i havnt written since the first day of school. it has been one of those weeks where alot happens but i dont feel like talking about anything, or nothing feels worthy of typing, so i have decided to just start typing and be done with it. i have to blog, right? any excuse? i told myself i was going to be all over this blog business to keep myself writing, so here i am, writing in my blog. but what about? i'll tell you one thing, i will not be grammar or spell checking this post. i simply do not feel like it.
how about the guy that was murdered at the video store on 140? pretty pathethic. so Tiffany is a girl i work with, and i found out that the guy was someone close to her. i dont know the relation, but what the paper isnt telling people is that the guy was beat to death with a fire extinguisher for a measly $1000. seriously. is it worth it? is that money so important that people must die over it? the guy's wife and son were waiting for him that night. he didnt come home at the normal time so they went to his video store to see what was up. they found him dead. can you imagine? i cant. i dont want to, and i never want to know what that is like.
i know i go on about this often, but i really do not understand people. as a whole. how can one human being feel that they are so much more important than others? do people think it is okay to do things like that? murder, scream at cops, hurt other people, destroy property, steal...do the people who do these things really think it is okay? or are they delusional? is there somethign wrong with them? i cant understand it.
i am sick of greed.
all i want is enough money to be comfortable: pay of my loan for school and not struggle to survive. thats not too much to ask. but i will not go out and destroy a family, take a life, and possibly land myself in jail for some extra cash.
i cant understand the things people do for a little bit of money. i am ashamed enough that i have to wait on people and serve them food for money. that is degrading enough. when someone murders for money, do they feel as though tthey are stooping really low? or is it something they enjoy?
do you have to enjoy killing to be a murderer?
i do the best i can to keep my temper under control because letting myself get angry is slightly embarrassing. are people embarrassed when they lose control to the point that they murder someone? do they feel good? do they feel anything? do murders feel bad for what they have done? do they regret it?
people make no sense.
but thats enough depressing news.
im pretty happy about my classes. i find myself having trouble getting into the swing of the semester, but then again i have only had two days of class so far. i guess it will be easier. i dont feel like doing work though, thats for sure. i like the classes, but im getting lazy. senioritis? seriously. i still have to buy two textbooks. and pay my application fee for graduation. and buy a cap and gown. though i wish i could find a way to see the cap and gown and compare it to the cap and gown i already have. oh, and i still havnt paid the sigma tau delta fee. gotta get on that. everyone wants money. i hate money.
im worried about filing taxes. i want to do it and get it over with. i just dont want to owe. thats all i really care about. i wish there were people who could direct you at tax time but not charge you hundreds of dollars. I have quite a few questions that i would love to ask. complicated, personalized questions. everyone gives me different answers. i think the whole thing is designed to be misleading. im convinced there are no answers. that even the irs has no idea what people should do. its just funny how each person does what they can and cheats the best they can to get as much money back as possible. meanwhile, the irs tries to cheat us out of as much money as they can. the only difference is that if a person gets too much money, the irs can chase them down and punish them. if the irs cheats me out of money, all i can do is hold a grudge against them and be angry that tehy are such a ripoff. how unfair.
i have alot of reading to do. too bad i have to wait till tomorrow to buy one of the books i need to read. i will buy it tomorrow, and then i need to read through chapter 33 of said book by tuesday. this is what i dont like about college: everything is excessive. they dont just make you pay money, they make you pay excessive amounts of money. they dont make you read, they make you read tooooo much. and writing wouldnt be bad if i just wrote alot. but i write more than alot. i write non-stop. excessively, if you will.
but the world is still spinning, and there is supposed to be an ice storm tomorrow. im not sure how thats related, but im hungry.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
first day and beyond
Yesterday was my first day of school. I had a good day, but it was the start of my last semester, and I am nervous.
In spite of being such a good student, inspite of my accomplishments as a student, I have major misgivings about my ability to function outside of the academic world.
I have been a student for as long as I can remember. Like most of my peers, I have never known a world without school. Now, I face having to find and succeed at a job after graduation. Scary.
I watch so many people pick up and move on to the perfect job and I wonder if I can do the same. I have worked so hard for so long to ensure that I can get a job, but I honestly wonder if I ever will.
Employers do not care about my accomplishments as a student. They only want to know if I am qualified for the position. Most employers seem more worried about years of experience in the field than an actual degree. I have no experience.
Times like this I feel the need to override my goals and plans and just jump into Grad school to avoid the struggle of making it in the real world. But that goes against everything I want.
I was looking at Grad School possibilities last night. I am still stuck on Emerson for some reason. They have two parallel programs that look awesome. I love the location. I love the city. I love the idea of going to a school that centers around the arts. I am sick of going to a business and Law school.
But I want things before Grad school. Things like kids and a job and a house and travel experience.
But I also want the security of having a higher degree than most people in the market. I want to know that I can do whatever I want.
I really just hope I can land a great job. Maybe my first one will suck, but I want a job. Without that, I can kiss Grad school goodbye.
This blog has depressed me. I'm gonna go clean something.
As a side note, I think I am going to use my blog for class assignments. That seems like a good excuse to write.
In other news, I am working on a pretty big project. I hope to finish it in time. In time for what, you ask? just in time is all. It has not left the planning stage, but when all is said and done it will be a compilation of those things I love to do most.
So it goes.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
SkiLiberty
After years of seeing Ski Liberty in the distance from the giant hill on 97, I finally got a chance to go there. We (my family, troy, and Aaron) went tubing last night and then stopped at Tony’s in Tawneytown for some pizza. I expected tubing to cost more than $16 per person, but by the end of the night, I changed my tune. 16 is reasonable, but the lines to get up the hill and then back down are so long that you really only have time to go down four times.
On a week night, or any night when it is not so crowded 16 would be reasonable, but the crowds made the lines move so slowly that it really wasn’t worth it.
I find it ironic that on a crowded night, like a weekend night, the cost is $16, but on a weeknight, when you will get more chances to go down the hill and the overall experience will be better, it only cost $12. Makes no sense. In the future, I will want to go on a weeknight.
I loved the snow machines. It was awesome watching them blow snow high into the air, but the snow would hit you in the face on the way down.
It really was not too cold last night, either. I did not start getting cold until the end of the night. Other than my face, I was warm.
I took many pictures with my Lc-a, but I am worried that it was too dark for them to turn out correctly. If I could be sure, I would just double expose the whole roll, but I also took some direct sunlight pictures, and they would white out. I often miss having a display screen to preview my pictures. But I guess that’s part of the game. The nature of the beast, as Troy would say.
Today is my last free day. I plan to do nothing. Nothing. I am going to wear pj’s all day and a hoodie, and my Ugg boots. I plan to not go anywhere and sitting around Troy’s house all night. Maybe watching a movie. Gonna be a good day.
Now, if my parking pass could be here today, that would be great.
Schedule for the semester:
Monday:
Writer As Reader- 5:30-8:00
Archeology Of Language- 8:15-10:45
Tuesday:
Publication and Performance-2:00-4:30
Seminar in Writing: the Modern Tradition- 5:30-8:00
Wednesday:
Work.
Thursday:
Work.
Friday:
Contemporary Literature- 2:00-4:30
On a week night, or any night when it is not so crowded 16 would be reasonable, but the crowds made the lines move so slowly that it really wasn’t worth it.
I find it ironic that on a crowded night, like a weekend night, the cost is $16, but on a weeknight, when you will get more chances to go down the hill and the overall experience will be better, it only cost $12. Makes no sense. In the future, I will want to go on a weeknight.
I loved the snow machines. It was awesome watching them blow snow high into the air, but the snow would hit you in the face on the way down.
It really was not too cold last night, either. I did not start getting cold until the end of the night. Other than my face, I was warm.
I took many pictures with my Lc-a, but I am worried that it was too dark for them to turn out correctly. If I could be sure, I would just double expose the whole roll, but I also took some direct sunlight pictures, and they would white out. I often miss having a display screen to preview my pictures. But I guess that’s part of the game. The nature of the beast, as Troy would say.
Today is my last free day. I plan to do nothing. Nothing. I am going to wear pj’s all day and a hoodie, and my Ugg boots. I plan to not go anywhere and sitting around Troy’s house all night. Maybe watching a movie. Gonna be a good day.
Now, if my parking pass could be here today, that would be great.
Schedule for the semester:
Monday:
Writer As Reader- 5:30-8:00
Archeology Of Language- 8:15-10:45
Tuesday:
Publication and Performance-2:00-4:30
Seminar in Writing: the Modern Tradition- 5:30-8:00
Wednesday:
Work.
Thursday:
Work.
Friday:
Contemporary Literature- 2:00-4:30
Thursday, January 24, 2008
the answer to the war against terror.
A friend of mine figured out a way to fix all of the world's problems with the click of a button.Lately I am upset with the Baltimore City School Board. They have decided to pay students for increasing their individual test scores by 5%. The board is prepared to spend thousands of dollars bribing high school students to work harder to pass state tests.
I attended highschool in Baltimore City for two years. Terrible place to learn. I am living proof that Standardized tests do not prove a student's ability to learn or to think. I failed my Math SAT two times. Not for lack of trying, but because I am not good at taking test. After feeling stupid and inadequate compared to my peers, I gave up on school and my GPA dropped. When I moved to Carroll County, I learned that standardized tests really mean nothing, that they are a way for school systems to compete and earn money.
I began taking classes that focused on thinking and writing, and my GPA jumped to a 4.0, and has not dropped more than .1 since.
Now, while I am one of the top 10% of my University, many of those students who scored well on standardized tests are either college drop outs, did not attend college at all, or gave up their academic life for retail and other minimum-wage jobs. I have nothing against those people, I do not look down on them. I understand that, while they scored well on tests, they were never taught to think or solve problems.
Success in the real world does not depend on answering all of the questions correctly. Success is measured by the ability to solve problems. Not problems given in paragraph form with one variable missing, but real problems scattered haphazardly throughout larger problems.
Even a student who scores well on a math test might not have the skills needed to create and maintain a budget. Students who can find the "main idea" in a paragraph, or the "subject" of a sentence may be incapable of constructing a well-written essay.
There are seniors at my University who cannot construct a paragraph. Many are my age and have completed the same amount of school, yet cannot write a proper sentence. They may understand the definition of a "compound-complex sentence" but cannot create one.
I wish standardized test could be eliminated from the curriculum.
Why does education have to depend so heavily on people who have no idea what makes a child learn. Why will school boards never listen to the teachers who actually interact and care about each child?
Do other countries have this problem? Or is it just this mass of land we mistake for the most powerful and wealthy country in the world?
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Bad dog.
My dog bit me. Attacked me, really. My lovable, pain in the ass, getting old and has never bitten a single person (post teething age, anyway) smart, human-like black lab. BIT ME. This is a picture of him (a bad picture, but it shows his size really well)I can’t believe it. I really cant. There was no blood shed, but he did break skin, and my hand hurts quite a bit.
He was on my mother’s bed, which he knows is off limits, and I was going to let him stay there until I left for work, but then I heard him digging on the mattress (I don’t know why dogs do that) and I decided it was time to evict him. I told him to get down and he wouldn’t budge. So I grabbed him by his collar as I have so many times in the past, and he showed his teeth and snapped at my hand and started biting me until I slapped him across his nose.
Even after all of this He wouldn’t move, so I grabbed him again, more forcefully this time to let him know that I was angry but not afraid, and pulled him off the bed.
I have one lone tooth mark in the center of the top of my hand, but I feel the pain all the way down in my elbow, and bad in the palm of my hand. I guess he hit a nerve or something. It’s starting to swell a bit.
He knows I am angry. I yelled at him and made him go downstairs. He went willingly, tail between his legs.
I am not sure I trust him now.
The family had another Black Lab before this one. I never liked him. His name was max, and he had the Parvovirus as a puppy. Very few puppies recover fully from Parvo, and we were close to putting him down when he miraculously recovered one morning. It really was sad. He couldn’t walk, eat, or even wag his tail. When he recovered, he bounced back 100% and we had him for another year before things started to change.
He started by going after my grandmother and biting her hand. We couldn’t have him around the younger children in the family. The worst part was his over-protectiveness of my mother. My father could not sit on the couch beside her, we could not get close enough to hand her a report card, we could not show her affection. For that matter, we could not show affection to anyone but him.
The thing that made me trust Cody, the current black lab, was that you could take anything from him without him retaliating or biting.
Max attacked me a few times, but the worst was on new years day one year. He was chewing on a Styrofoam cup and tearing it up all over the floor that I had just vacuumed. I was angry, and, without thinking, tried to take the cup from him. He tore my hand wide open, and lunged at me. Only my father kicking him got him off of me.
After that, my mother decided that it was time to put him down. He had attacked too many people, He was dangerous. They put him down and bought Cody that night.
Cody was a good dog. He still is for the most part. He has gotten grouchy lately, and I wonder if he is in some sort of pain that we don’t know about. I have always trusted Cody, and even though I do not particularly like dogs, I like him. But if he bites me again, we are going to have a serious problem.
Lately he has taken to barking at everything. He barks to go out, barks to come in, barks for food, barks for attention, barks to play, barks for everything. One of those loud barks that just pierces into your skull. I don’t know what started the barking, but he never did it before.
Perhaps it is the introduction of Milo, my sister’s boyfriend’s beagle puppy. Milo is friendly and loveable, and has no clue about boundaries and territory. Milo seems to rub Cody the wrong way. I wonder how much of Cody’s irritability is a result of Milo.
No matter what, my perception of Cody has changed. Something is not right when a dog that does not bite attacks its owner. There was no major harm done this time, but I am sure it can happen again.
Monday, January 21, 2008
the winter of my discontent
I have lived in this house since 2001. Seven years. Seven long years without air-condition or heat in my bedroom. I have silently suffered freezing winters beneath multiple layers of down, wool, and fleece blankets, and seven blistering Julys with a small desk-fan to relieve the sultry Maryland summer.
My house is not old—no more than 12 years old—and it has central air. Every room in the house has central air conditioning and heat. Every room except mine. It is miserable.
Summer is not so bad. My room faces the back of the house, and I rarely have direct sunlight. Combined with the constant breeze that flows through the valley below my house, I am comfortable during the summer.
Winter, on the other hand, is miserable. If I am in my bedroom during the cold season (I call it that because winter is not always cold here, as we have already discovered in a previous blog post) I am under a blanket.
The worst part is the draft. My bedroom (the one I picked out of the four possibilities on moving day) is directly under the attic. The attic is pretty open, and wind gets in easy. On particularly windy nights, the plywood that sits over the entrance to the attic will shift in the wind. I also get drafts through my window. I am not sure how. I spent my morning draping a heavy blanket over the window to keep some of the draft out and the heat in. I then stood on my bed with my hand right below the vent in my ceiling (the one that is supposed to deliver the heat) and noticed a slight cool draft coming from there as well. Makes no sense. The rest of the house is toasty, and I have a cold draft.
At least I don’t have to worry about my Macbook overheating. I’ll never die of heat exhaustion. I will be able to survive if the world runs out of heat.
Those are all of the situational pros I can think of. Right now, my cold fingers can only think of cons.
Getting out of the shower is the worst. My bathroom has the best heat in the house. (funny how a house has different heating scenarios in each room, despite the “central” air conditioning.) The bathroom is always perfectly toasty in the winter and refreshingly cool in the summer.
Getting out of a hot shower and walking into a freezing bedroom is unbearable. This morning, the doorknob was even cold to the touch. The way the metal of a seatbelt is when you first get in on a snowy day.
Nothing beats the terrible feeling of being cold and getting under a comforter that is still cold. The minutes of waiting for your body temperature to catch on and kindle the heat trapping properties of said comforter could feel like hours. But once the heat is trapped in, life is good.
Until you have to move your leg and it happens to reach just beyond the warm area and into the uncharted cold desert that is the uninhabited sheets outside of the body-heat zone. Perhaps the leg of your pajama pants becomes stuck around your knee, leaving your whole leg exposed. You might kick and swing your leg in attempt to pull the pant leg back down. A shiver runs from that foot to the very tip of your nose, and you gather the blankets closer to you, tucking them beneath your body to keep the cold out. For that minute, you are an Eskimo, or a biologist studying the snow in Antarctica. The world outside of your comforter is frozen tundra home for all sorts of misery and suffering.
My bedroom is the North Pole.
My house is not old—no more than 12 years old—and it has central air. Every room in the house has central air conditioning and heat. Every room except mine. It is miserable.
Summer is not so bad. My room faces the back of the house, and I rarely have direct sunlight. Combined with the constant breeze that flows through the valley below my house, I am comfortable during the summer.
Winter, on the other hand, is miserable. If I am in my bedroom during the cold season (I call it that because winter is not always cold here, as we have already discovered in a previous blog post) I am under a blanket.
The worst part is the draft. My bedroom (the one I picked out of the four possibilities on moving day) is directly under the attic. The attic is pretty open, and wind gets in easy. On particularly windy nights, the plywood that sits over the entrance to the attic will shift in the wind. I also get drafts through my window. I am not sure how. I spent my morning draping a heavy blanket over the window to keep some of the draft out and the heat in. I then stood on my bed with my hand right below the vent in my ceiling (the one that is supposed to deliver the heat) and noticed a slight cool draft coming from there as well. Makes no sense. The rest of the house is toasty, and I have a cold draft.
At least I don’t have to worry about my Macbook overheating. I’ll never die of heat exhaustion. I will be able to survive if the world runs out of heat.
Those are all of the situational pros I can think of. Right now, my cold fingers can only think of cons.
Getting out of the shower is the worst. My bathroom has the best heat in the house. (funny how a house has different heating scenarios in each room, despite the “central” air conditioning.) The bathroom is always perfectly toasty in the winter and refreshingly cool in the summer.
Getting out of a hot shower and walking into a freezing bedroom is unbearable. This morning, the doorknob was even cold to the touch. The way the metal of a seatbelt is when you first get in on a snowy day.
Nothing beats the terrible feeling of being cold and getting under a comforter that is still cold. The minutes of waiting for your body temperature to catch on and kindle the heat trapping properties of said comforter could feel like hours. But once the heat is trapped in, life is good.
Until you have to move your leg and it happens to reach just beyond the warm area and into the uncharted cold desert that is the uninhabited sheets outside of the body-heat zone. Perhaps the leg of your pajama pants becomes stuck around your knee, leaving your whole leg exposed. You might kick and swing your leg in attempt to pull the pant leg back down. A shiver runs from that foot to the very tip of your nose, and you gather the blankets closer to you, tucking them beneath your body to keep the cold out. For that minute, you are an Eskimo, or a biologist studying the snow in Antarctica. The world outside of your comforter is frozen tundra home for all sorts of misery and suffering.
My bedroom is the North Pole.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
yeast
I baked bread today. I made four loaves, and within an hour, there was only half a loaf left. I got the recipe from my Memoir professor last semester, and have wanted to try it for quite some time. So, today I skipped church and spent a relaxing two and a half hours in the kitchen baking bread.
now that I know I can do it, I want to make different kinds of bread. Aaron suggested tomato Basil like the bread at Panera. I'd imagine I could just add tomato paste and basil to the dough. We shall see.
stay tuned next week for Jollie Green Smoothies, an idea I got from FatFreeVegan.com, one of my new favorite blogs.
I enjoy baking and cooking. I think I'll do it more often. If my bread was a hit and my Hummus was a hit, I'm sure my other ideas will go over well too.
now that I know I can do it, I want to make different kinds of bread. Aaron suggested tomato Basil like the bread at Panera. I'd imagine I could just add tomato paste and basil to the dough. We shall see.
stay tuned next week for Jollie Green Smoothies, an idea I got from FatFreeVegan.com, one of my new favorite blogs.
I enjoy baking and cooking. I think I'll do it more often. If my bread was a hit and my Hummus was a hit, I'm sure my other ideas will go over well too.
Friday, January 18, 2008
whiskers on kittens
Because I feel like I spend too much time complaining, I decided to make a list of the simple pleasures in my life. Some are weird. I know there are other strange things that I derive an odd satisfaction from, but here are 50.
1. Using all of the ink in a pen. I hate having billions of pens. If I could, I would carry one with me at all times, use it until every drop of ink was gone and then starting a new pen.
2. Simple items with beautiful product packaging. Like staples or paperclips or something small in a really well designed package.
3. The shape and color red wine leaves as a stain on white fabric.
4. The smell of fresh tires. And cheap shoes, like payless shoes.
5. Rearranging my bookshelf. It is always disorderly because I constantly reference books and never put them back.
6. Peeling glue from under my nails.
7. Fresh shaved legs and flannel pajamas
8. Cardboard rolls. I wish I had something to do with them. Especially the really long ones from wrapping paper. They’re just cool. There has to be some sort of amazing craft out there waiting for me.
9. A sweater that fits perfectly.
10. The little bit of gas that comes out of a freshly opened soda bottle.
11. The sound Toast Titanium makes when it finishes burning a disc.
12. Chocolate covered strawberries
13. Dipping my grilled cheese in ketchup
14. Grass between my toes
15. Not wearing shoes…and wearing crazy patterned socks
16. Getting an email from someone other than apple or school or other non-human entities.
17. Making weird noises when I’m tired for no reason
18. The American sign language sign for “overhead projector”
19. Finding sand in my bag a week or so after getting back from the beach
20. The very bottom of the sugar cone in a Drumstick Ice-cream.
21. Empty French fries (the ones that are a bit darker and have no actual soft potato in them, they’re just hollow and crunchy)
22. Green salt and vinegar chips
23. Stuck together gummy bears
24. Frozen Gatorade rain
25. Eating pizza on a beach
26. The smell of a blown-out match or fireworks
27. Smelling like outside, and also the smell my skin gets after being in the sun for a few hours
28. Finding money in strange places. I used to hide five-dollar bills from myself, knowing I would find them later.
29. Scarf season, hoodie season, and fall altogether.
30. Realizing that it is fall on the way home from somewhere. That brisk feeling in the air and the changed leaves.
31. Going to work and finding out I wasn’t scheduled
32. Peeling the skin off of grapes before I eat them
33. Pulp in my juice
34. Things that fall out of books.
35. Random things that want to be re-painted or covered in something. Like my little glass elephant that wants to be covered in fortunes from fortune cookies, but I don’t eat enough Chinese food to do it lately. All in good time.
36. Burping really big, satisfying burps. File “the hiccups” under “things I hate” by the by, I have a really bad case of those painful hiccups as I type. I have had them for an hour. Highly unpleasant.
37. Letting my shower water get so hot it burns.
38. Baltimore at dusk
39. The target dollar bin
40. The smell and texture of acrylic paint
41. The word “hoodia”
42. “We Tigers” “Woop, Woop Woop”
43. Books. Period.
44. Blowing my nose and actually getting stuff to come out, and the subsequent renewed ability to breathe.
45. Kaluah. Especially the Laurie and Troy homemade version of it.
46. Putting my hand into a really big bag of M&M’s. Also the colors they make when they melt in my hand.
47. Drawing pictures on my fingers with pen and then transferring the image to paper by pressing my finger down really hard.
48. Elephants. Their shape is awesome. I have three carved from oyster shells. ☺
49. Melted chocolate ice cream. I would only eat chocolate ice cream if it was melted when I worked at Friendly’s. Something about it being melted makes it have more of a taste. I swear.
50. Being able to prove that I was right to someone who insisted that I was wrong. especially when someone was rude about it, or tried to make me sound dumb.
1. Using all of the ink in a pen. I hate having billions of pens. If I could, I would carry one with me at all times, use it until every drop of ink was gone and then starting a new pen.
2. Simple items with beautiful product packaging. Like staples or paperclips or something small in a really well designed package.
3. The shape and color red wine leaves as a stain on white fabric.
4. The smell of fresh tires. And cheap shoes, like payless shoes.
5. Rearranging my bookshelf. It is always disorderly because I constantly reference books and never put them back.
6. Peeling glue from under my nails.
7. Fresh shaved legs and flannel pajamas
8. Cardboard rolls. I wish I had something to do with them. Especially the really long ones from wrapping paper. They’re just cool. There has to be some sort of amazing craft out there waiting for me.
9. A sweater that fits perfectly.
10. The little bit of gas that comes out of a freshly opened soda bottle.
11. The sound Toast Titanium makes when it finishes burning a disc.
12. Chocolate covered strawberries
13. Dipping my grilled cheese in ketchup
14. Grass between my toes
15. Not wearing shoes…and wearing crazy patterned socks
16. Getting an email from someone other than apple or school or other non-human entities.
17. Making weird noises when I’m tired for no reason
18. The American sign language sign for “overhead projector”
19. Finding sand in my bag a week or so after getting back from the beach
20. The very bottom of the sugar cone in a Drumstick Ice-cream.
21. Empty French fries (the ones that are a bit darker and have no actual soft potato in them, they’re just hollow and crunchy)
22. Green salt and vinegar chips
23. Stuck together gummy bears
24. Frozen Gatorade rain
25. Eating pizza on a beach
26. The smell of a blown-out match or fireworks
27. Smelling like outside, and also the smell my skin gets after being in the sun for a few hours
28. Finding money in strange places. I used to hide five-dollar bills from myself, knowing I would find them later.
29. Scarf season, hoodie season, and fall altogether.
30. Realizing that it is fall on the way home from somewhere. That brisk feeling in the air and the changed leaves.
31. Going to work and finding out I wasn’t scheduled
32. Peeling the skin off of grapes before I eat them
33. Pulp in my juice
34. Things that fall out of books.
35. Random things that want to be re-painted or covered in something. Like my little glass elephant that wants to be covered in fortunes from fortune cookies, but I don’t eat enough Chinese food to do it lately. All in good time.
36. Burping really big, satisfying burps. File “the hiccups” under “things I hate” by the by, I have a really bad case of those painful hiccups as I type. I have had them for an hour. Highly unpleasant.
37. Letting my shower water get so hot it burns.
38. Baltimore at dusk
39. The target dollar bin
40. The smell and texture of acrylic paint
41. The word “hoodia”
42. “We Tigers” “Woop, Woop Woop”
43. Books. Period.
44. Blowing my nose and actually getting stuff to come out, and the subsequent renewed ability to breathe.
45. Kaluah. Especially the Laurie and Troy homemade version of it.
46. Putting my hand into a really big bag of M&M’s. Also the colors they make when they melt in my hand.
47. Drawing pictures on my fingers with pen and then transferring the image to paper by pressing my finger down really hard.
48. Elephants. Their shape is awesome. I have three carved from oyster shells. ☺
49. Melted chocolate ice cream. I would only eat chocolate ice cream if it was melted when I worked at Friendly’s. Something about it being melted makes it have more of a taste. I swear.
50. Being able to prove that I was right to someone who insisted that I was wrong. especially when someone was rude about it, or tried to make me sound dumb.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Maryland, my Maryland
here are some pictures of why I hate where I live.
I took these shortly after getting off work.
My work, like most places in Maryland, does not close for snow. Now, I understand why places like Colorado and Michigan do not shut down for a little bit of snow. Actually, I imagine anyone from a high-snow-content area would laugh at this blog. But the truth is, Marylanders are IDIOTIC when it
snows. They have no idea what to do, they all go out to dinner in blizzards and go shopping, and then get into an accident, block up the roads, and killing innocent people who just want to get home.Not to mention, our plow system has something to be desired. We rarely see plows, and when we do, they are never actually plowing. My road will never be plowed throughout this storm. How do I know? Lets call it experience.
Welcome to this lovely state where you can go swimming one day and sledding the next. I swear, when I buy a home, it will be in a place where I can count on the weather being the same for at least one week at a time.
A few weeks ago, Troy and I played Tennis in tee shirts.
A few days ago, I went for a walk with my dog…in shorts.
It has been early fall weather, not winter weather. But, in true Maryland fashion, the warm, 50degre weather has given way (overnight) to a snowstorm.
We already had one bad storm this year. Early December. And then we had a warm spell right after that, and now, we have a winter storm again.
As if the unpredictable change wasn’t enough, try watching the weather and hearing that the storm will be a light mix of snow and rain, accumulating to no more than 2 or 3 inches. It will taper off by mid afternoon, and tomorrow will be a high of 45.
News flash: It is now 3:28 (I’d call that a little past mid-afternoon) and we have a minimum of 6 inches across Carroll county. YAY! The weatherman caught up. It took a while, but WBAL changed their report to include snow in the forecast until Monday.
So now, the weatherman says it will continue to snow into tomorrow morning, and will accumulate no more than 6 inches. Well, weather man, we already have that. Where are we supposed to put the rest of it?
I know it isn’t the meteorologist’s fault. I blame this God-forsaken state.
Highest murder rate for a major city, extraordinarily high cost of living, worst school systems, lowest-paid teachers, massive debt, high unemployment rate, most cases of aids/hiv, something in the water making all of the sports teams suck lately, and insane weather patterns. I swear. In spite of what the experts say, Maryland, especially the north/western counties, has a microclimate.
And if the northern states dumps any of that lake effect snow on us, I’m gonna hate them too. Packers or not.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
ITS ALIVE!
I am always amazed at what I can do if I actually try. I was hesitant to start chrocheting because I had convinced myself that I couldnt do it, but my mother made me learn the basics, and I have learned the rest from books and websites and experimentation. The hat is a baret. I couldnt find a proper pattern for it, So I modified other hat patterns until I made it the way I wanted it. This one is my third attempt, and while it is a little puffy, I love it. I got confused by the flower patterns (I guess I have a little more work to do before I can read patterns properly without getting confused and frustrated) So I made the flowers up as I went along. I think it worked out well.If I saw a random person wearing that hat and that scarf, I would wonder where they bought it. :)
My next project is a secret (for no good reason, really). I bought the yarn yesterday, but I want to learn a new stitch before I get started. I must admit, I got a good deal on the yarn, and probably saved almost $20. Nothing makes a crocheting project better than a.) knowing that my final product cost less than buying the same thing in the store, and b.) paying less than I should have for the yarn.
I love a good bargain.
Well, off to work. after a whole day off with almost no human contact, I am actually looking forward to working with the masses of Olive Garden guests. Perhaps, if I am lucky, I will find a new topic for my "chat book". If nothing else, I'll make a little bit of money.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
injustice and a croched hat
Yes, the economy rises and falls. While that is true, the economy has never fallen in my lifetime, and that makes the possibility of a recession scary. In a world that relies so heavily on money, a dearth of money, or an excess of worthless money can be detrimental to those of us who are just now graduating from college and beginning to establish ourselves as members of the economy.
I worry lately about finding a job. I have a fear that I will have a nice, shiny new degree that will be nothing more but a useless sheet of paper, much like what the paper dollar may become.
My manager at work bought a BMW yesterday. I wonder, with the economy being the way it is, how can people spend frivolously? His reason for buying it was that he wanted something flashier than his Acura.
Maybe I am too cautious. I wont take that as an insult. I know that an economy cannot turn itself around in a day, and that decades of bad habits and over-zealous credit card companies cannot change overnight. I doubt we have hit close enough to rock bottom for change to even be possible at this point. Life has to get much worse before change can happen.
I would not call my mother a very wise woman, but she made a really good point: people on the other side of the world can die every day, and no one will care; a hurricane, volcano, fire, flood, tornado, terrorist attack, can destroy a neighboring city, and no one will care. But if you attack someone’s wallet, you will have his or her undivided attention.
A recession in such a selfish country is the only injustice that people will feel.
Meanwhile, I worry because that’s what I do, and I wonder how long it will be before I can be financially stable. Kids are out of the question for at least a few more years. Even a House will be next to impossible if money keeps killing itself off. Student Loans alone will be my constant companion through these hard times of economic tragedy.
Troy doesn’t seem to be worried. Maybe he is right. But the truth is that I would rather worry a bit and be prepared for something ten times worse than what happens, than to ignore the signs and be unprepared for even the slightest hardship.
When credit card companies cant afford the consumer’s debt, something is wrong.
On a lighter note, I learned to crochet a hat. I finally made one that I am satisfied with. I’ll post a picture of it in a day or so. It still needs some work and a matching scarf ☺
Until then, its textbook buying time. Another waste of money and trees. All textbooks that do not necessarily need color pages should be printed in black and white, and cheaper paper. It should be the law. Its all about making students spend more money than they have to, isn’t it?
I worry lately about finding a job. I have a fear that I will have a nice, shiny new degree that will be nothing more but a useless sheet of paper, much like what the paper dollar may become.
My manager at work bought a BMW yesterday. I wonder, with the economy being the way it is, how can people spend frivolously? His reason for buying it was that he wanted something flashier than his Acura.
Maybe I am too cautious. I wont take that as an insult. I know that an economy cannot turn itself around in a day, and that decades of bad habits and over-zealous credit card companies cannot change overnight. I doubt we have hit close enough to rock bottom for change to even be possible at this point. Life has to get much worse before change can happen.
I would not call my mother a very wise woman, but she made a really good point: people on the other side of the world can die every day, and no one will care; a hurricane, volcano, fire, flood, tornado, terrorist attack, can destroy a neighboring city, and no one will care. But if you attack someone’s wallet, you will have his or her undivided attention.
A recession in such a selfish country is the only injustice that people will feel.
Meanwhile, I worry because that’s what I do, and I wonder how long it will be before I can be financially stable. Kids are out of the question for at least a few more years. Even a House will be next to impossible if money keeps killing itself off. Student Loans alone will be my constant companion through these hard times of economic tragedy.
Troy doesn’t seem to be worried. Maybe he is right. But the truth is that I would rather worry a bit and be prepared for something ten times worse than what happens, than to ignore the signs and be unprepared for even the slightest hardship.
When credit card companies cant afford the consumer’s debt, something is wrong.
On a lighter note, I learned to crochet a hat. I finally made one that I am satisfied with. I’ll post a picture of it in a day or so. It still needs some work and a matching scarf ☺
Until then, its textbook buying time. Another waste of money and trees. All textbooks that do not necessarily need color pages should be printed in black and white, and cheaper paper. It should be the law. Its all about making students spend more money than they have to, isn’t it?
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Cheating is Patriotic, according to the NFL
Why has there been no parallel drawn in the NFL between the Patriot’s perfect record and their “brief” stint as cheaters? Am I the only person who understands that people who cheat are given an unfair advantage over those who do not? Why else would they do it?Warning: This may be the result of post-losing-streak bitterness, but I honestly feel that the Patriots should forfeit their winning streak.
After being caught spying on other teams, the Patriots were barely slapped on the wrist with a few fines: Belichick $500,000 and the team $250,000, according to AP. For a team that pays their QB $60 million, I think $250,000 sounds like petty change. Even if $250,000 is a substantial amount of money, it does not destroy the unfair advantage that the team gained from cheating.
As a side note: Who actually believes that this is the first instance of cheating. Aren’t most big-time thieves caught after stealing their first candy bar? No, not usually. The NFL Commissioner believes that the team will abide by the rules from this point on. I’m sure.
While I do not feel that taking the Patriots out of the equation this season would not have helped the Ravens, I must admit that I wonder if we, too, might have been undefeated had we cheated. I think that’s a fair stab.
To be fair, I would normally commend and hope the best for a team with such an excellent record. Even if the Steelers were undefeated (never going to happen as long as they have to play the Ravens at home. If we can beat no other team in the NFL, at least we can beat them). Anyway, I don’t care if the hated Steelers had a perfect season, I would admit that they deserve it. If a team—regardless of who they are—worked so hard and put so much into the game that they maintained a perfect record, I would personally shake their hand and congratulate them on a job well-done and a W much-deserved. “Deserved.” Do the Patriots DESERVE to win the Super Bowl?
Do the Patriots DESERVE to be undefeated? How much of that record depends on good players, amazing training, concentration, power, muscle, determination, and flawless execution of plays? How much of the record is the result of information gained by cheating? Knowing another team’s plays and patterns can make or break a game. Especially a really important game.
In short: I hope they go all the way and then lose. I hope they make it to the Super Bowl and get shut out. That’s what they deserve: to be cheated out of the Super Bowl like they have cheated other teams out of Wins.
By the by, I really hope the Packers are the team to do the honors of blowing the Patriots away. It is my opinion that Favre (if not the rest of the team) deserves the Super Bowl after the shit he went through last season. He is amazing, and just generally deserves the honor.
I am Ravens Girl, through and through, but I have always loved the packers too. Who doesnt?
Lets see a repeat of XXXI!
Thursday, January 10, 2008
My Chemical Obsession with something i know nothing about.
I used to think my father and mother were stupid because they were out of the popular music loop. My mother didn’t know about Metallica, and my father had never heard of Staind. Later, neither of them could stand the sound of Avenged Sevenfold or Converge. These bands were important to me. Everyone else knew who they were and how awesome they were and how important they were to the grand scheme of…I don’t know…life?
I had never stopped to think that maybe they were uninterested in my music because the music fromt their generation was 50 times better. I wouldn’t realize that until my 20’s when I developed a healthy love for Jefferson Airplane.
In the mean time I felt superior. I would argue in favor of my favorite bands, and I knew how amazing Nirvana was and how bad off the world was now that Cobain was dead. I knew all the names of all the important bands, and if I didn’t know about them, they must not be worth my time.
I watch so many kids go through this. My brother has finally gotten out of it, and is harkening back to the days before he was thought of, by obsessing over bands full of dead or really old people. He knows whats what because he knows that Freddie Mercury was the front man of Queen. He collects vinyl records and hangs them on his wall, and wont let my sister listen to them on her record player (a luxury that he neither has nor wants) because she “doesn’t even know anything about them.” Coincidentally, he tells my dad the same thing. My dad who probably, as a young adult, went through the same routine of knowing everything about every band on my brother’s wall.
Why is it so important for people to feel an affinity with the bands that they know about? Why do kids go through the cult phase of feeling superior to other people because of their style of music. A kid that listens to heavy metal feels superior to the kid that listens to rap because the rap kid has never heard of this Metal band or that singer.
Everyone knows that ____insert name____ is the best drummer to ever live. Who cares what rolling stone says: they don’t know what they’re talking about. (like saying that the Ford Focus is the greatest car ever made…regardless of what Car and Driver or even the Kelly Blue Book says)
Those of us who are lucky fall out of this phase like a kid falling off of a swing…with just a scraped knee and no psychological damage.
Some of us realize that music is as diverse as the colors in one of those really big Crayola boxes. Red isn’t just red, but a whole host of hues and shades that look like red.
After years of teenager hood, my need to impress friends with my CD collection ended a few years ago. Now, I take pride in knowing as few bands and songs on the radio as possible. The music I like is rather obscure and strange. I like it that way. I run a very small risk of finding someone who has heard of the bands I like, or of someone gushing over them and making me list my favorite songs or exchanging “I heard they…” stories.
I try to convert people to my music if and only if I think they would fully appreciate the music. I tell people about bands because I love them, not because everyone should know about them. I recognize that the majority of the country would not enjoy my music.
If they did, I wouldn’t like it anymore.
Bands I LOVE that many people have never heard of:
1. Animal Collective
2. (and consequently) Panda Bear
3. Sigur Ros
4. Devandra Banhart
5. Do Make Say Think
6. Islands
7. Mum
8. Storsveit Nix Noltes
9. Squirrel Nut Zippers
10. Air
11. The Album Leaf
These are all bands that I listen to regularly. Yes, I have Troy to thank for introducing me to them, but they have become my bands: what makes a bad day better, my inspiration, my companion through the grueling semesters, my relaxation time. I love them, and I don’t care if anyone else does. As a matter of fact, If you are one of those hateful “I like bands because other people like bands and I’ll probably ruin good music for you” kind of people, I’d rather you just go back to your Nsync and My Chemical Romance.
I had never stopped to think that maybe they were uninterested in my music because the music fromt their generation was 50 times better. I wouldn’t realize that until my 20’s when I developed a healthy love for Jefferson Airplane.
In the mean time I felt superior. I would argue in favor of my favorite bands, and I knew how amazing Nirvana was and how bad off the world was now that Cobain was dead. I knew all the names of all the important bands, and if I didn’t know about them, they must not be worth my time.
I watch so many kids go through this. My brother has finally gotten out of it, and is harkening back to the days before he was thought of, by obsessing over bands full of dead or really old people. He knows whats what because he knows that Freddie Mercury was the front man of Queen. He collects vinyl records and hangs them on his wall, and wont let my sister listen to them on her record player (a luxury that he neither has nor wants) because she “doesn’t even know anything about them.” Coincidentally, he tells my dad the same thing. My dad who probably, as a young adult, went through the same routine of knowing everything about every band on my brother’s wall.
Why is it so important for people to feel an affinity with the bands that they know about? Why do kids go through the cult phase of feeling superior to other people because of their style of music. A kid that listens to heavy metal feels superior to the kid that listens to rap because the rap kid has never heard of this Metal band or that singer.
Everyone knows that ____insert name____ is the best drummer to ever live. Who cares what rolling stone says: they don’t know what they’re talking about. (like saying that the Ford Focus is the greatest car ever made…regardless of what Car and Driver or even the Kelly Blue Book says)
Those of us who are lucky fall out of this phase like a kid falling off of a swing…with just a scraped knee and no psychological damage.
Some of us realize that music is as diverse as the colors in one of those really big Crayola boxes. Red isn’t just red, but a whole host of hues and shades that look like red.
After years of teenager hood, my need to impress friends with my CD collection ended a few years ago. Now, I take pride in knowing as few bands and songs on the radio as possible. The music I like is rather obscure and strange. I like it that way. I run a very small risk of finding someone who has heard of the bands I like, or of someone gushing over them and making me list my favorite songs or exchanging “I heard they…” stories.
I try to convert people to my music if and only if I think they would fully appreciate the music. I tell people about bands because I love them, not because everyone should know about them. I recognize that the majority of the country would not enjoy my music.
If they did, I wouldn’t like it anymore.
Bands I LOVE that many people have never heard of:
1. Animal Collective
2. (and consequently) Panda Bear
3. Sigur Ros
4. Devandra Banhart
5. Do Make Say Think
6. Islands
7. Mum
8. Storsveit Nix Noltes
9. Squirrel Nut Zippers
10. Air
11. The Album Leaf
These are all bands that I listen to regularly. Yes, I have Troy to thank for introducing me to them, but they have become my bands: what makes a bad day better, my inspiration, my companion through the grueling semesters, my relaxation time. I love them, and I don’t care if anyone else does. As a matter of fact, If you are one of those hateful “I like bands because other people like bands and I’ll probably ruin good music for you” kind of people, I’d rather you just go back to your Nsync and My Chemical Romance.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Lc-a pics
So I finally scanned in all of my Lc-a pictures. Took me long enough. I only posted a few of my favorite in this blog. Next on my list of things to do is upload them all to lomography.com, and/or flicker. one thing at a time, though. First things first: I need a shower and some breakfast. Uploading can wait for some other day.perhaps captions would be advantageous.
up first we have the Zen Duckie. part of my second test roll.
Believe it or not, this is paint, paintbrushes, and a plastic watercolor palette.
this is the one I mentioned in my last post where I thought I had wasted a shot on the ceiling.
Another of my new favorites. Those are lights hanging outside at Power Plant Live in Baltimore on New Year's Eve.
The Harbor Place clock. Still a long time till midnight!!
Alright, enough stalling, time for a shower.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Adventures in Lomoland
I now have several processed and printed rolls of 35mm shot with my Lc-a, and I love it. Lomography is a different world than photography. It requires the same attention to detail that a normal photographer must have, but relies more on happy accidents.
On new years eve, I walked through harbor place and the Pratt street pavilion in Baltimore, shooting random shots into the crowds of people, and a few of them turned out alright. One particular shot is of a few people in a magazine shop. The shot shows the people, but is mostly of the ceiling. I love it. I distinctly remember taking the shot, holding the camera in front of my belly and shooting upward, thinking that I had just wasted a shot on the ceiling.
When I received my camera, I was disappointed that the film counter does not work, but now, the number 36 (where the counter is stuck) is a lucky number that reminds me that I have a constant flow of unlimited shots. Not knowing when the last shot is coming, I will never try to reserve a shot; I will never hold the last exposure for something special. All of my shots will be random and mixed up.
Without the counter problem, I never would have investigated and analyzed the way the camera works, and would not have realized that, by loading the film with as little lead as possible, I can add extra exposures to my roll. I think I knew that this was a possibility with a manual camera, but I never would have put two and two together.
In spite of everything I have learned about my Lc-a and about photography, I must admit to my one unforgivably stupid mistake: judging distance incorrectly.
When I studied the prints from my first three rolls, I was dismayed that all of the close-range shots were blurry. I insisted that the camera must have a problem, because I am not an idiot, I can judge distances well enough to know when something is a foot or three feet from my face.
There in lies the problem: feet. I feel absolutely foolish for not considering that the camera was made in Russia. America is the only place where feet fill in for meters and inches override centimeters. Even as I type, my face is burning red and I am laughing at myself.
The worst part is that I never would have figured it out if Troy had not pointed it out to me over dinner. How humiliating.
But I am still alive, and so is my beautiful, cheaply made, black brick of a little camera. No harm done. Another lesson learned. The rolls were a success.
As soon as I find the time (and stop being perpetually lazy) I want to post some of my shots in my blog. I am even going to open an account on lomography.com and upload my pictures to a home page and compete in the contests and create a lomowall. A brave, new world has opened up to accept me, and I shall enter: camera and meter-stick in hand.
On new years eve, I walked through harbor place and the Pratt street pavilion in Baltimore, shooting random shots into the crowds of people, and a few of them turned out alright. One particular shot is of a few people in a magazine shop. The shot shows the people, but is mostly of the ceiling. I love it. I distinctly remember taking the shot, holding the camera in front of my belly and shooting upward, thinking that I had just wasted a shot on the ceiling.
When I received my camera, I was disappointed that the film counter does not work, but now, the number 36 (where the counter is stuck) is a lucky number that reminds me that I have a constant flow of unlimited shots. Not knowing when the last shot is coming, I will never try to reserve a shot; I will never hold the last exposure for something special. All of my shots will be random and mixed up.
Without the counter problem, I never would have investigated and analyzed the way the camera works, and would not have realized that, by loading the film with as little lead as possible, I can add extra exposures to my roll. I think I knew that this was a possibility with a manual camera, but I never would have put two and two together.
In spite of everything I have learned about my Lc-a and about photography, I must admit to my one unforgivably stupid mistake: judging distance incorrectly.
When I studied the prints from my first three rolls, I was dismayed that all of the close-range shots were blurry. I insisted that the camera must have a problem, because I am not an idiot, I can judge distances well enough to know when something is a foot or three feet from my face.
There in lies the problem: feet. I feel absolutely foolish for not considering that the camera was made in Russia. America is the only place where feet fill in for meters and inches override centimeters. Even as I type, my face is burning red and I am laughing at myself.
The worst part is that I never would have figured it out if Troy had not pointed it out to me over dinner. How humiliating.
But I am still alive, and so is my beautiful, cheaply made, black brick of a little camera. No harm done. Another lesson learned. The rolls were a success.
As soon as I find the time (and stop being perpetually lazy) I want to post some of my shots in my blog. I am even going to open an account on lomography.com and upload my pictures to a home page and compete in the contests and create a lomowall. A brave, new world has opened up to accept me, and I shall enter: camera and meter-stick in hand.
Anger.
I finally watched the entire “Zeitgeist” movie tonight. By the end of the viewing, I felt an overwhelming sense of despair and nausea. I do not consider myself an overly religious person, so the cracks at religion gave me something to ponder, but the theories about the government and war and 9-11 made me sick.
I am totally against the National ID. Completely and 100% against it in all forms, yet there is nothing I can do to change it. After consideration, it occurred to me that my recent pessimism and general distrust spawns from a direct dislike of all things that are out of my control. The National ID—which, by the way, has an E.T.A. of May 2008—will impact every tiny aspect of my existence, yet I am helpless to change or deny it. Designed to replace the Drivers License, SS Card, and Credit/Bank card, this one card will silently take over the daily life of every American in a way that Microsoft can only imagine.
Whether we, the American people, like it or not.
The next step will be an implanted chip in every newborn. One child already has the chip. Some ignorant parent has already decided “for the child’s safety” to have her newborn child injected with a chip that will act like a Garmin or TomTom. (Only this chip will not talk or give the child direction, or save it from the evil lurking behind the red white and blue). This child is the first among of many. Poor kid.
Perhaps I sound unpatriotic. Perhaps I am. I have nothing against my country, but something more like a distrust of mankind and its world-crushing love for power and money.
I foresee, in the future, communes of people banning together in order to live without the chip. Those of us who do not buy the “for home lance security” B.S. will do what we can to avoid the chip, to live outside the realm of organized and imprisoned society. But the chip will be needed to shop, to own a vehicle, to buy a house. For every large group of people who slit the skin between their thumb and forefinger to remove the device, one will have to play the lamb to support those chip-less refugees.
A scar on the hand will become akin to the WWII Star of David, or the now familiar “dark mark”: a hunted aspect of human life. People with that scar will become synonymous with drug dealers, liars, murders, terrorists and general scum. But the people with scars will depend on the self-sacrifice of a person who keeps the chip intact. The intact person will become like those who lead the Underground Railroad, or those students who were massacred for protesting the Vietnam War. Their double lives will save whole communities.
I hope people open their eyes before this happens. We, the college students and young people of 2008 should be hosting protests and sit-ins and peaceful demonstrations against things like the “War on Terror” and National ID’s and the Patriot Act. We should be fighting, not subscribing to everything we are told, not blindly submitting to the fate that our country is planning for us. I fear that by the time the country wakes up and wipes the crusty sleep from its eyes, it will be too late. We will have lost the right to do what we should be doing now. We will have allowed the world to fall down around us, and will have trampled our own morals and beliefs in the process.
What causes several times the destruction of an earthquake, and destroys itself and everything in its path in the name of faceless and useless values based on scare-tactics? What kills humans, animals, forests, oceans, and itself? What force on this earth is gluttonous and greedy? What can destroy an entire planet in just a few million years?
Look in the mirror.
What really frustrates me is my lack of control. As I mentioned somewhere at the beginning of this rant, I have a general disdain for any impacting force that I cannot alter. I cannot protest consumerism because society is centered on consuming everything in its path. I cannot refuse to buy food, I cannot refuse to go to college, I cannot refuse to buy clothing and computers and calculators and cell phones and houses and lamps and cars and shoes and everything that society has made necessary for modern existence. I cannot protest China’s recent attempt to inundate the world with Lead poisoning because China makes everything. I cannot protest hormones and chemicals in my food because organic food is not guaranteed, and is hard to come by. I cannot protest the education system in this country because I need a degree.
I cannot protest the National ID and the subsequent chip that my children will be forced to have implanted in their hand because the man behind the curtain can take away my right to protest, or take away my child, or take away my life. No questions asked.
The man behind the curtain can take away anything. Any time I learn of a new conspiracy theory about the government and someone tells me that it could never happen, I wonder what the average American must think of the current government. Do they really believe that a group of FBI agents could not force their way into a home and take a person from bed for no reason? I really am not one for ill-founded conspiracy, but this seems logical to me. A government that has the power to invade other countries, a government that has the power to pass laws and give rights and take rights and do almost anything in the name of “national security” can do whatever it wants. Easily.
So what does this mean? It means what you want it to mean. One can believe it or not, but ultimately, we will find out soon enough if any of it is true. If the National ID starts in five months, other forms of Hell cannot be far behind.
For me, it gives me pause to seriously weigh the pros and cons of bringing children into this world. More simply, it makes me consider whether I want to bring children into this country.
As a side note…
I wonder how a random person who might stumble across this blog might perceive me. The tendency to write or blog only when something makes me angry might give the impression that I hate everything. I really just want to make a difference. There are so many hate-filled, ignorant, selfish, destructive, annoying people in the world, and I just want to say something or do something to make it better.
I digress.
People need to stop wasting anger.
Stop being angry that you were accidentally charged an extra dollar at the supermarket, and be angry that the world is being destroyed and your rights are being taken away.
Make anger an emotion worth having.
I am totally against the National ID. Completely and 100% against it in all forms, yet there is nothing I can do to change it. After consideration, it occurred to me that my recent pessimism and general distrust spawns from a direct dislike of all things that are out of my control. The National ID—which, by the way, has an E.T.A. of May 2008—will impact every tiny aspect of my existence, yet I am helpless to change or deny it. Designed to replace the Drivers License, SS Card, and Credit/Bank card, this one card will silently take over the daily life of every American in a way that Microsoft can only imagine.
Whether we, the American people, like it or not.
The next step will be an implanted chip in every newborn. One child already has the chip. Some ignorant parent has already decided “for the child’s safety” to have her newborn child injected with a chip that will act like a Garmin or TomTom. (Only this chip will not talk or give the child direction, or save it from the evil lurking behind the red white and blue). This child is the first among of many. Poor kid.
Perhaps I sound unpatriotic. Perhaps I am. I have nothing against my country, but something more like a distrust of mankind and its world-crushing love for power and money.
I foresee, in the future, communes of people banning together in order to live without the chip. Those of us who do not buy the “for home lance security” B.S. will do what we can to avoid the chip, to live outside the realm of organized and imprisoned society. But the chip will be needed to shop, to own a vehicle, to buy a house. For every large group of people who slit the skin between their thumb and forefinger to remove the device, one will have to play the lamb to support those chip-less refugees.
A scar on the hand will become akin to the WWII Star of David, or the now familiar “dark mark”: a hunted aspect of human life. People with that scar will become synonymous with drug dealers, liars, murders, terrorists and general scum. But the people with scars will depend on the self-sacrifice of a person who keeps the chip intact. The intact person will become like those who lead the Underground Railroad, or those students who were massacred for protesting the Vietnam War. Their double lives will save whole communities.
I hope people open their eyes before this happens. We, the college students and young people of 2008 should be hosting protests and sit-ins and peaceful demonstrations against things like the “War on Terror” and National ID’s and the Patriot Act. We should be fighting, not subscribing to everything we are told, not blindly submitting to the fate that our country is planning for us. I fear that by the time the country wakes up and wipes the crusty sleep from its eyes, it will be too late. We will have lost the right to do what we should be doing now. We will have allowed the world to fall down around us, and will have trampled our own morals and beliefs in the process.
What causes several times the destruction of an earthquake, and destroys itself and everything in its path in the name of faceless and useless values based on scare-tactics? What kills humans, animals, forests, oceans, and itself? What force on this earth is gluttonous and greedy? What can destroy an entire planet in just a few million years?
Look in the mirror.
What really frustrates me is my lack of control. As I mentioned somewhere at the beginning of this rant, I have a general disdain for any impacting force that I cannot alter. I cannot protest consumerism because society is centered on consuming everything in its path. I cannot refuse to buy food, I cannot refuse to go to college, I cannot refuse to buy clothing and computers and calculators and cell phones and houses and lamps and cars and shoes and everything that society has made necessary for modern existence. I cannot protest China’s recent attempt to inundate the world with Lead poisoning because China makes everything. I cannot protest hormones and chemicals in my food because organic food is not guaranteed, and is hard to come by. I cannot protest the education system in this country because I need a degree.
I cannot protest the National ID and the subsequent chip that my children will be forced to have implanted in their hand because the man behind the curtain can take away my right to protest, or take away my child, or take away my life. No questions asked.
The man behind the curtain can take away anything. Any time I learn of a new conspiracy theory about the government and someone tells me that it could never happen, I wonder what the average American must think of the current government. Do they really believe that a group of FBI agents could not force their way into a home and take a person from bed for no reason? I really am not one for ill-founded conspiracy, but this seems logical to me. A government that has the power to invade other countries, a government that has the power to pass laws and give rights and take rights and do almost anything in the name of “national security” can do whatever it wants. Easily.
So what does this mean? It means what you want it to mean. One can believe it or not, but ultimately, we will find out soon enough if any of it is true. If the National ID starts in five months, other forms of Hell cannot be far behind.
For me, it gives me pause to seriously weigh the pros and cons of bringing children into this world. More simply, it makes me consider whether I want to bring children into this country.
As a side note…
I wonder how a random person who might stumble across this blog might perceive me. The tendency to write or blog only when something makes me angry might give the impression that I hate everything. I really just want to make a difference. There are so many hate-filled, ignorant, selfish, destructive, annoying people in the world, and I just want to say something or do something to make it better.
I digress.
People need to stop wasting anger.
Stop being angry that you were accidentally charged an extra dollar at the supermarket, and be angry that the world is being destroyed and your rights are being taken away.
Make anger an emotion worth having.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Serving Chat Book Idea
I work at the Olive Garden. I admit it. This hateful place has become the fuel for my writing fire. My memoir class was the most inspiring and useful writing class I have ever taken, and I learned that creative writing does not have to be fiction.
By the second week of the class, I decided that I would begin constructing personal essays based on my experiences in serving and food service. Most people think it has been done before, but few people have written about the restaurant industry in an unbiased and constructive manner. Movies and books on this topic are written by bitter servers who want to 'get back' at restaurant patrons.
I want to tell the truth. The unbiased truth from a fly-on-the-wall point of view. I want to leave m opinions and feelings in the kitchen, so to speak, and write in the same way that I serve.
Serving tables takes quite a bit of patience, creativity, and the ability to put your own feelings and opinions aside long enough to feed a group of people and get them out of the restaurant quickly with a smile on their face and as much food as possible in their belly. Servers are self-less, servile actors and actresses. We really don't care about your day or your problems, or the weather, or even what you thought of the food. we care about the wallet that you usually do not open wide enough to pay us. An objective view of this 'caring to not care' phenomenon would be much more important than a personal essay about how servers hate their jobs.
I strongly believe that I must follow through with this idea. I have to publish it, if only because no one else can. Though, as a student with no previous publication experience, I'm just a bit intimidated by the idea that i might not be good enough to do it.
If I'm not good enough to have my work published, perhaps I should chose a new career path.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
ten books to read this year
Since winter break only lasts so long, I am going to condense my reading list to one book: The Brothers' Karamazov.
I read constantly during the semester, but never what I want to read. I get stuck with things like Logic of Language, Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, and The MLA Handbook. Not my favorite things to read. For Christmas, I asked for and received quite a few books, including Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and the complete collection of Fairytales from the Brothers’ Grimm. Sure, these sound like children’s’ books, but they really aren’t. Any Writing Major or Writer, for that matter, who has not read those books should be ashamed.
Writing is about telling stories, and a writer who does not read is probably not a good writer. One does not understand the art of good story telling unless one first investigates the classics.
I have an extensive library ranging from current best sellers to classics, to self-help and chat books. I have read…. most…. of my books, but there are a particular few volumes that continually hide from me and avoid being read. I have made a list of the next ten books that I will read no matter what. Excepting those required texts for the coming semester, I will read no other books until I have completed the list. (Perhaps I will be lucky enough to find one or two from my list on the textbook list this semester. Doubt it, but it is possible)
1. The Brothers’ Karamazov
2. Don Quixote
3. Garden of Eden
4. House of Mirth
5. Galapagos
6. Mrs. Dalloway
7. West Side Story
8. Les Miserable
9. Catch 22
10. The Catcher in the Rye
How, you might ask, have I survived as an English/Writing student for so long without reading some of theses books??!! I really must be a poor excuse for an English major, having not read The Catcher in the Rye. Non-readers accost me all the time and try to get the best of me by telling me how they ready TCitR and Animal Farm for their Freshmen Composition class. I am perfectly happy having skipped over that class altogether.
I find that I have developed a horrible habit: I do not read the required reading for class; I wait and read it the week after the semester ends. I never have enough time to devote to each book, so I wait. Otherwise, I read sections of the book and have no interest to read the whole thing later. I just wish professors understood this instead of thinking that I am lazy. It never occurs to them that I simply take my education more seriously than they do.
I read constantly during the semester, but never what I want to read. I get stuck with things like Logic of Language, Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, and The MLA Handbook. Not my favorite things to read. For Christmas, I asked for and received quite a few books, including Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and the complete collection of Fairytales from the Brothers’ Grimm. Sure, these sound like children’s’ books, but they really aren’t. Any Writing Major or Writer, for that matter, who has not read those books should be ashamed.
Writing is about telling stories, and a writer who does not read is probably not a good writer. One does not understand the art of good story telling unless one first investigates the classics.
I have an extensive library ranging from current best sellers to classics, to self-help and chat books. I have read…. most…. of my books, but there are a particular few volumes that continually hide from me and avoid being read. I have made a list of the next ten books that I will read no matter what. Excepting those required texts for the coming semester, I will read no other books until I have completed the list. (Perhaps I will be lucky enough to find one or two from my list on the textbook list this semester. Doubt it, but it is possible)
1. The Brothers’ Karamazov
2. Don Quixote
3. Garden of Eden
4. House of Mirth
5. Galapagos
6. Mrs. Dalloway
7. West Side Story
8. Les Miserable
9. Catch 22
10. The Catcher in the Rye
How, you might ask, have I survived as an English/Writing student for so long without reading some of theses books??!! I really must be a poor excuse for an English major, having not read The Catcher in the Rye. Non-readers accost me all the time and try to get the best of me by telling me how they ready TCitR and Animal Farm for their Freshmen Composition class. I am perfectly happy having skipped over that class altogether.
I find that I have developed a horrible habit: I do not read the required reading for class; I wait and read it the week after the semester ends. I never have enough time to devote to each book, so I wait. Otherwise, I read sections of the book and have no interest to read the whole thing later. I just wish professors understood this instead of thinking that I am lazy. It never occurs to them that I simply take my education more seriously than they do.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
questions to start the year
Something must be written. I really must write. Write must I, really. Really, I must write. I must really write. There are many topics to write about, yet I ain't got nuthin. New Years Day. And no topic sparks an idea. Nothing seems important enough to write. So, instead, I write nothing.
I went to Baltimore last night. That sounds like something worthy of my keyboard. There were hordes of people. The SWAT team circled Harbor Place, and I left. The lights and reflections and boats were pretty.
Nothing stays the same. Some people argue that change is good, but I must disagree in some instances.
As a child, I could roam the Inner Harbor for hours. My friends and I would walk the two miles to the Harbor and occupy ourselves with watching people and eating food. Back then, it is important to note, food would not take up all of our money; we might even have enough left over to buy a new scarf.
"Mayor Shelia Dixon" was plastered on every poster, truck, stage, instrument, building, boat, inanimate object within a mile of the Harbor. Before midnight, she yelled to her "multitudes" that she plans to make Baltimore the safest city in the world.
crack dreams.
Queen Elizabeth has more power over Baltimore than this woman.
And she was wearing a dead animal on her neck.
Not sure why I am personally offended by fur coats. I wear sheep skin UGG boots, and have several leather purses. What is the difference? Am I just a hypocrite? Probably.
Midnight was destroyed by a fight between myself and my boyfriend. I do wonder about this year. I was fine with 2007. Not a bad year, though they seem to get progessively worse. Is it the year? or is it my age? or is it my increasing pessimism? cant it be helped?
Why do people collect things? My mother obsesses over antique dishes. Obsesses. She never uses them, wont sell them to collect their monetary value. She just hordes them.
I collect items of no use that would ordinarily be thrown away. Not because I want to reclaim them, or give them purpose, or because I feel they have a value to anyone. I collect the items I collect because they are pleasing to my eye. They are pretty, or evoke some feeling.
What does a coin collector feel about his coin collection?
Without collections, items would be lost. Someone needs to collect old coins because of the historical value.
the same might be said about pottery and art.
Who decided that people should collect Holiday Barbie? Beanie Babies? Star Wars figurines? teapots?
Is it a race to see who can own the most items?
Why do we continue to make some things? we mass-produce so many things that no one wants.
everything is liked by someone. This is a point that fascinates me to no end. Somebody in the world likes the sound of breaking bones. Someone likes cabbage. Many people enjoy the smell of dog poop. why?
is it an appreciation for something strange that makes people like some things? Are masochists and sadists mentally unhealthy? or am I weird for being repulsed by such things?
I wonder, often, if I am the one who is wrong about life. Is my perception skewed?
I think it is wrong to drive 90mph on twisty roads while drunk. Am I the one who is wrong?
I find it repulsive to smear my feces on public toilets. Am I wrong?
I cannot bring myself to torture, hurt, maim, kill another living being. Should I try harder to do these things like other people? Are people who hunt for sport intelligent beings who have life figured out?
Do some people feel that they are more important than the other 99.9% of the world's population? what is the difference between this and selfishness?
Does the person speeding at 90mph have a much more important destination than the rest of us? what about the person they rear-end and kill? Was that newly-departed person simply in the way? does this qualify as "survival of the fittest?"
who are these bi-ped fiends I share a planet with?
should marijuana be legalized and alcohol banned? I'm beginning to think so.
I went to Baltimore last night. That sounds like something worthy of my keyboard. There were hordes of people. The SWAT team circled Harbor Place, and I left. The lights and reflections and boats were pretty.
Nothing stays the same. Some people argue that change is good, but I must disagree in some instances.
As a child, I could roam the Inner Harbor for hours. My friends and I would walk the two miles to the Harbor and occupy ourselves with watching people and eating food. Back then, it is important to note, food would not take up all of our money; we might even have enough left over to buy a new scarf.
"Mayor Shelia Dixon" was plastered on every poster, truck, stage, instrument, building, boat, inanimate object within a mile of the Harbor. Before midnight, she yelled to her "multitudes" that she plans to make Baltimore the safest city in the world.
crack dreams.
Queen Elizabeth has more power over Baltimore than this woman.
And she was wearing a dead animal on her neck.
Not sure why I am personally offended by fur coats. I wear sheep skin UGG boots, and have several leather purses. What is the difference? Am I just a hypocrite? Probably.
Midnight was destroyed by a fight between myself and my boyfriend. I do wonder about this year. I was fine with 2007. Not a bad year, though they seem to get progessively worse. Is it the year? or is it my age? or is it my increasing pessimism? cant it be helped?
Why do people collect things? My mother obsesses over antique dishes. Obsesses. She never uses them, wont sell them to collect their monetary value. She just hordes them.
I collect items of no use that would ordinarily be thrown away. Not because I want to reclaim them, or give them purpose, or because I feel they have a value to anyone. I collect the items I collect because they are pleasing to my eye. They are pretty, or evoke some feeling.
What does a coin collector feel about his coin collection?
Without collections, items would be lost. Someone needs to collect old coins because of the historical value.
the same might be said about pottery and art.
Who decided that people should collect Holiday Barbie? Beanie Babies? Star Wars figurines? teapots?
Is it a race to see who can own the most items?
Why do we continue to make some things? we mass-produce so many things that no one wants.
everything is liked by someone. This is a point that fascinates me to no end. Somebody in the world likes the sound of breaking bones. Someone likes cabbage. Many people enjoy the smell of dog poop. why?
is it an appreciation for something strange that makes people like some things? Are masochists and sadists mentally unhealthy? or am I weird for being repulsed by such things?
I wonder, often, if I am the one who is wrong about life. Is my perception skewed?
I think it is wrong to drive 90mph on twisty roads while drunk. Am I the one who is wrong?
I find it repulsive to smear my feces on public toilets. Am I wrong?
I cannot bring myself to torture, hurt, maim, kill another living being. Should I try harder to do these things like other people? Are people who hunt for sport intelligent beings who have life figured out?
Do some people feel that they are more important than the other 99.9% of the world's population? what is the difference between this and selfishness?
Does the person speeding at 90mph have a much more important destination than the rest of us? what about the person they rear-end and kill? Was that newly-departed person simply in the way? does this qualify as "survival of the fittest?"
who are these bi-ped fiends I share a planet with?
should marijuana be legalized and alcohol banned? I'm beginning to think so.
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