW I HAVE PIMPLES IN MY EYES!!?!?!

And I get to take meds that make me puke. Bonus.

Girls. Hot-warm soapy wash your eyelids and hot compress after, or face death by embarrassment when I have to tell everybody I know that, no, my 'husband' didn't punch me, ... again! ... I just have pimples in my eyes.

Great.

I'm going to bed ... wake me up after I'm done with adolescence, please.

Boyz and their toyz

"Imma boy. I have rockets. I play Call of Dummy. No: Call of Doodoo. No: sommat like that. Anyway! Today's challenge is to get headshots, but I don't care. Imma gonna get high score, cause Imma boy, and I have rockets!"

*sigh* Um, no.

`phfina with her big, long purple thing?



Yeah, I meant needler rifle, too, but that's another story ... hm-hm-hm. Where was I? (Girls get ... 'distracted' ... by 'things')

Oh, yeah: `phfina with her needler rifle, and her non-death-spree (great job, there killer-boy! And how many suicides was that with your big-old rocket launcher, compensating for your little willy?), well, let's just say I walked away with another win. Again.

Boyz. @_~

Fangirl

Okay.

SQUEEE!

That's not very informative, but have you ever met a fangirl who is?

Well, now you have, 'cause you just met me, biatch!

Like, for example, I squee like a fangirl over the Avengers, but I tell you why I'm squeeing. And it makes (reasonable) sense. So there.

So, a bit of squeeing first:

Cortana-angry/(nekkid)-babe ... what you didn't see in that clip was the (start of the?) campaign mission, with spiffy new, neato self-constructing weapons (ooh, techi-nerdy girl squeals), and bad-ass robotic alien enemies (eh *shrugs* ... I'm not into monster-closet-boo-scared-you cheap thrills).

Okay, more squeeing: Imma gonna save the galaxy!

Imma gonna act like a ... BOY! ... Not! SO Not!

Imma gonna kill me some nasty space bugs!

So, yeah, I'm all tingly and squee-y and saving up my quarters. But you notice something? (besides boyz being boyz, but that's like a non-news item) ... I mean and sure the hero is a (craggy old) boy, but you notice how much more present the female role is? And more than just a 'Imma here to give you the next waypoint and make you a sammich' role?

Check this.

Yes, it's fictional, but there are more girls on that team, and kicking ass, too, than there are boys.

Yes, I'm a fangirl, and an idealist, that I believe that girls can ... well, you know, be out there with the boys, on equal footing, kicking ass, and getting respect, not because they are girls only, but because they are, you know, real, contributing members of the team.

Yeah, I'm stupid that way, but that's one of the reasons why I'm squeeing. I'm seeing girls, I'm seeing me, out there, in Halo 4, kicking ass, taking names, smiling, a part of the team, respected.

And that's one of the reasons why I'm saving my quarters for Halo 4.

... oh, and do I get a steamy hot-smex shower scene with Cortana as an unlockable? I'd kneel down in front of her and make her scream, all right, but she won't be wearing her angry face, oh, no ... ;) *snicker*

Carried

Okay...this.

So, it's just a bunch of numbers to you the outsider, so, as a gracious favor to you, little `phfina in her black shawl (and black eye, again, don't ask) will provide interpretation for you.

Okay, so I go into the hopper, ready to drive a vehicle, so somebody will gun for me, so I can get a shiny new driver assist ribbon, but here we go into condemned ... no vehicles. Great.

*sigh*

Well, just tough it out.

And what transpired before my eyes? Two of my teammates were around my rank, so I thought, finally I wouldn't have to carry the whole damn team (which I rarely do, ... my friends, who are boyz, are killahs to da Max). But no, I see boyz being boyz, rushing right in, and dying. All the time. We were behind, by like, 10 points at one point in the game, and I was leading my team in score, in fact: twice that of the second player.

At the end of the game, well, in the last minute, we pull ahead and win.

I look at the leaderboard, and saw what you see.

What do you see?

Well, kills are kills, right? Wrong. K-D is actually important. It tells you how many times you killed, but also how many times you died. My k-d was higher than anybody elses...friend, or foe.

But when you add up the k-d's... my k-d was higher than my team. My whole team. My k-d was higher, in fact, than both teams combined!

Why?

Boyz being boyz.

"YARRRRG! I'm a boy! So I'm going to rush straight in and punch the other guy, 'cause I'm a boy!"

The kill distance for all my teammates were all averaging less than 10 meters. Their death distance were all at least double that.

My kill distance, contra-whateverly, was at least double my death distance.

And the weapons they used? My teammates? Every single one of them?

Their fists.

They have all these beautiful ranged weapons where they can like, shoot from a distance? Or shoot mid-ranged? No. It's like they put all these things aside. "I don't need no stinking rifle! I'm a BOY! CHAARRRRRGGGEEE!!!"

And got shot full of holes, the final hole being in their cranium.

Me, I'm a girl. I watch. From a distance. I watch boyz charging at each other, I pick up my scoped rifle, and I shoot them. I shoot them all. The enemies, that is.

When a boy charges toward me? What's my instinctive reaction? "CHHHAARRRRGGEEE!!!!"?

No, it's back-up, shoot, back-up, shoot, back-up, shoot, back-up, shoot, kill.

I'm a girl. I'm smaller. Only an idiot would charge in and go toe-to-toe with "HULK SMASH!"

I was, unfortunately, matched up with five idiots.

And I carried their asses to the win.

What did I get for that? Gratitude? "Oh, `phfina, thank you for carrying our sorry n00b asses to the win!"?

Nah. I waited. And I waited. And I checked the stats, ... and I told them, exactly, what idiots they all were, and how.

I did get some feedback. "You on the rag?"

"Just off, thanks," was my reply, "But what's your excuse for that piss-poor performance? None! Learn to fight like a girl!"

Now, I don't want to leave you the impression that I'm all anti-boy. ... I'm MOSTLY anti-boy.

But some boys make being boyz ... work. Take Grim or Max or Gulch for example. They are boyz. They are really boyz. They charge right in there.

But the thing is, they don't do it stupidly. They have mad skilz, yo! They come in with better weapons, or with surprise, or under cover, or after the fire fight has already started, so they walk away from a three-dog fight the winners, time after time.

Fine. Works for them, and great, glad they are on my team.

Me? I'm a girl. So I'll just hide in my little hidey hole and snipe and get headshot after headshot, game after game. ONE day Imma gonna get an unfriggenbelievable. I already have two perfections. Two. Boyz? With you charging in there, how many perfections do you have? More importantly: are you helping the team? Yes? Keep doing that. But are you hurting the team. Stop it. Stop what you're doing, and do something different, something better.

You know: assess, evaluate, learn! Is that too much to ask of you boyz? No, it's not. You just have to set aside your manly pride and admit what you're doing isn't working and watch other players and see what's working for them, then learn, try that, fail, try again, and help the team, right?

Is that so hard?