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.
Showing posts with label non-fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label non-fiction. Show all posts
Friday, January 18, 2008
Saturday, January 5, 2008
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.
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