SART

I'm hoping writing here will help quell the adrenaline rush, since what I'd really like to be doing is sleeping, but after you get paged by the sexual assault beeper, the adrenaline flows into your stomach like cold water, and all you can do is wait it out.

I was paged tonight to phone a young woman whose friend had just been sexually assaulted. The survivor didn't want to talk, but her friend was interested in some information, and what the options were. I spent ten minutes talking to her about what the centre offers, what our roles are, the time lines for our services, etc etc. Talked a bit about crisis psychology and some of the things her friend might experience over the next few days. I always think I've forgotten tons of my training, and I get paranoid that I'm leaving massive chunks of information out, but when I get down to talking to someone, letting them know how long they have before it would be useless to take the emergency contraceptive pill, or support them in making a plan for how they're going to get through the next twenty-four hours, I feel like I'm actually doing real work that makes a real difference in people's lives. If I can leave this earth knowing that at some point I made another person's life that much more bearable, or their pain that much easier to work through, then my life won't have been a stupid waste of interneting, movie-watching, and procrastination.

Summer Movies

I'm not really aware of it, but along the way I seem to have acquired a bit of an "intellectual" label concerning books, music, movies and other media. And I guess it's true to an extent. What is probably less known about me is that I freaking LOVE summer movies. Smashy, shiny, slick, plotless, jingoistic (there's that "intellectual" thing again), and hackneyed - I love them so. Everyone should go see the Transformers movie because the way the transformers looked when transforming in the air was one of the cooooolest things I've ever seen. The humans in the flick are useless meat-bags who utter completely laughable shit and shouldn't have been in it at all. In fact, I wish there had been NO plot whatsoever. I like my summer movies like I like my porn, it seems - hardcore action, and nothing more.

Harry Potter was dark and has pretty art direction as per usual and I get to watch jail-bait boys be all pensive. Sweet! I'll go see it at least once more.

I'm going to watch the musical "Hairspray" this month too. The original John Waters movie is one of my all-time faves (HELLO!?!?! The heroine is a fat chick named Tracy who gets the hot boy in the end - what's not to love?!?!) so I have to see it and then go for a drink, toasting to the memory of the lovely Divine.

The Simpsons movie is going to be utter shit, I'm sure, and I'm going to see it as well, just for the train-wreckedness of it. I haven't watched almost any of the Simpsons after the 10th season because almost all of the ones I saw made me want to cry out for Conan O'Brien to come back, so I'm not really expecting anything from this movies. Too late in the game, too over-hyped, but I'll see it anyway, and I'm sure some twisted part of my heart will love it.

Some of my all-time favorite summer movies:
- Any of the Terminator films
- Independence Day
- Pirates of the Carribean