thanksgiving

thanksgiving is a brilliant holiday, but i am beginning to get sick of it. what ever happened to sitting around the table and telling each other what you are most thankful for? why is it important to make plans to see each and every family member on that day and to eat with them?

troy and I ate three dinners for thanksgiving. seriously. and that was after I watched the Today Show's special on the caloric intake of the average American on thanksgiving. depressing. here I am, about to get married and have to squeeze into a dress, and i cant even begin a diet because everyone expects everyone else to eat dinner with them.

the dinner is no longer special. now, its about hassle and scheduling, and is just another holiday where family takes a back seat to retail. (and i wont even go into the whole beginning of thanksgiving and how it really is founded on genicide and hate, and the displacement of native americans, and slavery and the very people who spawned the people who spawned wallstreet.)

black friday has slipped out of its post-thanksgiving food-coma stupor and taken over the entire weekend. retail stores have raped familys of the holiday.

instead of sitting around the table and talking, families are rushing through that expensive and hard-earned meal to make it to some retail store before every other person in that particular area.

people lined up at Best Buy in Owings Mills, MD at 6pm. did they even eat dinner? did they say hello to the families that flew into MD to see them for the holiday as they were cramming cranberry sauce into their face and grabbing the car keys on the way out the door? the cops were called to that particular store twice for fighting and threats.

and the worst part is, the retaliers are pulling one big heist over on the trusting shoppers after another.

example: Kohls. Troy and I went to Kohls around 4pm on black friday. the sale was still going on, but I didnt see a single sale. A shirt that was on sale for $15 a month ago was still on the rack, in the same place, only it was marked up to $50 and on sale for $25. so...the person who was not paying attention would say "look, honey, this is a $50 shirt, thats not bad for $25" until said idiot goes into work with the shirt on, sees someone else with it, they talk about where they got it, and said idiot finds out that the $50 shirt was actually a $15 shirt back in October.

and what is this about "only the first 15 people in line get a flat screen tv"? so youre telling me that, with all of the money that retailers make, and of all of the tv's they ship in and sell all year, they can only order 15 of them on the biggest shopping day of the year?


not to mention the two men shot, the pregnant woman knocked down, the 45 year old man who was trampled to death at walmart......

not over diamonds or gold, or a car, or a house, or a life-or-death situation...that poor man, a walmart employee who probably didnt want to work that day because he wanted to spend it with his kids....was trampled to death, stepped on, walked over, tripped over, crushed. CRUSHED TO DEATH BY FAT AMERICAN CONSUMERS over a television. over something that almost every single home in this country has. every single home.

i read somewhere recently that even homes that have no food, clothing, or heat for the winter have a television. a kid can go without food for a week in this country, but they still watch cartoons.

and yet so many people were worried about getting a television that they killed someone over it.


and that brings me to the "that cant happen to me" mentality in this country: I almost gurantee that all of those people who trampled the poor man watched it on the news that night and thought "what animals. killed the poor man. what a shame" not even stopping to consider that they did it, that his blood is on their hands.

at walmart. isnt that a joke? not Saks 5th avenue. not Tiffanys. not a gucci outlet, not nordstroms, not a place with any sort of worth. walmart. the place that owns half of the known world. the place that scouts out small mainstreet towns with the intent to destroy.

walmart...that place that you hate because it is always crowded, the parking lot is a pain in your ass, the employees are the lowest of the lowest class, and so are most of the shoppers. the place you wish you never had to go, and yet you have to because who else has a lightbulb or windsheild wipers, or a pack of napkins, or glad plugins at all hours of the day for inflation-proof prices? that place that has helped destroy the economy, and multiple cultures around the world. the place that preys on good quality product makers by exploiting the lower class.

it was for this place, this hell-hole on earth that a man died.


now isnt that a shame?



it is a shame. this whole thing is a shame, and yet it will never stop. black friday is as much a part of our culture as buying tons of christmas gifts, eating our weight in turkey or mcdonalds hamburgers, shooting each other over a little argument, beating each other with baseball bats at stoplights, jerryspringer, theft, child abuse and neglect, crooked politicians, racism and reverse racism, and inflation. it is an accepted norm, and as long as there is a lower class, it will continue to grow every year, preying on those who cant afford inflated retail prices.

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!!!

manifesto for one's purpose

i like to think that there is a purpose to everything that every individual does. if not, then bring on the brave new world. but as a dreamer, i cant settle for what i get.

I have never been so deeply moved, disturbed, actually, by any class I have ever taken. My contemporary Literature class is slowly driving me crazy.

In the class, we are studying the common themes and concepts behind literature of all genres written in the past 20 years.

common themes include:
1. failure of a character to connect with other characters
2. inability to show emotion
3. disconnection with the world
4. rape, hate, crime, psychotic behavior, abuse, distrust, ect.
5. death
6. the acceptance of the inevitable, example: death is part of life, death makes life
7. the down side of liberation movements
8. selfishness
9. mistrust, and why mistrust is intelligent
10. the lack of value in love and human relationships
11. lack of hope
12. loss of faith, innocence, life, meaning

all of these topics are things that surface in one way or another throughout current writing.


as a writer (i.e., one who writes) I am discouraged. I never thought of my writing as adhering to any of the topics above, and yet I see, after looking at my writing through the lense of contemporary literature, that my writing is overflowing with many of those things.


After some consideration, I see that I have fallen into the trap of becoming a product of my environment. I write what I see and live through. I write about the ugliness of the human race. The downfall of education, the inevitability of death, and politics. I write about the same things that other people write about.


I cant allow myself to believe that this period in which I live will be defined as a theory of literature hundreds of years from now. Students will take some archaic class that covers my contemporaries. perhaps, instead of the Victorian, modern, post modern, renaissance, Marxist, structuralist, classical, post colonialism, semiotic, or new historicism, we will be called the "hopelessists" or "destructionists"

is there any way to change that? no. literature and art reflect the time in which it is created, but also change the time. Picasso painted in a time of great turbulence, and so his painting was chaotic. "guernica" is a perfect example. He painted a war in the most chaotic, and color-symbolic way he could. his painting reflected the war the way the war created the painting. literature is the same way. literature reflects the time, but also changes how people think.


I wish I could be so brave to think that I could change the way literature works. perhaps, in my own small way, I could.


after waking up at 4am this morning from a bad dream, i decided to consciously change my writing.

for a long time, i viewed writing as something that is very much a part of the self. i still think that way, but i understand that, like the self, writing must undergo change. static writing is boring and useless. so i want to change my writing to still follow the way of my contemporaries (because i have no choice in the matter, mostly) but in a way that allows hope.

I am at a point in my life where i refuse to settle into this American hopelessness. I cant do it. I cant look at the world as something ugly and full of hatred. I am a dreamer, and as such, i need to believe that there is a purpose, that there is meaning, that life is not defined by the absence of death.

I cant give up on hoping that the world is beautiful.


I want to write the way I want to think. but when the world around me is going to hell and people are becoming more hateful and self-centered, selfish, disconnected, i need to hang on to what i have and what i know to be possible.

I want to surround myself with beautiful things. I want to write beautiful things.


i cant avoid writing about how ugly the world is, because the world i live in is ugly. no way around it. and a story without conflict is a story without change, is a story without a story, is a story without purpose. i cant write empty stories. everything i write, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or even expository writing, has to have a purpose. I have no time for stories about a cute little kitty or unicorns. i despise fiction about empty subjects.


i want my writing to have the weight of lead, but also a sense of hope. damn the contemporaries for creating a world of writing where denouement is not part of the plot line. nothing should end without some sort of resolution. i see the point of doing things that way, but it is sloppy, and it doesnt leave hope. there needs to be hope. i will not live in a world that has no hope.


so, i have thought about my writing and what i want to experiment with next. what is writing if not experimentation? i change my style every time i edit a story, why not change my style in terms of content? forget adding imagery and poetic device. i want to change my place in literary history. not that i expect to become part of literary history, but i feel that i need to take into account that my writing may (if i am lucky) one day reach beyond the small circle i live in. and if it does, god willing, what will people say about it. where will i fit? writing is something that can easily become a legacy. music is too plagued with luck, and art is too critical, but writing is a possibility for recognition, especially posthumously. the editor of the urbanite said that the first thing you have to do to become one of the greats is not to write fantastic pieces, but to give up the obsession you have with air. who knows where my writing will take me, or where it will go without me. but if it goes even as far as one small college lit magazine, or as far as the new yorker, or to whole books, or just my own portfolio, i do not want to be lumped into the same burlap sack with those who write about a lack of hope. they are dragging us down just as much as the topics they write about.


so. i want to write some stories where the situation is serious and the suffering is great, but the setting and description downplay it. i want to use that hemmingwayish understatement to hide the importance of the situation and to focus on the setting and characters. he was a master. perhaps he was much more ahead of his time than we thought.

I dont pretend that i will ever become a great writer, or that i will even be recognized for my writing. i actually doubt that i will. but the point is that i need to look at my writing more seriously, or else i have wasted my degree before i have even gotten it. and in that sense, i need to write something that makes me feel as though i have done something good. and if writing a story every now and then that has a little bit of beauty and hope in it is as far as i can go, then thats all i'll ever need.

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.

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?

lets ramble.

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.

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.

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?

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.