I consider myself an accepting person, generally.
Somehow every couple of years a person pops up that i just don't like, for no good reason.  It annoys me that I don't like this person, who annoys me.  This time especially, because they just keep cropping up. Maybe that's part of what annoys me about them.  It'd probably be a good thing if I could just let whatever it is that irks me go.

Goal.  Hang out with them. A lot.  Maybe I'll see the light.  

Be more positive, Joni. I will see the light.    

Ok, at least I'll get to indifference.    

So, you know, if I suddenly start hanging out with you a ton....

Jokes.         

It's long but worth it.
"As a story, this works pretty well. It plays off of Abed’s character on a fundamental level, and it gets into the fact that—broadly speaking—he’s always going to resist growing up. There’s a real tension at the heart of Community between reality and fantasy, between the idea of giving up on fantasy to exist in “reality,” whatever that is, and it’s one that stretches back to one of the very first episodes. In it, Abed’s father grew angry at the idea of Abed continuing to make films, even though those films were the way Abed dealt with the emotional trauma of his family breaking up. Britta and Jeff pushed him back on the path of pursuing his dreams, rather than working at his father’s business.  Broadly speaking, Abed’s not terribly likely to break into the film industry, the only place he could make any real money at this. At some point, he’ll have to find a job and grow up and stop living in a fantasy world. But, as Troy points out, that would stop making him Abed.

This is a pretty fundamental thing that happens to change people between when they’re about 20 and when they’re about 25 (and again between 25 and 30). Eventually, you realize that your number one dream for life just might not be attainable, and that leads to a slow winnowing down, a wearing away of what you wanted that leaves you in a place where you can make enough money to live, but you might not be doing what you’d always hoped you were. One of the crucial shifts that’s happened in the last 30 years or so, however, is that kids, increasingly, aren’t prepared for this. They are told they can have everything they want and be whatever they want, and then they hit about 25 and realize, abruptly, that that’s just not the case. My grandfather might have wanted to be a professional baseball player, but he also knew he was going to end up working on a farm and getting married. That was the life he was born into, and what he could do to change that was to make sure his children had other opportunities.

But we live in the land of opportunity. If you’re a middle-class white kid, you probably had it pretty good growing up. You didn’t get everything you ever wanted, and you probably had peers who had it slightly better, but you had food to eat and clean water to drink and somewhere to live. And that’s to say nothing of movies to go see and music to listen to and TVs to watch. We take these things for granted, but it hasn’t always been that way. It used to be that the house and food weren’t a given. It still is all over the world, in ways we pretend not to know about. So when we long for the better opportunities, we glom onto the baseball player fantasy, onto the impossible. And eventually, we realize that’s not going to happen.

So here’s Troy, hoping not to tug Abed back to Earth because he, himself, doesn’t want to have to deal with the fact that he will probably become an air conditioning repairman. It’s something he’s tremendously good at, but it’s also something he doesn’t have a great passion for. (On some level, I would hope, just about everybody can relate to this.) Abed keeps him from having to grow up too fast, but there are problems inherent in that, like getting in over your head financially because you just buy whatever you want and worry about the consequences later. I like that this story is as much about Troy as it is about Abed, and I like that it concludes with the two largely moving scenes in which Troy and Abed talk about how Troy will sometimes need to step in and tell Abed not to do something and in which Abed meets with his dark alter ego, terrified by the thought of things changing around him. (Who’s emotionally malnourished now?) Reality pulls on the rope, and Troy—realizing his destiny—reluctantly complies. Abed flies off into greater fantasy."

I had an unexpected moment taking a study break to read the review of this weeks Community and listen to Youth Lagoon, 17 in the library.   The angst felt when once realized what Troy has realized is overwhelming.  However, Abed choosing to use fantasy as an escape from reality will only end miserably in failure.  The reviewer comments that Abed exiting his fantasy world would be the end of the true Abed. I believe that the critic is missing a key concept. There is no need to either destroy Abed by extracting him from his safe haven or remove Troy completely from the hopeful boy that emerges while imagining with Abed.  What we must find is that balance between the two states of believer and disbeliever.  Only there in that place where both collide can peace ensue.  Youth is a quality cultivated throughout life.  My friend expands on the process of cultivation more eloquently in his post here.  I highly, highly recommend you peruse it. 
The tragedy of Peter Pan lives on as modern interpretations continue to appear. 

SO. Ally went home to wait out the time before her mission.  Life has been cray cray since she left with several unbalancing things happening. BUT, I decided that i'm being waaay to dramatic about it.  She's going on a mission for goodness sake! Such a great thing. Eighteen months is not that big of deal compared to all of life, Wyld Stallions 4ever!  Actually, it's probably real healthy for both of us.  Since we met three years ago we haven't been apart for more then two weeks at a time.  So, we're kind of used to each other being there all of the time. Now, here we are being grown ups and doing adult things. She's going on a mission and I'm going to drive buses/tour guide in Alaska.  Yes, her task is admittedly more grown up than mine. I told her I'm actually going to have to get a boyfriend so i have someone to talk to haha.  She'll have a companion stuck to her side so she doesn't really have to worry about being lonely.  Rather, she has to worry about not killing her companion since most girls besides me annoy her.  But, she gots it.
These past two weeks have been crazy.  Instead of sleep, we would stay up and chat.  Or we would spontaneously decide to make american flag shorts because of ammmerica.  Oh that night.  Griff was crazy. I don't think he'd slept in awhile.  Ally had to chase him around Walgreens while he threw stuff at her off the shelves.  In the parking lot he managed to wriggle away and run across State Street as we were literally pushing him into my car.  So that is four lanes of traffic he crossed, literally screaming at the top of his lungs.  He starts doing circles around the restaurants as Ally and I yell at him to get in the dang car. The poor couple next to us in the corvette seemed rather shocked at the spectacle we were making. They had probably never met anything quite like one o'clock no sleep Griff.  It didn't help that he changed directions and started charging for us with a crazed look in his eye.  As the couple sped off we opened the door and strategically placed ourselves, intending to trap the wild beast. Last second he sensed our plot, changed directions and disappeared into a ravine.  After a couple minutes of silence and us half heartily trying to convince the other to go after him, Ally's phone rings.  Through puffing, we made out that he tried and failed to scale  the underbelly of the cement bridge and that there were trolls under the bridge that had smallpox and they had plans to...but those plans were lost to us as we heard a small sploosh.  He dropped his phone in the river.
So, that was Walgreens.  We finally got him in the car and back home. Due to his disruptive behavior we chose to make him wait outside our apartment while we got our shorts to make amerrican (pronounced a-merr-i-ken).  I got a suspicious feeling while walking through the dimly lit alleyway into the quiet night.  The silence pressed against my ears.  The suspicious feeling peaked as I approached the dumpsters and saw Griff's clothes lying in a heap on the cement.  Before I could get my guard completely up I saw a flash of peach as Griff emerged stalking, seemingly naked, from the dark shadows of the pine trees.  Graciously, he was at least wearing the flesh colored mini shorts he had brought to spray paint and was not simply in the nude.  After many protests to his suggestion that we just spray paint the shorts while they were still on his body, he changed back into clothes with a larger surface area.  Due to the small area of shorts to spray paint with Amerrica, Griff finished painting way before Ally and I.  He grabbed the sparkly star decals we were using as stencils and ran off whistling patriotic songs.  Days later we are still finding these glittery starts stuck around our apartment complex.
So, that was just one night of happenings before she left! Lots more to tell. but not tonight.


In response to rachel's comment:

THIS is a Griff.

"NOBODY TELLS THIS TO PEOPLE WHO ARE BEGINNERS, I WISH SOMEONE TOLD ME. ALL OF US WHO DO CREATIVE WORK, WE GET INTO IT BECAUSE WE HAVE GOOD TASTE. BUT THERE IS THIS GAP. FOR THE FIRST COUPLE YEARS YOU MAKE STUFF, IT’S JUST NOT THAT GOOD. IT’S TRYING TO BE GOOD, IT HAS POTENTIAL, BUT IT’S NOT. BUT YOUR TASTE, THE THING THAT GOT YOU INTO THE GAME, IS STILL KILLER. AND YOUR TASTE IS WHY YOUR WORK DISAPPOINTS YOU. A LOT OF PEOPLE NEVER GET PAST THIS PHASE, THEY QUIT. MOST PEOPLE I KNOW WHO DO INTERESTING, CREATIVE WORK WENT THROUGH YEARS OF THIS. WE KNOW OUR WORK DOESN’T HAVE THIS SPECIAL THING THAT WE WANT IT TO HAVE. WE ALL GO THROUGH THIS. AND IF YOU ARE JUST STARTING OUT OR YOU ARE STILL IN THIS PHASE, YOU GOTTA KNOW ITS NORMAL AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO IS DO A LOT OF WORK. PUT YOURSELF ON A DEADLINE SO THAT EVERY WEEK YOU WILL FINISH ONE STORY. IT IS ONLY BY GOING THROUGH A VOLUME OF WORK THAT YOU WILL CLOSE THAT GAP, AND YOUR WORK WILL BE AS GOOD AS YOUR AMBITIONS. AND I TOOK LONGER TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THIS THAN ANYONE I’VE EVER MET. IT’S GONNA TAKE AWHILE. IT’S NORMAL TO TAKE AWHILE. YOU’VE JUST GOTTA FIGHT YOUR WAY THROUGH.” 

- IRA GLASS

yes. Ira. yes.

i am working on another application due Monday. though i have quite a bit done, panic is starting to set in. that is all. soon i will write of sweet nothings.