my scream got lost in a paper cup/

I think there's a heaven where my screams have gone

The most discouraging thing is feeling like I have nothing new to add to the collective (un)consciousness.

I was going to write my interpretation of American Beauty, because it really struck me when I viewed it for a second time on Tuesday. Now I don't feel like bothering because I am sure that I made no real new observations. It must have already been written about in that way. The ambiguity of the ending has surely been analyzed to death.

I have been feeling like this about everything lately. I have no different angle...nothing new to add to the conversation...nothing witty to say...nothing remotely intelligent to say...and I feel so repetitive.

+post scriptus+
(warning, spoiler)
(with apologies for not knowing characters' names)
fuck it. i'll be repetitive.
I guess what I noticed this time about the movie was The first time I saw American Beauty, I took the ending to mean only one thing...the boy's father was a closet homosexual, and so that is why he goes to confront the main character, and kisses him, and kills him. I took it to mean that the army guy was so fearful of his own sexuality that he had to kill the other man for making him aware of it.
But then, I was thinking this time, that maybe the army guy kills him because the main character is like a doppleganger or mirror image, and that he has to eliminate the reflection of himself that is literally across the street. It is a reflection, in that both men have defective relationships with their wives and children. Both men had gotten too serious about life.
But then, my friend Liz twisted this even more. She thought the army guy had gone over to kiss the man to "test" him, to see if his suspicions about his son were correct. And when he is rejected, the army guy has a meltdown because he realizes that he kicked his son out/disowned son for something that never happened.
And then, Liz and I agreed that it was interesting that the only characters who have a healthy, functional relationship are the neighbors who are openly gay. The boy and the girl seem to have too much self-destruction, and are too impulsive, plus, the boy was videotaping her, which is just creepy if you ask me. The cheerleader and the father...well, beyond the fact that she is a student, and probably a minor...her entire existence is based on being the center of attention with as many people as possible, and his objective, if he had one, was to have fun without responsibility.
Anyway, that was my observation. Any other bits of speculation on the ending (why the neighbor killed the girl's father), let me know. It's been driving me nutty for a few days.

Community y Diaspora

Because I am procrastinating on my school work, I already posted this week's collab topic question. Go answer it and make me feel special. I really don't know when I'll have my own answer because this is not a subject I think about very often, or at least, not in these terms.

abuse

from this week’s Hartford Advocate:
“How can a person know if a partner will turn out to be abusive as the relationship becomes more committed? Abusers have a gift for putting their charming, charismatic sides forward in the early stages of a relationship.[…]
The number one thing to watch out for is any kind of verbal abuse: yelling, name-calling, put-downs. They’re also the best indicators of future physical abuse. Does he impose a severe level of control, and what happens when she resists that control? If the control gets worse, that’s an almost certain sign of future serious mistreatment.”

This article was difficult for me to read through, for the obvious reasons, and I can’t say it had much of anything “new” in it, except it was refreshing to see it acknowledged that abusers also have very manipulative (or “charming”, if you want to call it that) personalities, in which they try to pit everyone against the victim.