As I lamented last night about the Sestina (HORRIBLE HORRIBLE THING), I have prevailed tonight! HUZZAH!

I found a website that better explained a Sestina and even had a generator so you could put your six words in and it arranged them and you could fill in the rest of the poem then (IT IS STILL ORIGINAL WORK IT JUST HELPS YOU OUT SOME!)and after my first poem (blank verse) I wrote was 4 lines about mimes being creepy, I decided to keep with the humorous approach (Well, bitterly dark humor because I hate poetry and this class is going to RUIN my GPA) I decided to write my sestina about an english major who dies/kills herself because the poetry drove her insane! MUAHAHAH!

A Student’s Lament.

Never would she have imagined something so good could cause her such pain.
After years of devotion to her subject, she never expected such confusion.
Her hopes of prevailing have dissolved and she fears that death
Could be the only option as her inner walls begin to crumble
As she spirals downward into such depths that she fears for her sanity.
She expects the only option is a search for a means to an end.

She has struggled through and held on until now without imagining the end
Of her rope drawing any nearer. She formerly welcomed the pain
As it proved her challenges. However, she is rapidly losing her sanity
In the jumbled mass of words that fill her brain to the point of confusion.
With every page turned in this dusty tome, her resolve can only crumble
Until she comes to the realization that the answer could possibly be death.

What could possibly be enough to warrant her death
One could ask? She would explain, as she contemplated her end,
That her mind’s walls began to finally crumble
And she was only suffering a worse and more unbearable pain
Than she had ever before from her subject, much to her confusion.
There was no way to deny the malignant effect it was having on her sanity.

“Why must you hurt me so?” she sobbed, clinging to the edge sanity
So full of desperation that she almost yearned for death
To end her ever growing, all consuming, unparalleled confusion.
“This is more than I can handle,” she admitted to herself as the end
Began to look more pleasant than suffering further pain
For her beloved subject. The last of her strength began to crumble.

Those around her could only watch as she began to crumble
Into a shell of the person she once was, losing more than sanity
To her once-beloved subject. Her friends cursed her pain.
She was longing for what others feared: her death.
As she came to the dregs of her strength and fought against an end,
Others could only watch with a sad sense of confusion.

There was nothing to end her and her friends’ confusion
As they watched a once strong young woman crumble
Into a bland copy of the person she was. It was her end.
She suffered losing more than her last strands of sanity.
Her beautiful, wondrous subject had brought her death
In exchange for her devotion. It repaid her love with pain.

What, you ask, caused so much confusion it stripped her of her sanity?
What could bring a bright youth to crumble so sharply she faced untimely death?
In the end, it was poetry that caused our young English Major unbearable pain.

.... he's totally gonna fail me, lmao!

So, in Intercultural Communications I've got to do an assignment in which I watch a film and then the instructions exactly are:

"Select a feature-length film or several shorter films about a culture other than your own.
Preferably, the action of the film’s story should be set in that culture as well. Study the communication that occurs between the characters in the film and identify the effects of cultural patterns, perception, verbal codes, nonverbal codes, social episodes, and roles on interpersonal communication. In other words, you are to come up with a short description of the communication that occurs within that culture, but from the vantage point of your own cultural point of view."

And one of the things is 'avoid films you've seen before' and 'avoid 'major' films' aka, popular, blockbuster films. Also, they have to be ACCURATE to the culture portrayed (I sure hope I can recognize NOT accurate, or else I'm fucked!).

HOWEVER I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO WATCH! I haven't looked up EVERY movie on the list, but a lot of these films seem very fucking boring. The list is full of movies I've never heard of and the few I have looked up appear to suck ass.

SO! Here's what I want from you guys! Suggest films to me! They need to portray a certain culture (It can be a period of time, an ethnic culture, ANY sort of interpretation of 'culture') and preferably be interesting enough I dont hate life. ALSO creativity is a bonus! Example of that is: My first assignment in that class was to talk about YOUR culture and rather than 'southern culture' or something like that, I wrote my paper about fandom culture and basically based the entire paper around Tumblr fandoms and things unique to each fandom. I legitimately worked Doctor Who into an actual facts paper for school and she LOVED IT!

**Note, at the moment, even though I HAVE seen it, I'm actually trying to find a way to work Paul into being my film of choice, but I dont think it'll work so PLEEZ TO BE GIVING SUGGESTIONS! (Paul is an accurate portrayal of sci-fi geek culture with TONS of subtle nuances to geek cultural icons, HOWEVER the action isn't exactly set in a way that makes it PART of the geek culture... also the film is ridiculously innapropriate so if the teacher goes and watches the films that she hasn't seen before and is mortified at my choice, I dont want that to reflect negatively on my grades. She seems like a very 'nice' lady and probably not one to appreciate all the profanity in that movie)

EDIT: Someone wanted the list and I thought 'well I should've done that already, huh?' so here it is:

Babette’s Feast (Danish)
The Barbarian Invasion (French Canadian)
Before the Rains (Asian Indian
Bella (Latino)
Beyond Rangoon (Burmese)
Blue Kite (Chinese)
Bread and Chocolate (Swiss, Italian)
Bride and Prejudice (Asian Indian)
Children of Heaven (Iranian)
Cinema Paradiso (Italian)
The Circle (Iranian)
City of God (Brazilian)
Crash (various U.S. American)
Cry, The Beloved Country (South African)
Daughter from Danang (Vietnamese
Eat Drink Man Woman (Chinese)
The Edge of America (Native American)
El Norte (Guatemalan, European American)
Eureka (Japanese)
Europa Europa (European)
The Gods Must be Crazy (Sho Bushman)
Good Bye Lenin (German)
A Great Wall (Chinese, Chinese-American)
Higher Learning (African American)
Il Postino (Italian)
Indochine (Vietnamese
The Joy Luck Club (Chinese, Chinese American)
King of Masks (Chinese)
The Kite Runner
Kundun (Tibetan)
The Last Emperor (Chinese
Like Water for Chocolate (Mexican)
Little Buddha (Tibetan)
To Live (Chinese)
The Makioka Sisters (Japanese)
Maria Full of Grace (Colombian)
Mediterraneo (Italian, Greek)
Mi Familia (Latino)
Mississippi Masala (African American, Indian American
Mongolian Ping Pong (Mongolian)
My Favorite Season (French)
My Life as a Dog (Swedish)
My Sassy Girl (Korean)
The Namesake
Offside (Iranian)
Outsourced
Picture Bride (Japanese)
Pushing Hands (Chinese, Chinese American)
Raise the Red Lantern (Chinese)
Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker (Chinese)
The Road Home (Chinese)
The Scent of Green Papaya (Vietnamese)
Schindler’s List
Shall we Dance? (Japanese)
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring (Korean)
The Story of Qui Ju (Chinese)
Tortilla Soup (Latino)
The Vertical Ray of the Sun (Vietnamese
A Walk in the Clouds (Latino)
Water (Asian Indian)
The Way Home (Korean)
Witness (Amish)

I've heard of a couple of them and I kind of want to watch Outsourced because it looked funny when I looked it up, but other ideas are welcome!