hello, blog

I'll skip the excuses for being a poor blogger and just get right to business....

1. The United States just elected its first black president, and I feel that I should at least say something about it, so bear with me:

I will not say who I voted for or what I believe, in an attempt to avoid random angry comments from people. I will say, however, that for the first time in a long while, I have hope. I am so tired of hearing how horrible our government is, and hearing that things need to change, and I am just happy to finally hear that change is coming. Even bad change is change, and anything that changes has a chance to make something better. I wish The future President all the best, and I hope that he may be numbered among the great in our History.

2. I have a job. after what seems like ages of joblessness and searching and interviewing, I have landed the perfect job as a Graphic Designer. I am so excited to have finally reached the point in life where I will no longer have to wait on tables or hold temporary jobs just to make money for gas. This job comes with an arsenal of fantastic benefits and perks, and I could not be happier.

3. Troy bought me a flickr pro account today. randomly. So that means that I have something to keep me occupied until I start my new job, and I will be scanning in my moleskine paintings. I also no longer have to delete pictures just to add more. so keep an eye out for flickr updates.

4. Troy and I have been re-thinking the marriage thing. I mean, the marriage is still on, its just the Wedding that is up in the air. There is alot to consider, but I think that, once we make the big decisions (venue, food, day) things will be fun, and much more easy. and, FYI, i do not want to hear wedding horror stories. I wont say that mine will be different, because I know it wont, but I refuse to allow fear to run my wedding.

Now, if I could just afford the dress I want. Believe it or not, it is part of the Disney's Princess collection. It is beautiful, but I am afraid of the price tag.

5. We have begun working on our future home. Its a complicated narrative, so I'll save it for a later day.

6. I have finished my first moleskine book. I'm addicted, and I'm glad. The motivation and creative outlet is good for me.

7. Maryland might get its first snow flurries this weekend. Not sure how I feel about it yet. I'm not really ready for it.

8. "If All Goes Wrong" just came out, and of course Troy bought it that day. If you are a Smashing Pumpkins fan, or just a fan of music and the artistic struggle behind good music, you should see the interview with Pete Townshend and the documentary. Genius. BIlly Corgan always has a way of taking my own personal beliefs and putting them into words.

9. The Pour House closed down. The Pour House is a local coffee shop in my town, and, while it was always packed with obnoxious teens and the prices were pretty high, it was still a local business beloved by the community. I spent the better part of my highschool and early college years there, and now I cannot believe it is gone. I have been going less and less in the past few years, but it felt good to know that the place would be there if ever I needed it. NOt to mention, now, that is one less local business. some person's savings and dreams, devoured by the economy. As much as I love starbucks coffee, I would rather see the local starbcks shut its doors, at least starbucks has a chance to come back. a local business, however, cannot just bounce back, it sucks up every resourse the owner has, and then thats it. I try my best to patronize local business as often as possible because they have more integrity and sincerity toward customers than a giant corporate chain. But, alas, the pour house is no more.

10. Gas is currently 1.97 in my home town. How crazy is that? I do not even know what else to say about it. lets just leave it at this: I hope it stays that way.

11. finally, a word about football: HURRAY RAVENS. lets just keep moving forward and I'll be happy.

thats it for now. good day to you, my random reader.

Pasta, of all things

I have been developing a deep disgust for my fellow humans. Perhaps "countrymen" would fit better than "humans" as I am sure that the people for whom I feel the most disdain are primarily Americans.

Americans love to eat. But we dont just eat the way other people from other countries do: we eat in excess! we cant just order one meal and be happy, we have to get as much as we possibly can for our dollar. How dare we stereotype other nationalities and call them cheap or swindlers when we try to cram as much in our wallets and mouths as we possibly can.

a direct representation of this is the "Never Ending Pasta Bowl" at the Olive Garden. disgusting. for $8.95, a single person can get endless pasta, bread, and choice of endless soup or salad. thats fine, especially since the price is so low, but it just is not enough for the Americans.

Endless pasta: people literally sit and eat bowl after bowl after bowl of pasta. I am surprised that people dont regularly die of carb-shock! and as if bowl after bowl of penne, or linguine, or angelhair is not enough, add the sauce: alfredo, meat sauce, five cheese marinara! did you know that eating one portion of Olive Garden alfredo sauce is like drinking a pint of heavy cream? its true. but dont tell the corporate office I told you.

so we have the endless pasta. that should be plenty to fill up any person. It is endless.

but, that obviously isnt enough, so first they have to cram themselves with endless soup or salad. So many people ask me: "the never ending pasta comes with endless salad, right?" as if, if the salad was not included, they would not order the pasta. is it that important to have endless salad with endless pasta? and god forbid the garlic bread does not come out constantly.

how do these people eat so much?

and then complain about McDonalds having such calorie loaded food!!!

You can probably eat five Big Macs for the caloric intake of the five cheese ziti at Olive Garden. I'm serious.

so my new complex is this: I cannot watch people eat without feeling queasy. It is fine if i am sitting down in the resturant and eating and am able to ignore the people around me, but as a server, watching the guests mindlessly stuff themeselves into a food-induced coma disgusts me.

Have you ever seen Casper, the one with Christina Ricci? the scene where the three ghosts are eating breakfast and all of the food is just falling on the floor...thats what i imagine when i am at work and serve people their food. it literally makes me sick.

and the bicker over the smallest price change. the Never Ending Pasta Bowl, like i said, costs 8.95. that is almost $1 more than a lunch portion of pasta. yet people complain that it is expensive! how, i ask you, is endless amounts of pasta, 75 bowls of pasta, if you wish, expensive at $9? how can people take themselves that seriously?

and then there is the lack of manners. We consider ourselves advanced, ahead of other countries, yet we have no table manners. NONE. we shout at the table, answer cell phones in the middle of dinner, allow our children to literally throw food in resturants, much less run around the resturant and then get upset when the server trips on the little brat and spills hot food on them.

and we chew with our mouth open, stuff our mouths till food is over flowing down our chin. then we speak to the server (who we treat like a dog and snap our fingers at) with full mouths. heres a news flash, america: most servers are college students, or college graduates trying to get a new job. I.E. they probably have a higher degree than you do and are usually smarter than you. dont treat them like infants.

i need to get out of the resturant industry. hopefully I'll get a call back from one of my applications soon. the food service industry depresses me.

self-fulfilling prophecy

i am so sick of waiting on other people. my impatience on this particular occasion is brought to you by the Welter staff who are not doing what needs to be done so that my life is not miserable next week.

i have to fit a month's worth of work into one week, and i had no idea that that was the case until this weekend. press day is april23 and i have no cover art, no written work, much less author bios, order of appearance, or logo. now, if this was my magazine, and i could take care of all of that myself, it would be done by now. but no...i have to wait for a democratic decision on cover art that is apparently not even created yet. i also have to wait for 5 people to proof 43 stories, essays, and poems. they are supposed to have them to me by the 17, and as of yet, they havnt looked at them. i have to wait for someone to tell me that i can go ahead and create a logo, but that logo has to depend on the cover art that i dont have. how can i figure out how to incorporate the cover in the layout without first seeing the cover?

this impatience has extended to disliking people who do not immediately respond to text messages, phone calls that are not picked up on the first ring, being left waiting for a response on ichat, especially when the other person is the one who started the conversation, traffic, sitting in class and listening to a lecture when there are so many other things i would rather be doing with my time, havint to write papers instead of reading a book that i would love to read, slow windows computers in the computer lab at school, being in front of, behind, next to, or within a 50 mile radius of a cop while driving, email, having to be nice to people because they are in my class, when i would rather be in charge so that i can enforce the rules and deadlines in a way that ensures they will be done, not being in a position to step on toes when necessary, and having to move from my bed to my desk to connect my macbook to my external harddrive. thats it, for my birthday, i want some sort of wireless or bluetooth external!!!

why do all of my feelings become clear after i leave?

i dont even know what to type. i had all kinds of good things planned for this blog: some social commentary, some discussion of what constitutes anger and what a quarterlife crisis really is.


but the sad truth is that i have an overpowering sense of rage that is pent up inside of me. there is no way to let it out. none. and i think that is what is wrong with everything in the world. we are so suppressed and restricted. we have to worry about hurting the feelings of people we love, and people we dont love, and we need to make sure we dont do anything that will ruin people's good opinion of us, or change anyone's perspective of us. destruction of property is illegal. detruction of people is immoral and illegal. trowing things is frowned upon, i havnt screamed...actually yelled or screamed and raised my voice since middle school. hitting a tennis ball isnt very satisfying if you arent good at it.



there is no outlet for the rage and pent up emotion i am struggling with.


we have reached victorian england again. we are quakers. we are fucking pilgrims who burn people at the stake for feeling.



and i hate it.


even the word hate has no meaning now. i hate many things: onions, ignorant people, religious pamphlets, crying, my job. but saying that i hate them does not express fully how i feel. nothing can.


feelings are static. they change, but they cannot effect change.


thats why some kid beat her teacher, and two kids beat each other with hockey sticks. thats why so many people are killed daily. because god, or whatever else is responsible for this shit hole decided to eff with us and give us these feelings, but no way to contain, control, or outlet them.

and i am sick of it. perhaps i should give up on worrying about what people think, and hurting feelings. maybe i should stop letting myself feel shitty. perhaps i should look to hurt people. then i would be normal in the eyes of society.


i wish my mouth could open as wide as anatomically possible, but i have a restricting divice psychologically. damn morals and caring.

adventures in serving italian food

As a server, I find that the strangest things make my day. For example, I was ecstatic that two tables left an extra pen on my table. Two completely different tables, back to back! That might sound trivial, but when you find a good pen and get used to using it, and then have to let a guest use it to sign a credit card receipt and they take it…well, its just devastating. We usually carry three pens at a time, so if two tables steal a pen each, youre down to one. And it is only a matter of time before someone steals the last one. How do you write a complicated food order for a party of 12 without a pen? You don’t.

But today the restaurant gods smiled upon me, and was given two beautiful pens. Clicky Pens!!

But pens are nothing compared to genuine manners and pleasant attitude from your table. A smile, a wave, or even something as simple as answers to your questions:

“how are you today?”
“Yeah, I’ll take the minestrone.”

Is not acceptable

“ma’am, would you prefer soup or salad?”
“I thought it already came with that big bowl of salad!”
“yes, ma’am, but you have a choice between the salad or a bowl of soup.”
“so you’re not going to bring my salad? I thought you brought salad!”

and so on.

But sometimes you find people who actually listen, who actually care about what you have to say, and do not cut you off in mid sentence.

Personally, I am perfectly happy with any table that does not look down its nose at me or snap at me or clap its hands at me or try to tell me how to do my job.

I especially LOOOOOVE middle aged women. I will deal with any grouchy, smelly, pain in the butt table of 30 toddlers before I will volunteer for a table of over-dressed, control freak middle aged women.

I honestly do not understand what is happening in this world. All white women between the age of 29 and 60 seem inclined to bad temper, bad manners, bossiness, controlling attitude, too much bad perfume, god complex, stupid over-the-top laughter, and prissy snotty flat out rudeness. They shop at kohl’s and all wear the same thing, have the same interest in basket bingo, coach bags, competing against each other’s kids, too much makeup and jewelry, laziness, and just a general bad attitude. Theyre the type that will sit and take up a table for 4 hours without a tip, or have to order for their husband, friend, kid, elderly parent, or the person at the table next to them. No, he doesn’t want peach tea, regular will do just fine. Or honey, you don’t like alfredo sauce. Or I want the capellini pomodor (literally tomatoes and angel hair pasta) but with no tomatoes. Or with Alfred sauce instead of the tomatos.

I swear, that dish is the most complicated I have ever seen. It is literally diced roma tomatoes and angel hair pasta, but at least once a week I have a conversation like this one:

“Can I get fettuccini Alfredo instead of the tomato sauce on the pomodoro?”
“do you mean fettuccini or alfredo?”
“fettuccine alfredo”
“so you don’t want capillini pomodoro at all?”
“yes, I just don’t like the sauce”
“ma’am, the dish is literally angel hair pasta with tomatoes. Do you want alfredo sauce in place of the tomatoes?”
“yes, that’s what I said”
“oh, I’m sorry, I thought you wanted fettuccini alfredo. Fettuccine is a pasta, and alfredo is a white sauce.”
“yes, the white sauce”
“but you still want the angel hair, right?”
“it comes with angel hair?”
“yes ma’am.”
“no, just give me the thick flat noodles, what are they called?”
“Fettuccini”
“yeah, them”
“so you want fettuccini with alfredo sauce?”
“yes, but made like this capilini pomodoro.”
“ma’am. That dish is completely different. Capalini is a type of pasta that we call angel hair. Pomodoro is the sauce. Its literally diced tomatoes. it is angel hair with tomatoes. fettuccine alfredo is the flat noodles with a white sauce.”
“well cant they substitute it?”
“theyre two different dishes. Look, lets do it this way: do you want angel hair or fettuccine?”
“fettuccine”
“and red or white sauce?”
“white”
“okay, I’ll bring you fettuccine alfredo.”
“well doesn’t that cost more?”
“yes. The alfredo sauce is more expensive than the pomodoro sauce.”
“well, just bring me the cheaper one.”
“If I bring the cheaper one, it will be the tomato sauce with angel hair pasta.”
“It doesn’t matter. Oh, and no olives, croutons, tomatoes, onions, or peppers on my salad. But can you throw a few extra cucumbers on there?”
“we don’t have cucumbers”
“are you sure? They did it for me last week.”
“ma’am, ive worked here for three years. We have never, in the history of the restaurant had cucumbers.”
“I swear they had them last week. Are you sure?”
“positive.”
“alright, just put some French dressing on it then.”
“ we do not have French dressing either.”
“can I speak to yoru manager? You’re getting a little bit of an attitude and I’m not sure I like it.”
“gladly.”


I swear, this is the type of conversation I have with people allllllllll the time. And when they don’t understand because they aren’t listening, they think I’m either rude or stupid.


I love my job.

this is it.

the day has arrived. i am sitting on troy's couch waiting for him to shower. we're leaving for dulles in a little bit. im going to drop him off and return home alone.

as was expected, the day for this scary trip (my first ever driving by myself in, over, around, near, through dc) has turned out to be quite the fun, warm, pleasant, sunny, peachy day.

and by that, i mean i just spent a good hour scraping a layer of ice from all sides and surfaces of my car. and i was soaked. it wouldnt be bad if the temperature would rise. but the ice will turn to rain and the rain will turn to snow while i am on my way home.


thrills.

troy doesnt seem worried that the weather will be too bad for me to drive in, so i guess i shouldnt worry.


but then again, my car stalls out and starts smoking in deep puddles.


i need a new car. first item of business after graduation and new job.


in the mean time, i had a fight with my mother over sheets this morning. i had a fit because the sheets I bought (for over 50$) were given to my brother to use. my mother said i shouldnt take my problems with troy leaving out on her. i think she missed the point.

she doiesnt understand that i basically confine everything i own to one room. i buy all of my own things. the only public domain items in my house that i use are water, electricity, and food. i buy and wash my own sheets, towels, clothes. i use very few dishes, and wash them when i finish.

i swear, i was not made to share a house with five other people.

but graduation is around the corner. i cant wait.

so i got a little sidetracked.

the point is that i will be stuck with her for three weeks telling me any time i am angry that i should go yell at troy or that i shouldnt take my anger or frustration at his leaving out on her. she loves to rub this sort of stuff in.

i finally gave troy the big project. i hope he doesnt think it is dumb. i hope he appreciates it and likes it for what it is. i hope the whole thing wasnt a waste of my month and a half.

i skipped school yesterday. my department head/faculty adviser said i made the correct decision. i feel a little less guilty now.


im hungry. i took troy's word that he was going to make us breakfast. somehow i think our plans have changed.

The Illywhacker

I have never been unable to find a textbook in my life. I am usually the person who can find a copy cheaper and earlier than my classmates. I feel as thought the University gods have chosen my number: it is my time to suffer.

I was supposed to have read 33 chapters of this damnable book by tomorrow afternoon. Not going to happen.

The university bookstore informed me that the publisher is out of stock, the UB library has told me that they gave their last copy to a student this morning. Not a single Barnes and Noble in Maryland or Southern Pennsylvania have a copy. Neither Borders nor Greetings and Readings have had a copy in the past two weeks.

Lets not mention Villa Julie, McDaniel, towson, Goucher, St. Marys, all of the community colleges of Marlyland and the University Circuit.

Oh, but they do have a copy in College Park.

Yes, let me drive to college park for a textbook. I'll do it right after I get out of class tonight at 10:45pm.


Well, what can I do? I guess this means I get off easy. Oh happy day.

What the hell is an Illywhacker, anyway?

According to google definitions, an illywhacker is " a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey"

Wikipedia also says it is a novel, but adds that is an australian slang name for "a stick for hitting a child with". aside ending the definition with a preposition, Wikipedia also says an Illywhacker is "not allowed anymore." Now, I ask you, does that mean the word is not allowed "anymore" or the use of a stick to hit a child?

either way, the peer reviewers at Wikipedia have begun to slack and the book has vanished from the face of the earth.

Meanwhile, this computer lab (in the student center) smells like old, greasy popcorn and the keyboard on which I am typing is nasty. I think I shall walk to Starbucks.

Side note: why is Wikipedia not in the dictionary that governs typing online?

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?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.