Back TO Skoooool

Hey, friends, this is an important note: Strangers/creeps taking a stroll on the world wise web, ignore this:

I look different than when I left. However tempting it may be to point this out to me, in the form of a ' you look great' thinking i won't pick up the subtleties, please refrain.I do realize that I am asking a lot of you all, not to state the obvious even in the form of a compliment to my face, because my mind is still healing and not healed. Hearing those things drives me mentally nuts. And while yes, I'm personally proud of my progress, and yes, I know there are brighter and more balanced days to look forward to in my mental future, I am today where I am and this is what I need for you guys as friends.

SEE YAAAA'LLL SOOOON YAHOOOO

I Am Freaked Out

WATCHING OPENING CEREMONY OF THE OLYMPICS.

OREO COMMERCIAL. LITTLE REDHEAD GIRL. DUNKS COOKIE.

SHE LOOKS IDENTICAL TO ME WHEN I WA LIKE 7. I WAS ENTRACED BECAUSE I WAS CONVINCED IT MUST HAVE BEEN FOOTAGE OF ME EATING A COOKIE EDITED.THIS IS THE MOST BIZARRE THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

I AM ON TV.

if anyone can find this commercial let me know.

Counter intuitive

Every week I grapple with a different assignment. Last week, I was rushed to read two books in five days. These books were mental earthquakes.Shook up my world.And now, the chaotic aftermath ensues: thinking about revamping the way I think. Quite literally, I am manipulating my thought processes as to foster long term potentiation between currently unrelated neurons. ( Long Term Potentiation is just a neuroscience nerdy way of explaining Learning through neurons. Neurons that fire together, wire together. And from there on out, an activation of neuron 1 may jump-start a less intense, slower, but still present, firing from neuron 2 as well.Learned Associations. The reason why when you saw Cheeze-It, the color Orange comes to mind.) I have to drop everything I think I know and fully trust the words written by strangers on the pages before me rather than my own life experience.
They do make an awful lot of sense.
No, they're all in it for book sale revenues which increase with 'feel good' endings.
Well, not following it will get me Nowhere.
Maybe not, but at least I know where Nowhere is; to unequivacoly trust a book with my life is extreme, but following it to an undiscolsed location seems insane, like welcoming a kidnapper in my sanctuary.
Emily, What do you have to lose?
The ( at times) self destructive weapon that is the way i conceptualize myself and how i fit into the context of the world as I see it. Changing the language , anarchy to any rules and morality judgements I held.
Emily, are you willing to give that up if that cracks open the door for a slight possibility you could be the version of yourself you've always wanted to be?
Maybe.

Sexual Harrasement

I am a heretic to my gender, according to Nordstrom.
I have arms, I have legs.I can hold a baby, row a boat and run freely. I have a head and face, a brain and mouth; I am someones daughter and have a unique identity and story, I have opinion's and I share them wanted or not. I have eyes, both knowing and curious-you see, I am complex.Like a human being. I have a body, and my body is my tool to till the world to cultivate my vision, and how dare you make me a another blueprint in your marketing scheme.
I was coaxed into going to Nordstrom today. The Devil herself in Designer Heels. In the checkout line at the shoe department, there was a golden statue. On an pedestal, right before my very eyes, was the ideal woman. This is who I am supposed to aspire to be. No,This is what I'm supposed to be. A What. A Thing. A limbless,headless, sexy piece of tits and hips connected by a literally pencil thin waist. And then put on display to look pretty.

Maybe I can see that and think 'Nordstrom Fuck Off', but I'm not sure I could say the same of every 8 year old in the store. Or 48 year old for that matter.

I'm sick of this shit. Send me to Jupiter, I'll recolonize.

Inverse Ageing

John McCain is a fossil. He is old, old and out of touch, old and an anti-American testament to crusade against ageing.

Your words, America, not mine.

If you ask me, John McCain may be old, but judging by his campaign he would lead America with the catty charisma of a Middle School Queen Bee. Witness, immaturity at it's finest:

"John McCain's campaign is not backing down from the controversy over it's latest television commercial. Titled "Celeb," the ad, set to run in 11 battleground states, declared Sen. Barack Obama to be the "biggest celebrity in the world," and juxtaposed his image with those of Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears. The Obama campaign cried foul, accusing McCain and Republicans of trying to scare voters instead of talking about the issues."

Philosophy

It's really inconvenient that applied philosophy isn't one-size-fits-all. It's all situational, it's all context, and if it weren't and life actually worked by the rules of direct cause and effect, then there would have been no need for the human ability of higher cognitive processing and we'd all still be apes.

What feels good, is good.
Evaluate the cost/ benefit ratio, factor in the law of diminishing returns, and gauge goodness by the greater of the sums of utils.
God is Good; the bible is an ancient Ask Abby.
Good is defined by what is normative; what would most people do?
Life is short, no day but today
Live for yourself, present and future; keep all doors open.
What is Good is relative, it's all relative. ( the ultimate cop-out philosophy)
There is no good or bad, moral or immoarl; our perceptions of truth are our truth and not the truth in this vast, limitless universe and beyond.
what is good is natural.
Life is suffering; minimize it to find goodness and happiness.


They all make sense every now and again. But I'm on the market for a life philosphy that's like my trusty pair of slippers; I can use it daily and it provides me with great comfort.

Reader, if you know any good mantras to be a general rule of thumb, holler at your girl.

Suck It, British

The root to most of the world's problems past and present is disguised under a sophisticated accent and a bold red coat. The British are the personified Plague of the human species. My white guilt runs really deep--that's what she said. And by she, I mean that hypnotic Motherland we hail to and universal chambers of arian dominated confessional booths in every territory she has intimately touched or internally terrorized through colonization. To be white is to be void of authentic definition and only conceptualized in contrast to the less than flattering labels thrown on the Others, and The White Privilege is the offspring of that phenomenon. Being born while is entering the world as tabla rasa, a blank white slate which could be made into a masterpiece an invaluable, defining part of society, or just another neglected plain Jane piece of white paper.Don't get me wrong, I still hold class lines and bank accounts to be the sparsely pored separating shield between defendant and prosecution, social welfare leftovers and the creme of the crop, incarceration,obligation, and authoritative masturbation. However, race is still an underlying method of social segregation; is a black or white person more likely to get a loan? Money begets more money, but how can a minority rise up and participate in this capitalist economy to make a profit if they have no fiscal capital to to take any risks because their own country doesn't have the balls to invest in their humanity: loans for education, housing, higher paying jobs, etc. And you know what? It's hard to believe in oneself when nobody else does.

Humor me here by participating in this thought experiment. My thought is that the Judeo-Christian concept of morality as interpreted and applied in modern society is MORE of a reflection of the normative white socio-economic status and LESS of a rigid and stable code of conduct resilient to circumstance. Here's the hypothetical situation:

Welcome to Wall Mart, single Mom! You have twin babies at home, and are scavenging through your purse for that $20 bill you packed with you to replenish your supply for a ceasely demand for diapers. Unfortunately, you don't have the resources ( time, energy, money) to be eco-friendly about it, especially since the children's father started viewing child support as choice. You have exactly 20$. Which means you get diapers or dinner for the next 2 nights? No one is looking at you. You're by the Gerber baby food. do you stuff it in your purse? Do you steal? Would you steal?
Hell yes, I would. A parent's love for their child and spiritual covenant with them I would say runs deeper than upholding every pillar of a religious tenant because white men in beards wrote it down in the land before time. A Rabbi once argued at me that every sin is a form of stealing. And much like the Rabbi, I think the lawmakers in this country would agree that the single mother shoplifting is criminal and fine her ( so she is more broke), or arrest her ( so she losses a job and is more broke) , or find some other creative form of retribution to rub her face in shit and wag their fingers at her as if she were a 4 legged bitch: bad girl, bad bad girl. Alls I'm saying is that moarlity is relitive and circumstantial, and I would do the same thing in the single mom's shoes, so the only difference between her and me is that I was not born into a barren community with petty excuses for education and rampant unemployment. I was born into privlage, and i happen to be white, and privlage also begets more privilage.

I forgot where this entire entry was going. ill finish it tomorrow.Humph.

Spork Update: Three Prongs of Life

Prong One: The Dentist-
I look forward to dentist appointments. I brush, I occasionally floss, and thus, I get great performance reviews on my oral hygiene. And who doesn't like a nice pat from a latex glove and a smile from behind a paper-elastic mouth shield? But like all great things, there are speckled defeats on the road to victory. And yesterday, yesterday was an oral catastrophe.

My filling had fallen out. I went to a dentist's office I'd never been to before. They isolated my tooth via dental damn, Popsicle sticks and a metal clamp for over and our. Told me they wanted to start a root canal, and then proceeded to ask me what i wanted them to do...while my mouth was jarred open and covered...so i couldn't possibly ask questions or respond. They decided to start a root canal. paralyzed the right side of my mouth with umpteen shots of Novocaine. And after the Dougie Howser dentist had dug down to the root of my tooth, he changed his mind. Stopped the root canal procedure. Refilled my tooth with a cap. Those extra 4 shots of Novocaine were useless. All the while, the hygienist tripped on the main chord turning off the equipment, snapped at me for a ringing phone which made her jump when she had the wrench in my mouth and told me this was too dangerous for distractions, she chatted with the hygienist next to her about the mistakes they had made on patients, she forced me to bite down on something after i refused because i could taste blood from the contraption ripping at my cheek, the dentist talked to me about all the bleeding in my mouth mid procedure (comforting, right?), and the list goes on. And my mouth still hurts.

Prong Two: The Deception-
I'd read Running With Scissors before, and last night I saw the movie. In a coin purse, it's based off the book which is the memoir of a boy who became a man and thought his life was worth publishing and reading about. After his memoir came out, the real life characters in his book were livid and sued, saying his perception was far from the truth, a fabrication loosely based on reality, and unflattering. This is concerning. What is the truth is not perception of an individual? Even things that are deemed scientific fact and limited to isolating something measurable to human perception and measurement. How much poetic licence does one have when writing a memoir? Is there a No Symbolism Allowed rule to avoid any fiction sensationalism?

Prong Three: The Democrats-
Obama, the Presumed nominee for the democratic presidential ticked, is shopping for a nice VP running mate. This is a headache. John McCain naturally is up to bigger and better things. Like knocking Obama's stance on slowly but surely pulling out of Iraq. Why? Because, he argues, it is necessary that America keep fighting in Iraq until we have won or else we will need to go back later. I'm all for finishing projects one starts, like scarves and spring cleaning, but how can we win a war with no logical purpose or mission? Yes, we've set up a semi-permanent military base over there so we can keep a vigilant eye on China and India. Yes, we are leaving tank tracks on top of soil blanketing heaps of potential oil. But it doesn't take a genius to see that our oil prices aren't going down. In fact, they're rising-gasp. Maybe if we redirected the money we were spending on the war and instead subsidized oil prices, we could re inflate our own miserable economy the good ol republican way, through people spending their dollars buying and selling to each other and having the wealth trickle down. Wasn't that the point of the tax returns, anyway? Maybe they should have saved the abundance for a rainy day, or, i don't know, paying back the national debt to both lower the sum and the amount of interest we pay on it ( third highest national expense). But I digress. John McCain says that we must stay in Iraq until we * bring Osama bin Laden to justice through a process similar to the Nuremberg Trials.* I agree, but here's a tip: LOOK IN THE FUCKING COUNTRY HE'S FROM. Which is not Iraq. Dumb ass. How have Americans still not caught onto this mass deception?

I'm going to go hit the sauna. But oh, am I ever Proud to be paying my tax dollars to the Land of the Free.

yesterday's cardboard creation

yup. art on cardboard.hobo chic.

Plus, a self-portrait. The camera flash kinda f'ed up the white sheen paint on my lip and brows, but you get the picture...ha. punny. not quite real life, but then again, it's not like i have a ninja turtle named after me or anything.

Who Am I

Daddy , if I find a way to be more non-existent, I'll let you know.
Through my actions: I would be persistently and fiercely pleasant like the daughters on family television, as deep as a surface smile and a glamorous yet understated mirror of outstanding parenting. I would sanitize every surface i touched, not a fingerprint of evidence of my consumption of light, water or energy to be found. I would defy the human shackles of dependence and be powered by love, and love alone. I would be selfless and tame. I would be be extraordinarily ordinary. Daddy, I'm sorry.

Daddy, I'm sorry my moods oscillates like the bounce of my curls, and my eyes observe with the intense fire personified in my red-hot mane. I'm sorry for my insatiable appetite for questions, hypothetical and real, and endless battle for a best fitting answer. I'm sorry for being a living paradox and a tireless controversy. I'm sorry that shadows and skeletons have a magnetic attraction to me and I seem to bring out the worst of things in your presence. Daddy, I'm sorry.

Daddy, I'm sorry my my heart is locked inside an icebox behind bones and bars visible to the human eye. I'm sorry for my weaknesses and my strengths, because really they are one in the same. I'm sorry I'm not your little girl, that I never was, nor ever desire to be. I'm sorry what you call parenting I call patronizing, what you call love I call guilt-evoking selfishness. I suppose if I adapted to your dictionary, life would be much more simple.

Daddy, I'm sorry for all of the trouble I've caused between you and Mom. I'm sorry for the divorce scares and for being the termite eating away at your marital foundation.

For being me, I'm sorry, but I cannot and will not be anyone else. So take me or leave me, Daddy, is all I have to say.

photo evidence of the impossible

i think im logging this to remind myself that I can do it. Palak Panner and garlic Naan, from scratch. my contribution to the extended family dinner.

Holler!

I made my first challah, from scratch. Rose the yeast my self, let the bread leven twice, beat the living air out of it, loved it, kneaded it, baked it, glazed it--the whole kitchen kaboodle.

And guess what? it actually turned out. I took pictures. Which i do realize is lame; however, I did not realize i could cook until last week so the victory is much sweeter. Toast to hidden abilities ( pun intended.)

...And The World Hates Men Too

Young, Attractive Blonde Lady: " Don't get me wrong, I have a great sex life. But sometimes, my husband just wants to cuddle. So what does that mean, when he just wants to cuddle and I am wanting to have sex?I want him to always want me."
Editor of Men's Health Magazine Man: "Hmmm, interesting. I'm thrown off that you are complaining that your guy wants to cuddleIt could be two things. My first thoughts are maybe he had a long day at work, and cudeling is all he has energy for. My second through is maybe he's just not that into women."

Masculinity, as defined by Free Society of ours, is confined inside a straight-jacket of expression. The idea that a man would at any point in time not want to have sex is so unfathomable to his partner that she is concerned and finds it abnormal, and so perplexing to the Men's Health expert that his sexual orientation is questioned.

If I ever have a male child, I sweat he's being raised in a big, yellow bubble.

DoubleUSA Today

Ah, WSA: the Women's Student Assembly of the university of southern california. An interesting place to call home, considering the tenant we hold sacred and hope to spread like the plague, best put by Gloria Steinem, "A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men." And although school is out for the summer, WSA remains perpetually in session.

America, you big, nosy neighbor, I'll grant you a solid; here is a sneak peak at the inner working of the Anti-Christ in a a red dress formally known as the Women's Student Assembly:
We are stopping prop 4 from passing in CA in the upcoming november general elections. We Are, and there is no way around it. Just like the prop 85 parental notification law was turned down in 2006, and it's twin sister just a few years before that, we're determined to give prop 4 the same non existent destiny.

To be honest, prop 4 scares me; however, a similar proposed constitutional amendment on an upcoming ballot in Colorado terrifies me like a giant ominous cloud predicting a storm of the likes i've never experienced. Brief synopsis of the two to my understanding:
Prop 4 in California: requires a physician to notify a minor's parents/legal guardians of her plan to abort at least 48 hours before the procedure, or otherwise obtain a parental waiver. In the case of domestic abuse households, the minor may appeal to a judge in court to waive the need for parental notification or a waiver. ( note: this is worthless for the following reason.) Any person may only obtain abortions within the first 23 days of pregnancy; 24 days and beyond will be considered murder, and may be prosocuted as such. Any doctors who do not follow or report any part of this proposed law will be fined, heavily.

Colorado proposed amendment: a proposition to amend the state constitution to define life at FERTILIZATION. Thus, any tampering with terminating a pregnancy is murder. Miscarriage may be murder if it is proven that a mother drank or smoked ( neglect), and and idea of a chlids existence once fertilized is granted the full set of rights of an adult citizen. IF YOU DON'T SEE WHY THIS IS A SLIPPERY SLOPE, ALLOW ME TO EXTRAPOLATE. The victory for the people backing this proposition isn't only winning in colorado; it's winning in colorado, inevitably getting a law case on it from a women who challenges the constitutional foundation of the amendment after feeling it's wrath, the US Supreme court eventually adopting this case, and overturning roe v wade, setting colorados definition of 'life' as a nationwide precedent. All abortions, emergency contraception, IUD's, and more would be illegal and perhaps tried as murder.

Now, Prop 4 is dark enough on it's own merits, but i hope you can see, America, that the first step in passing dangerous laws like that proposed in Colorado is first normalized and garnering support for parental notification laws and loser definition of life laws.

we are well on our way to seeing the glass ceiling collapse in. Birth control, in my mind, has given women the blessing of education because having sex didnt means having to be pregnant very young and become a mother. Women are being given al of the responsibility and repercussions but none of the rights and freedoms in these propositions.

steam is coming out of my ears.

As far as the parental notification law goes, adults, hear me out: I know that it is very tempting to vote yes for this prop because you would want your child to tell you if she was pregnant or considering an abortion.Please recognize that just because you'd want to be there to support your daughter and to be notified, it is dangerous to use your relationship and method of parenthood as a blanket rule for all of the daughters and parents in California. Parental notification laws are dangerous and lead to many back-alley abortions, self-administered abortions, domestic unrest, and young girls traveling long distances across state lines to acsess abortions in bordering states with no parental notification laws. If I were a mom, I think i would rather not know about my 15 year old daughters abortion down the road at a planned parenthood than have her travel to nowheresvillie southern washington alone to get the same thing.

I am mad that women's gift to be able to create life is no longer on her own terms. she is an incubator, she is a battle ground for controversy, she is the dumping ground for politics. steam is coming out of my ears. for more information, look at the cover of the new yorker.

so in the midst of planning our campaign against prop 4 ( and 8 but thats more the glbta territory to plan) i ran across a website and found some saying I like. I'll close this post with these, to keep things a little more lighthearted:

*A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men. -- Gloria Steinem
*A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life. -- Virginia Woolf
*Facts are theory laden; theories are value laden; values are history laden. -- Donna J. Haraway
*I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist. -- Sally Kempton.
*I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat... -- Rebecca West, 1913, The Clarion.
*Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. -- Margaret Mead.
*Radical feminism is called "radical" because it is struggling to bring about really fundamental changes in society. We, in this segment of the movement, do not believe that the oppression of women will be ended by giving them a bigger piece of the pie… We believe that the pie itself is rotten. -- Bonnie Kreps
*We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all civil and political rights that belong to the citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever. -- Susan B. Anthony
*First, whiteness is a location of structural advantage, of race privilege. Second, it is a “standpoint,” a place from which white people look at ourselves, at others, and at society. Third, “whiteness” refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed. [Frankenberg, Ruth. (1993). White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. London: Routledge. (p. 1)]
*Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. [Simone de Beauvoir, 1949, 16]

and because the first part of this blog post was so bitter, im attempting to counter balance that with the profound and often witty wisdom of various women:

*Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn’t have what it takes." They will say, "Women don’t have what it takes." -- Clare Booth Luce
*Easy is an adjective used to describe a woman who has the sexual morals of a man. -- Nancy Linn-Desmond
*I speak out of direct and particular anger at an academic conference, and a white woman says, Tell me how you feel but don't say it too harshly or I cannot hear you. -- Audre Lorde
*I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career. -- Gloria Steinem
*I’m not going to vacuum ‘til Sears makes one you can ride on. -- Roseanne Barr
*If high heels were so wonderful, men would be wearing them. -- Sue Grafton
*It’s interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses. -- Flo Kennedy
*Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths. -- Lois Wyse
*My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong. -- Mother Jones.
*Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. -- Eleanor Roosevelt .
*Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel. -- Bella Abzug
*The truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off. -- Gloria Steinem
*The phrase "working mother" is redundant. -- Jane Sellman
*There are very few jobs that actually require a penis or vagina. All other jobs should be open to everybody. -- Florynce Kennedy
*We’ll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth. -- Gloria Steinem
*We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters. -- Gloria Steinem
*Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We’re not inherently anything but human. -- Robin Morgan
*You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy. -- Erica Jong

America's Popular Crowd

If you have ever been to a salon or waiting room, you'll know what I'm saying. If you've ever been on an airplane, inside a mall dressing room, tuned into a cable network, paroozed Perez Hilton's site or have watched a sea of manicured nails and hungry eyes do just that from the back of a lecture hall, you'll know what I'm saying. Celebrities are the new gods of Mt. Olympus. Their fabulous lives have us entranced.

My grandma does not have a computer at home. I bring my laptop out to the porch, which awakened her from her siesta/ wine coma. Giddy as a school girl, she asks me to look something up for her. In reterospect I should have said no, because i wasted 10 valuable minutes of my evening researching the relationship ( or lack there of) of two ex-contestants on Dancing with the Stars. My Grandma is almost 80 years old, and even she is not exempt from Celebricitis. And neither am I; although I avoid a lot of celebrity culture, I do consider the characters on The Office to be real and furthermore, my friends. No shame in it, I'm sure everyone has a guilty pleasure.

Another pleasure of mine, just as as guilty nerdy as celeb voyerism is vapid, is browsing Jstor ( the USC online catalouge of eJournals.) But today, I stumbled upon a keeper: "Celebrity Watching", by Michael Newbery. And if this Newbery fellow is credible, then I may have learned my something new today.

Notes from the Journal:
A celebrity is someone known for their well-knownness. Back in the good ol' days, the spotlight was on the hero; the distinction between the hero and the celebrity is that a hero is a person admired for their great deeds or a great achievement who created him/herself whereas a celebrity is created by the media.Blinding ourselves with frivilous celebrity culture is a perfected art of self deception.And it gets better. The original celebrity as we use it in present day terms? WHy, Earnest Hemingway, of course, who lent himself to be mass distributed as a charictature of masculinity.

It goes on, I won't follow suit, but pretty interesting stuff.

The office trivia

Did You Know:

Creator Greg Daniels from the office is also creator of King of the Hill. Furthermore, he is the brother in law of Angela Kinsey ( 'Angela Martin' on the office) and Paul LIeberstien ( Toby on the office).

If You Can't Take the Corn, Get Out of the Field

Happy Birthday baby, 3 hours ish until the 20th anniversary of your escape from the womb. The distance is heartache homicide, and I wish nothing more than sharing this day with you and a cohort of quasi-potty trained 4 year olds. But soon enough...

Coming to understand You has been coming to understand Myself. In a few words, with you, there have been times when I've laughed, cried, argued, celebrated, all over Nothing. I've actually relished moments at Bovard and Sinai Scholars ( thus, disproving multiple scientific theories); when my raised eyebrows meet your smirk, our cynicism unites and all else fades away... You asked me if I think of you as a man or a boy at the turn of your last tween year into your early twenties. I said that a 'man' connotes more life experience that that of a 20 year old, like having kids or living/working/paying all bills independently. But ya know what- I partially revoke my answer. If one needs more years to get more life experience to gain more insight and wisdom and general and random human competence to be a man, then I was wrong because you have wisdom and insight already so that nixes the must-be-alive-for-another-decade argument. If annual public school testing taught me anything, it's when I think I have the right answer to verify it through another source. So here's the verification: when life happens, we fall together instead of fall apart. Enough said.

Happy birthday, see you SO SO SOOOOON!

webster

Confusion. The fusion between knowing and not knowing.

Novel Thought

It struck me today that the world's greatest masterpieces have remained unwritten: buried inside minds, disintegrated inside caskets, and eventually nourishing the soil. Never written-- living breathing stories, blowing in the wind.

The World Hates Women

Many women, scholars and common folk argue that there is no longer a need for feminism, and any more progess for women is striving for superior rights, not equal rights. WOmen got their vote, got into the workplace-for gods sake, Condaleeza symbolizes it all!

Wrong, wrong wrong. And I quote women talking to women on daytime TV:
female host: " so dave, since you are not cheating, but are accused by your wife of cheating daily, does that make you wanna just go out there and do it?"
Dave: " well...yeah i guess. I haven't but it's tempting to cheat if im constantly being told I am."
audience: boos
Host: " Hey audience, dont be hard on him. Linda ( the wife) is the one creating the self fulfilling prophecy here and his reaction is only natural. So Linda, how are you going to fix this?"
Linda: " I'm going to be more trusting and stop accusing him of cheating."
Host: " what else did we talk about"
Linda: " More sex. I'm gunna give him more sex so he doesn't have to cheat."
Host: Great

The latest and greatest scolding

I'm so confused it hurts.

blood boiling

Incoming memo for Debbie Zurow: I hate you. YOU make MY eyes burn, when I ask YOU to do something YOU do it, and I don't care if YOU are insulted it's too damn bad. How do you like your own words? Savor them because they only get more bitter with age.
If you ever google your name this will probably come up, and I hope it does. If a client or co-worker ever googles your name, I hope for the same. If this is the case, know you're supporting a good businesswoman but an unfit mother.
I have blatantly inherited your vindictive gene. Another thing: stop making my body the battleground for the family dynamic. Fight it out somewhere else, outside of my body, outside of my mind, and using my health as a measurement for the extent to which our family is fucked up.
The possibility that maybe I didn't do anything to deserve this was recently introduced to me. It's a new theory, but it seems to make sense. You need serious help. And as a result, so do I. I find you so off putting that, as the recipient of 50% of your genes, I've struggled with overcoming issues of self disgust. I'm coming to realize it's not all on me, it's partically you; and while I still think your sick power trip off of psychologically manipulative and degrading tactics are cruel, the word pathetic has been more fitting as of recent revelations. I don't even think you are fully at fault with your inability to empathize because sociopaths, autistic people and young children all suffer from the same symptoms and i wouldn't be surprised if you fell onto a spectrum under any of those categories. And as long as I'm being honest here, in my heart of hearts I think all of the bullshit you have put me through is because you are jealous of me because all you ever knew how to do was conform to please others (and look how happy that made you! )and I live for myself. Always have. That, and even though we kid about it i know it hurts I was never your princess mini-me cheerleader who you could take shopping and love doggies with. You could never help me with math, discuss a book, kick a soccer ball around, stopped cooking me any meals or doing my laundry before I was tall enough use the goddamn appliances myself, help me with a problem or bad experience because you reinforced it was my fault if you dared to acknowledge it and accept the occurrence as truth at all, chat about anything remotely political or cultural, and have been on a diet as far back as my first memories date and yet have the audacity to reflect any contribution to my own psychologically warped relationship with nutrition.In the decade past I've epressed all of the above to you both verbally ( not successful) and non verbally which is more successful in getting across to you you're a shitty parent but at the end of the day just sets up more roadblocks and damage to myself than it does to you. I'm done with it. And as I heal it makes my hair curl imagining you smiling to yourself as you bask in my reflected glory of achievement after you've denied any hand in those failures, like you did something right. No. I don't know much about motherhood, but I know enough to distinguish it from a fair-weather fan. This is for me. Feel free to keep making my mental and physical state your battlefield, but if it really does take two to tango, you'll be at war with yourself there because I'm moving on. You are so petty. Petty, pathetic, unsupportive, incompetent, and if you exemplify anything, it's mediocrity.
I hope you google your name.

If I Could I would

Both in the company of others and alone, I talk to myself aloud quite a bit. This habit is only perpetuated by another idiosycracy: i nourish my mind by creating and contemplating hypothetical situations and my hypothetical courses of action.Sudoku and crossword puzzles have never excited me,hence, the mind games.I've always been ambivilant on my decision if i hypothetically could be reborn- born again as a religious zealot, that is.Today I hopped from one side of the imaginary fence to the other.

I watched Jesus Camp today, a documentary about an Evangelical summer camp for kids. As a Portland raised, agnostic, environmentally conscious and politically aware gal, this film is more frightening than The Shinning.But from there point of view of those kids, Life is Grand. There was creation; they are individual and unique gifts from god,all put on earth with a purpose. Global warming is incorrect leftist jargon; they need not bear the weight of terrifying environmental issues because the earth is soon to end in an Apocalypse, and in the meantime, god put resources here to be used by man.There is destiny; they have faith that any negative obstacle in their lives is both not their fault and happening for a reason. There is an afterlife; they live this life in the flesh assured of an inner strength and courage of their spirit within. They are loved by God; just imagine having the most omnipotent being in existence as your support system.Your parents could be unfathomably nutty and it wouldn't matter because the Big Daddy upstairs is the best papa, ever. And a terrific listener at that. AND the best part is, even though you've sinned ( birth), you are forgiven. Don't even sweat it- some guy named Christ already died for your sins. As long as you worship that guy, you're pretty much saved. The second best part: you are better than most of the world because you are enlightened by the Truth. Jesus is your homeboy, and that makes you special.

Ya know what? I'm a little bit envious of the cushy life of those evangelicals. They have strength, courage and wisdom handed to them on a silver platter in a drive through McBible window while the rest of us suckers have to build character through doubt and learned self-reliance and esteem through experience. Our misdoings are ours, not a detour in a greater destiny and punished, not pardoned) but old white men with beards in municipal court.

I don't believe in the our culturally stereotypical concept of the judeo-christian God ( however, I do believe in the concept of omnipotent and divine balance, which is as close to god as I come.) I don't rule it out because in this infinite universe, the existence or occurrence of anything has some fraction of probability, and therefore, possibility. But i don't believe because it doesn't make much sense , to me. In the end, what I'm saying is i wish the opposite, that God made sense, and the idea that god ( as culturally defined) not existing made just as little sense.Yeah.

Tyra the Daytime Tyrant

Backstory: I recieve Tyra Banks' talkshow newsletter weekly. No, I didn't stutter, and no, I'm not pulling your leg. Believe it. First semester freshman year I took an upper division comm class ( before I knew the difference between a 100 and 300 level class was more than arbitrary); my nievity bit me in the ass, and I got stuck with my first college paper as a 12 page research whammy on the Tyra Banks talk show. To be honest, I originally subscribed for the research, and I've stayed on that list-serve for the past 2 years as part of the same embarrasing phenomenon that I could have a full-fledged conversation about Brittney Spears if pressed in a hostage situation. Now that you're up to speed on my shameful extensive knowledge on the Tyra Banks talk show, hopefully the following rant will have more credibility than most: Tyra just won a daytime Emmy...oh...my...god. Tyra just won a daytime Emmy, according to her newsletter, for Quality Daytime Programming. What's on this week's Tyra lineup? I'm glad you asked. Monday starts out with a bang and T-a ( like G-d, her name need not be written in such casual circumstances) tells us common folk if germs are our friends or our enemies. I, for one, am losing sleep in anticipation like the night before the first day of middle school. Holy crap, America, is this what it's come to? Have you no dignity...

In other news, I think it's time the countdown for school to restart has begun! Summer circumstances get real old, real fast. If I'm not sleeping, I'm dissipointing someone, somewhere. I used to keep my fingers crossed that one day I would be accepted, for better or worse, for being me. That sounds nice, but lately I've began to think that my weaknesses are just misdirected declarations of my strengths- if ya can't handle my weakness then that's essentially the same as not being able to handel my (inverse) strength. The entire thing is just a shame. With 4 deaths in 2 years, one may assume that people would start to appriciate what they got before it's gone. Then again, one may make the mistake of assuming most people are rational...

Oh, Memoir

If this intangible aspiration/ life-long work in progress were personified, it would be a sexy seductress in fire engine pumps and lips stained with the residue of a juicy red apple. The latest skeleton in the family closet is more suprising than the last, which was even more unbelieveable than the one before that. i think I finally reached a law of diminishing returns and will no longer be capable of a jaw dropping reaction. However, i am tempted to call up Oprah. That is, after I keep on digging and fully put into context who I am and where I fit into the bizzarro puzzle that is the Family Tree. It's an evergreen baby, life happens year round.

The Story of a Man Named Obama

I have a gut feeling that the latest breaking news update about Obama is soon to be repeated in syndication as long as he remains in the public political spotlight. World, I hate that I was right and i cringe to admit that I Told You So on this one.

One of Obama's campaign mantras during the primaries, which pursuaded the votes of many sheeple, was his dedication to not accepting huge campaign donations from big businesses. Noble and idealistic on the surface ( which is all you need to acrew most votes), but overall painfully naieve and troublesome. I a just a kid who finds the American political machine interesting, not even a political science major, and from the beggining it seemed crystal clear: a sexy spade is still a spade. Albeit you are full of whimsical, enchanting slogans Mr. Obama, you are still a presidential candidate for one of the two major political machines in a corrupt system. Dress up your potential presidency however you'd like to make it seem unique or different, perhaps better, but at the end of the day you will continue to make decisions much like the one you just made...
....to deny the opportunity to fulfil your promise to use public funding for your presidential campaign against McCain instead of vying for large private donations ( aka flirting with lobbyists). And why? Because McCain chose to use private instead of public funding. Fucking Duh, Obama. The system is broken. I'm not saying you made an unwise decision, I'm saying that you are a baby in politics and someone with more experiance ( cough clinton cough) may have never made such a rediculous promise and saw this perdicament coming. that's all.

मोनोपोली विथ bazookas

I'm not saying that my moarl compas is anything to chart and teach to kindergardeners nationwide.However, neither is yours, my fellow Americans. Here are some poll results from an AOL News.

On an article revealing doctors and psychologists reports of mental and psychological torture against p.o.w. in guantanamo and other US military run holding cells...
"How do you feel about such reports of torture?"
I find them troubling 44% 15,918
It's no big deal 36% 12,789
I have mixed feelings 20% 7,259

I'd like those near 13,000 people who think torture is no big deal to send their kid off to war and then see how they feel about the potential treatment of prisoners of war. I get it-war is dirty and messy and nothing like a game of monopoly where the rules have the finals say...but still... " it's no big deal?". COME ON people. Come on.

The Funny, Gory Bone

I've been trying to pay attention to when people laugh.My brother laughs when something is clever, my dad laughs at (mostly corny ol jewish man) puns, and my mom laughs when she's uncertain or vulnerable. I usually laugh when my mind plays out a Family Guy-esque tangent or exaggeration of the statement or situation at hand...which results in me laughing solo and seemingly without a prompt in the eyes of others most of the time. Like a schizophrenic. Whatever- I will obviously get the last laugh.

Tonight I saw Tim Burton's Sweeny Todd. My indifference to most movies is reflected by my toddler attention span to them...particularly evident in gory movies: 1/3rd of the time I'm eyes-to-screen attentive, 1/3rd my eyes are wandering, and 1/3rd they're covered because I really have no interest in seeing the human body inside out. Tonight I noticed everytime my face was burried in my hands because the creepy barber was slitting more throats to make into meat pies ( yeah, the original playwright must have been seriously twisted) the boys i was with would laugh out, loud.

Why? I'm pretty sure humor isn't the main input to get an outcome of laughter. The laugh must have some deeper adaptive, evolutionary function or it probably wouldn't exist. I got to thinkin, surface level: if laughter is generally a response to something interpreted as funny, what is humor? In most cases I think the humor has it's roots in truth. Like a socially acceptable medium to express taboo/shameful/uncomfortable things. BUT here is my road block, as a relativist: what is truth?

and with that, I'm off to bed, only to wake up early for father's day brunch. I'm really full. Josh would tell me it will feel all better in the morning. Hopefully, cross my fingers he's right again.

Last Day in LA

Today is the last, the very last...
...day in LA.

it's been real city of angeles,
ill miss the smog and traffic and perfectly manicured lawns
and dogs in purses
and dehydrated homeless people heaving on the road heaving on hot days.

it's all so great

but no really, i enjoy life here, and will miss it

adios para ahora
emily

both my thumbs

an earthquake in china

who knew?

A Two Way Analysis of Variance

Looking both ways before crossing an intersection is tricky enough; LA road rage and the epidemic of text message addicted bikers are honestly the most dangerous elements about life in South Central for a pedestrian like myself. Territory Gangs? Harmless. Biker Gangs? Lethal.
Here I stand. Toes curling over the edge of the sidewalk. An Intersection. Soul Street becomes Body Boulevard. Spring Semester’s cemented sidewalk meanders in a windy Summer alleyway. The two roads intersect perfectly, creating four right angles and a nauseating feeling that I’ll end up moseying the wrong way.

I have spent the past month clicking my heels together, closing my eyes, and visualizing the summer.

Red Light. Stop Days. Look both ways, where I’ve been, where I’m going, reconnect to where I am. Yellow Light, Finals. Synthetic light reflecting off my books into my eyes, a daze so intense it’s mellow.

Yet to turn Green. Anticipating the Green. Green, my favorite color. Green grows. Green changes. Am I ready for the light to change, leave the ol’, soul-enriching challenges of Leavey and this hectic lifestyle in a nicely packaged memory engram of the semester in mental storage, and enter into my body to trailblaze the frontier of the summer ahead?

Change is life’s only constant. To question change and approach it timidly is sleepwalking through life, not living. When the light turns green I gotta go, and for the sake of my physce I should embrace the destination.
My humble opinion: everything does not happen for a reason, but everything does happen and our interpretation of why and how, I reason, is what takes us where.
Ready, Set, -->

amusement

mantra: not a roller coaster, a farris wheel.

विज्ज़र्द ऑफ़ something

Tomorrow is your last tomorrow. The time it will take the sun to blossom out of the eastern horizon, arch, and dip down into the western waters is all the time you have. Where do you spend it? with who?doing what? why? Does your behavior change? do your actions? what would happen if you lived everyday like that? I've always heard that religious epiphany or dependence arises in the face of extreme hardship or near-death instances. Understandable- if one has no control how nice would it feel to be taken care of ( by god pressumably), right?
Growing up is the worst. When i was a kid, I was convinced that i was a prophet. I never told anyone because as much as i held it to be as true as 2+2=4, i realized it sounded far-fetched. Now I get it. I'm not a prophet, im a person. A person in a group of people, lined up on an infinite vector extending into the past and future and i just happen to be a point in the present. I wish i was a prophet.
I guess i wish a lot of things.
First and foremost, I want to be babysat again.
Independence is my strong suit, but it would be so, so nice to have a vacation from looking out for myself, especially in a stage where my usual steadfast confidence in by capability to do so is clouded. I make stupid decisions when my head is this foggy. A barred crib is not what I'm after, maybe just the security blankie and bottle would do. I'm feeling suffocated by my own anxiety and it's knawing away at me inside out.

I need to go home i need to go home i need to go home. I mean, i am from kansas. Isn't saying it 3 times the trick. ( insert clicking heals, here.)

Tenacious E

Lemmmmeee at ittttttt.

THERE HAVE BEEN SO MANY TIMES THAT IVE WANTED TO WRITE AND I COULDN'T BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE A COMPUTER AND SO IT'S BUILDING IT'S BUILDING IT'S BUILDING AND IF I HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE CLUMSINESS OF PEN AND PAPER FOR ONE MORE WEEK I'M GOING TO IMPLODE!

Response To the Facebook Thread asking me to say anything about womanhood

The first time my heart beat was inside a woman's womb. The first person to feed me was a woman, and the sole witness to my first word was a woman. The immigrant who kept me out of mischief while my parents worked was a woman. And the teacher who taught me how to spell 'Octopus'? Also a woman. The caregiver who taught me self-reliance way too early, but taught me nonetheless, was a woman. The tears I've shed have been evoked mostly by women. Still, my triumphs could not have been achieved without the security of a safety net comprised of mostly women below. I've seen my reflection with no distortion in the eyes of my closest female friends.
As a result of all of the above, that little voice in the back of my head telling me 'I CAN', giving me strength, courage, wisdom; humor, joy, epiphany;sorrow, empathy, motivation; ambition, confidence, curiosity; identity; is the crafted, collective creation of women building me up and breaking me down and for better or worse making me, Me. We are all little compilations of great women. To the person who doesn't like a woman, I have no margin to argue with a subjective opinion of a singular person; but to the person who dare say ' Women are _____' , i'd argue is not only insulting the family and community that nurtured them, but also expressing self-doubt. Afterall, if a shade of red is off hugh, then its combination and creation of any secondary color will deviate too.

कार्रोत face

April is the most ambivalent month of the year. Stuck in the middle between winter and summer, her stability falls victim to the circumstance as she oscillates between the beckoning of a Saint and a Siren. So April showers, so what? Have some empathy: how would you feel if fickleness was your soul/sole predictable trait? Like a stranger to yourself,that's how. Not a reflection to trust in the world. April is trapped in a tug-o-war; maybe I don't know why the caged bird sings, but I do know when, and it's in April.

Flowery language aside, April, to me, is a discussion of freedom. I can't think of a month with more, or more contradicting, hallmark and historical dates: Earth Day, Girl Scout Cookie Season, Passover, Easter stuff, April Fools, Hitler's Birthday the anniversary of Columbine, 4-20 and the list goes on. All together, April makes me think about freedom. It's all about the power struggle of the human condition- the complete freedom to Be (think/feel/behave) however we please, but only within the parameters of a pig pin.And that's life.
I am free to do whatever I want, go streaking through the oval office, whatever. In my mind, freedom is neither defined by a lack of consequences, nor a game of probabilities: it's all about the existence of a possibility.
My inner Id is a little depressed about this topic. I'm not bothered that there is only a minuscule chance that I will be able to exercise the Oval Office streaking freedom, what gets to me is that the most radical off-the-cuff idea I came up with was to remove my man-made garments and run. But perhaps that is actually a crucial element in the desire to be free: strip oneself of the petty layers we've created and conceptualize as the part of the human condition and just live how our bodies are born to, element to skin contact, to eat and be eaten and not utter a single prayer throughout. Freedom is deviant; if not, it wouldn't be considered freedom, it would be a social norm.
And i hate to be a Downer Debbie, but i usually feel somewhat caged or shortchanged when it comes to freedom. The discrepancy between imagination and reality almost makes me wish the two were mutually exclusive entities and a person inherited one or the other. Dangling a mouse in plain view of a caged snake all day is just cruel.

Automated Response-Up Yours, Samsung

This is my rage against the machine.

My theory: humans are becoming robots.

Don't write me off, the only conspiracy about this theory is that it's so hush-hush for such a blatent phenonmeon. I know the claim is on the lofty/paraniod side, so I'll guide you through my reasoning. Look, I'm not saying Hu-bots are good,bad,inevitable or anything; alls im sayin' is that the evidence is is pretty significant.

1.Plastic Surgury: Plastic makes perfect, right? Calculators don't have to wait,contemplate and work before getting the output result it wants, why should we? Skip the middle step ( isn't "work ethic" just empty national progoganda to rally the people and boost the economy?), go get those calf implants.
2.Cochlear implants: Becoming bionic. Here is where i sound like a callous, coldhearted bitch: diveristy and handicap can be cumbersome and undesireable for the individual, sometimes even taxing on society, but it's great for humanity. I'm in no way opposed to any person getting cochlear implants ( my dad is in about 7 years) because I accept that we Americans each live like the leading protagonist in our own life novel. I know I do. I'd get the implant. But I'll leave it at this: where would art and knowledge be or not be if all of the handicapped and drug ridden Greats had percieved the world in more or less the same way as you and I. Bheetoven, Freud, Vango, Edgar Allen Poe ( well, most writers and alcoholism), Einstein ( dyslexia), Khalo,and on and on-deviation breeds creativity, enough said. I can wait until globalization really does it's thang, I had enough novel stimuli as a baby, give me homoginization yo.
3.Genetic Engeneering: give me mutants, or give me death.Literally.
4. Linguistic Loops: language limits and defines our thoughts and thoughts loop back and demand a lexicon of words to articulate them. Back in the day, people likened how our brains to pipelines in everyday laymen's metaphors. How novice. Along came computers and cars and BOOM! Our brains are processing and computation devices filled with neural circuts and higher order processing capabilities. BOOM! Our bodies are machines, which have ideal shapes for their model. BOOM! Food is fuel, to sustain our metabolic meters, with measured calories ( energy units) in and out to keep the machine running. We don't get tired, we're 'run on empty.' If you considered literary devices to be a form of creative communication ("art"), then the real funny part is this: it's life imitating art ( i.e. likening our minds computers) ,which were created to replicate a component of life (an ideal physical manifestation of human cognitive processing.)
5. That's what the monkey's said. All you doubter need not look further back than the last human hybrid with the monkies. I'm pretty sure they were unaware they were morphing into us because it look a while, and likewise...well..ill let your minds wander.goodnight.

deep purple and navy

No, Indigo:
There's more than one anwser to these questions, pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.

I'm trying to find a ruler. My life-line has gone crooked, and I need help straightening it back out.

Music helps. Art helps. Busy helps. Thinking does not help. Presentations, papers and midterms also do not help.However, finishing them helps. Showering compulsively helps. Cleaning helps. Uncle's dying does not help. Take back the night helps at take back the night, but does not help when the crowd takes their empowerment party favor and disperses and it makes being alone feel like being lost. Sugar helps. Caffine helps. Spontenaity helps, impulsivity does not.Venting helps, suspecting yourself as the culprit of tainting a disproportionate amount of negative conversations does not. Family helps- maybe not mine, but being around other people's. Deprivation+overachieving= the ultimate high.Invincibility.Helps like magic. Trying to untangle those two factors while experianceing withdrawal from that high does not help, short term, present term.

There's no need to worry about me and this , by the way. It's just a stupid funk. Everyone gets in funks. I just am really trying to pull myself out of it before I fall in too deep because there are only 3 weeks left of school.

Deforrestation

In the rainforest, the canopy protects every living organism beneath from the brutalities of the livid noon sun or unyielding curtains of rain. It is a natural buffer, calloused skin covering the vulnerable permeance of the ruby fresh layer beneath it.

When the canopy goes, beams of reality, drops of extremity and leaves ( once a vibrant green, now wilted and pale) fall down with it upon it's posterity which lies beneath.

In this case, I lie beneath. For the 4th time since I've been at USC, I lie beneath. Burried in a pile of leaves, fragmented memories, reigning family patriarchs and matriarchs call out 'timber' time and time again until it is literally raining family patriachrs and matriarchs as they arch towards the unknown, potentially, and i ache to drop that prefix and have it all be known.

I get verbose when I feel, so sue me.

My Uncle jack's funeral was today, and i wrote this eulogy as catharsis about 10 minutes after recieving the news. It literally hurled itself onto the word document; it was written in about 5 minutes.

I'm a big fan of putting the emphasis on celebrating a life over a grieving death. I want to share with everyone was a terrific soul he is:

Uncle Jack was nothing short of inspirational; much like mygrandpa,his brother, he served as the family Confucious.Granted, physical distance between Jack and 
Frieda and my nuclear family after we moved to portland made it so my in person interactions with him were limited; 
however, they must have been significant because what I gained from him simply through observing his character is an 
example I have with me now, will be with me forever, and i aspire to one day achieve. Rarely is a presence so calming 
yet powerful; rarely is such respect demanded through content silence; rarely does a smile like his illuminate a room; and 
rarely do humility and modesty error on the side of wisdom and kindness when tempted to morphs into superficial vices 
of financial sucess. Uncle Jack was an artifact of the moral, family values which were killed a few decades back and my 
generation has the obligation to bury without the time to grieve the tremendous loss. A man of valor, a man of stability, a 
man of unwavering generosity: my uncle Jack deserves my time to reflect upon and respect the significance of his life 
and celebrate the closing of the curtains to an awe-inspiring show. The concept of celebrating death makes sence to 
me--although this is physically the end of uncle jacks life cycle, his soul lives on through a the effect of linked chains, lke 
myself, which will carry him with us and pass his legacy down to the next link, until forever. Until forever Uncle Jack, i will 
remember yo, respect you, and honor you until forever. Thank you for being you.



Mission Impossible

We can protest, demonstrate, and write a letter to every political figurehead.
We can boycott, mobilize and inseminate our communities with the oxymoronic seeds of bias truths.
But, as south-Central’s very own street prophet Mr. Shakur eloquently stated, "Some things never change."
I'm not sure about 'never.' Seems to me like can and never have an inverse relationship; if we believe both time and space to be infinite, then the possibility of anything drastically increases and the probability of never diminishes.
However, some things in this crazy, mixed up world of ours are changing at the pace of a recorded sloth, played in slow motion, and re-winded 1 second per 2 seconds it's played.
You know what I mean?
Let me provide an example.
Free Tibet. For the love of god, Free Tibet already.
This week there was a big Free Tibet protest in downtown Portland (my hometown). Typical. But really, how helpful are those demonstrations? So one Portlander informs another about Tibet and (surprise surprise) the new liberal guy agrees with the other liberal guy; national sovereignty is so in this century. Great. And let's even take this thought experiment as far as to say that these two fellow acted on their convictions and tried to do something to free Tibet. They created a documentary about the issue. Did that work? Is Tibet now free? No. My proof: my sophomore year in high school I saw a Free Tibet documentary in a local indie cinema. Is Tibet free now, 4 years later? No. Did I do anything about the issue after watching the film? No. Do I care/empathize more? Yes. ...Does that matter to the Tibetan people or help them whatsoever? Not really, No. Let's say these two men started a non-profit charity where all of the proceeds were put towards Tibet. Would that help? Ehhh...I mean, yeah I guess, but it's that exact form of altruistic neo-colonialism (nourishing a country from the tit of this great motherland) which a) sets up a dependent relationship which fucks over the other guys in the end and b) we NEVER ASK what the people over there want and need. We put our opinions, our values, our rhetoric, our theories, and our individualistic cultures into their collectivistic territory and don't really make things much better as much as we make them more complicated.

So if you ask me, I won't say Tibet will never be free, but probably not in my lifetime. But maybe I just need to adjust my mindset...with infinite time and space...if I was born once there is a possibility I could eventually be born again...and if I buy into the chance of my reincarnation, than the probability that Tibet will be free in my lifetime increases. Ah, optimism. And with that, I'm off to bed.

Check in

Every so often I do a self assesment. I ask myself: 'Self, if you could be anywhere in the world right now, doing anything you please, in whatever company you chose, where/what/with whom would be be (with)?'

Sometimes my (seemingly) mundane reality is the antithesis of my outrageous ideal; other times the two overlap so one is just a crescent shadow beneath the other.

The more boring my life is, the more extreme my desire to be in the exact opposite context is. When life is spice, my ideal meets it halfway. This is a happy place.

I've stumbeled into a realm of adventure and stability, with routine and occasional spontenaity to break it with. This is a new mix, a great mix, and let's see if i can finish week one of post spring break school on this same positive mood-note. CHALLENGE
.

Cool Poem

I'm reading Pinker's new book The Stuff of Thought. The guy is chalk full of examples to support his words analyzing our system of words and thoughts. One thing he threw in the mix was this poem which I really like, not quite sure why but it strikes me as clever. It also fronts as surface, which is nice because then ya can dig into it and get out from it what you want/can. To lay down the context, Pinker was discussing radical pragmatics as an alternative to conceptual semantics in terms of the aquisition and capacity for human language. Yeah, he's pretty much presenting the theory of pragmatics which is ( to the linguist) how language is used in context in light of the knowledge and expectations of the conversants. No more waiting, I'll unveil the poem he provided to exemplify polysemy as a function of pragmatics:

Dear White Fella
When I am born I'm black
When I grow up I'm black
When I am sick I'm black
When I go out ina sun I'm black
When I git cold I'm black
When I git scared I'm black
And when I die I'm still black.

But you white fella
When you're born you're pink
When you grow up you're white
When you git sick you're green
When you go out ina sun you go red
When you git cold you go blue
When you git scared you go yellow
And when you die you go grey
And you got the cheek to call me coloured?

springtime cliche

To whom this preemptive warning may concern (i.e. Hannah), one may not want to read this post if easily nauseated by frolicking, unicorns, rainbows and butterfly kisses. This springtime concussion has temporarily impaired by realistic cynicism.

It's spring! yada yada yada Rebirth! yada yada flowers blooming! yada yada yada Clean the closet, the fresh light illuminates the impossible internal maze of the winter and the correct corridors leading to the bright exit become obvious, yada yada CHLICHE, Cliche, cliché.

I woke up borderline euphoric. Pangs of warmth and happiness are pulsating through my body. This is strange, oh so strange, a strange and lovely surprise I could attribute to many things, which could all be summed up in one simple cliché: Springtime. In everything it actually is (freshness, openness, light, colors, flowers) and everything it has come to symbolize (clarity, personal hatching, balance achieved through restarting the circle of life, cleanliness, romance, buds of potential blossoming into a form that was once an idea), I feel the effects of spring drench my body like a much needed shower after hiking through the woods. I awoke at the end of that trail, feeling safe with my toes over the edge of a watercolor viewpoint. The mosaic routes and events have blended together to form a picture of a complete experience. I peer down: a birds eye view of the past, the pretzel twists and turns of the trail I spent the past year escalating. I gaze up: an open sky of possibility wisped with cirrus clouds. And I look straight out: a panorama skyline, inviting, wondrous, protective with infinite room for success, mistakes and growth. My eyes lock with the twinkling skyline lights; their winks assure me what's below it is our secret of a foggy winter past and what's above is worth climbing for up the thin, rope-like clouds because the building foundations are sturdy. I am my own safety net, and that feeling is the ultimate conceptual womb pregnant with euphoria.

Social Psychology is my favorite class of the semester, and among many other useful theories, it has taught me the Fundamental Attribution Error. People tend to overly attribute behaviors and attitudes as reflections of the person instead of giving the context and situation its correct weight. Maybe I'm overlooking how cathartic Spring Break has been by staking claim to achieving pure,raw, personal happiness. I have chosen what to do with my time instead of it dictating my life. I'm spending quality time with a few quality people instead of bits of time with boatloads of people. Real human connection-how refreshing. I have literally cleaned my room and the apartment every day. I have had time to pleasure read, which unfortunately has become a rarity that has been reserved for breaks since joining the world of academia. I feel relaxed, organized, put together, and in control instead of a victim of the circumstance. I'm able to be me at the core without sedimentary layers of anxiety compacted on top of me: obligations, responsibilities, meetings, classes, clubs, events, homework reading and writing and labs...at the end of the day, the aspect of life I value the most (inter-personal relationships) takes the largest concession. I've been working on reprioritizing and making my priorities congruent with my actual lifestyle. Which leads me full circle back to the silly little blurb which prompted the actual emotional regurgitation of this post: my horoscope for today. I clicked on it in my email for fun, and my skeptical stance on horoscopes is still in tact, but there is something eerie about receiving THIS horoscope on THIS day after waking up and feeling like THIS:
Gemini Daily Horoscope, Mar 20, 2008
Although you may have been overly involved with your career or with activities in your community, the primary emphasis in your life is changing. Your drive for professional success may be replaced with increasing concern for your own personal dreams. Use the weeks ahead to build friendships based on mutual benefit rather than a win-or-lose mentality.

I'll conclude with some highlights of the break, some of which I'll delve into in later posts: being a The Price Is Right audience member, Venice beach drum circles, drinking and dinning on our very own homemade Indian/ euro-itallianish meals in superb company, meeting Josh's family, random costume challenges, exploring the UV and goodwill, continuing my musical journey and reading this book. Savor this overly optimistic post for the outlier that it is. Maybe that will change, is changing, do I want it to change? If I can keep my sarcasm and cynicism still then yeah, I guess I do...we'll see what happens from here...

Spring Cleaning

When I was a kid (note: 'kid' is embarrassingly flexible and stretches through the middle school years), there was never a monster in my closet. But there was a person. I was never sure of the greater force he represented, but it was obvious that he was the Employee-of-the-Month type, dependable to be present and punctual for his window, bedside and closet looming duties. His lack of physical presence only confirmed my suspicion of his existence; any savvy Watcher would know that their implied presence is the fulcrum of their power. Remaining a nameless, faceless, mysterious entity was the job description by and large: watch by day, and let the implied presence marinate in wayward daydreams until the nighttime, culminating into the an unbearable tease, bulldozing the brink, brick wall of the imagination’s relative sanity and the concept of itself. Tangents of terror run amuck, the land of the mind and the land of time become indistinguishable and interactive: wincing at imagined wounds, whimpering for help to rescue you from the confines and constructions of your mind, your body. Point being, the Watcher need not do more than exist as a concept, because the imagination brings him to reality.

Now hold your applause, but by the ripe, wise age of 14, I devised a way to bid adieu to the Watcher. I’ve been sleeping in a bed, by a closet, and under a window for years. I know- Ripley's Believe It Or Not, here I come. The solution turned out to be simple: give the unknown a name. I humanized the hell out of that Watcher, kind of like a game of SIMs. The Watcher's ill intentions were as vast as America the beautiful herself, accentuated by years of exposure to our god blessed, striped and starred, sensationalizaed media. What’s a kid supposed to think when Mortal Combat and WWF entertainment are laced with advertisements claiming “Impossible is Nothing” and “ Just do it”? However, James McDougal, certified Watcher by profession, was just a lonely, harmless, twice divorced balding man with a fear of mold and impressive stamp collection. James had been in enough custody battles to prove his devotion to his children and to make him go broke, but unfortunately, he only got to see the little ones every other weekend. James had three dogs (literally the man’s best friends), one of which was a Chihuahua he bought in the glory days of the Taco Bell ad’s to pick up Bitches also walking their bitches in the park by his condo. No such luck. James was a good guy at heart, but that heart was calloused and layered, thumping lethargically through his jaded existence of watching and reporting, and occasionally opting out of mass for a Sunday social with his buddies C-Span and Jergens. There is nothing unknown, mysterious or faceless about James. He has a name. Thus, How James Lost his Fear Factor.

Spring Cleaning. Before I clean out my closet, I have to sift through the assorted clutter. Some I recognize, some I don't. Don’t know how I got it, why I’ve kept it, or how I go about getting rid of it. The difference between this and the Watcher situation is now I have a handful of cards and know how to play them when Fear invites me to the table for a game of poker. I just need to remember to box it all up and write a huge, legible label across the top in order to pack it up and ship it out of my closet. I want, so desperately, a nice, clean closet; the exhausting process is a means worth that ends. Name it, Say it, let someone hear it, package it, ship it. The psycho-therapeutic assembly line. Ford ain’t got nothing on this, shoot.

Theraputic Email Plea

If anyone saw me on Monday or Tuesday, I was a complete mess. Personal stuff, two midterms, and getting the grade back on a midterm from the week before all bubbled inside my mind like a teapot, until it reached a boil. I broke down into tears, I screamed. Some of the anxiety was just the stress of all of the looming library study hours and upcoming assignments. I'm used to academic stress, and alone it is manageable. Another component of the anxiety was lack of sleep, the effects of which cycle through fatigue, silliness, deindividuation, and finally everything about life seeming impossible, epic, and unfair. I was at stage four, which didn't help. The last part was the shame: the shame that I couldn't handle my own life, the shame of my own immaturity backlashing and slapping me in the face after turning a blind eye to my own deficiencies, and the shame of what those deficiencies are. It's break now, my assignments are done, I've slept, and now all that's left to do is face the music and get the help I need by blasting the music as loud as I can and embracing my own capabilities for what they are and what they aren't. Sighhhh.... I am dyslexic, here me roar.

Below is the email I wrote to my Law renowned professor and TA regarding my midterm grade. The very last thing I wanted to do was to personally and/or publicly give this situation any thought, but after time and some introspective thinking took place, I've concluded the antithesis: the best thing for me to do is to make to the situation as public as possible, come out of the proverbial learning disabled closet, and try to fix this laughably poor grade anomaly I've never dealt with before to sooth the sting of the shame.

********************************
edit: took out e-mail. I think the above gives the gist of things.

Fleeting Thought...

I don't feel the need to prove myself to anyone else, so why do I feel the need to prove me to me?

Percieve and Believe

Preemptive warning: tired, tipsy and tangental opinion below. Mind your head.

For us earth organisms, 'change' is a shift in perception. That's it. Funny how for us, Perception is Everything, but Everything is not Perception. (sidenote: shoutout to the muses who re-aroused my contemplation about everything and Everything.) Maybe Everything is perception, but for the sake of my sanity in at 9:30 am statistics class, I'm buying into it's applied validity for the human world...and the chance that this thing we have called existance is coincidently unique to specifically the scope and limits of our random 5 senses is kate moss slim. My point: if every truth and definition we have is limited to our perception, and we only test what we can emperically messure which is double limited by our perception AND abilities, AND perception is slave to a zillion variables, then how can change exist from one state to another when original state cannot be accurately defined?

i hate daylights savings. i like maple bars.

The Wisdom of the UV

Sunday. Sitting, sweating, studying at a table tucked in USC's neighboring ‘Village’, which is anything but a reflection of its University namesake. Well, maybe the Starbucks. Exchanged a smoke for a conversation with a local guy beside me. Lazy Sunday slurs at first, most small talk skipped, straight to the point: " Why you in college girl, wanna get yo'self a better job or sumthin?" Inside I laugh: not at him, at my lavish honest answer to his practical question and assumption. No, I said. Inhale, smoke, exhale, smoke. A small cloud above his head. I said I like to learn. Mouth shut, mind opened, ludicrous life of mine more stagnant than the smoke and thicker than the smog, unveiled in the silence that trailed my train of thought. Neighbor wandered off a stranger, neighbor wandered off a stranger, only to be seen again five minutes later, a different face with the same brows raised at the intersection of the grey road dividing the sun-stained bricks from the dirt bathed, tar paved real world wallowing and working under Mt. Olympus's shadow. Nose buried back in my Law book, lines of supreme court rulings, now more critically read in the space between as a history of discriminatory 'ism's. Two nights have passed as salient and awake as their conjoining days, spent loving to learn surrounded by bricks and book and the implied presence of ivy.

I could have done better on recent midterms. But ya know what? I really don't think it matters. There was never a need for the princess to complain about the pea when she had 25 mattresses in the first place.

Warning

Warning: I will be incommunicado until Tuesday mid-day.

By the way...
My biological family is my family by chance, and Michelle is my family by choice.We became eachothers family when we discovered as youngsters that stability in our own wasn't always promised. My best friend Michelle is the type of muse who inspires NYT and Oprah's Book Club Best Sellers. She's been ( the youngest person on a team) training for a charity triathalon for children with Leukemia. Just Because. If you assumed that this is some college girl cliche way to fill empty time, burn empty calories and put some meaning into an empty life, you could not be more wrong. This triathalon is intense--even as an ex- D-1 soccer player, she had to train for triathalon TRAINING. Mind you, all of this is on the side of being a full time college student set to graduate in 3 years, studying for the LSATS, coaching a girls soccer team, pulling straight A's, and working 2 jobs. We've known eachother since the 1st grade, and despite a rough patch in 4th grade when I called her a lesbian and then she didn't invite me to her annual birthday slumber party of the year, we made up in 6th grade and have been best friends/sisters everyday since. SO, because I could not be more proud of who she is and what she's doing with her life, I shamelessly plug her website here : http://www.active.com/donate/tntor/tntorMMassar . I'm pretty sure mich doesn't read my blog ( why would she need to if she's already inside of my head?) so i don't have to worry about embarrasing her humble self. If anyone knows any person or company or organization who likes to sponser or donate to this type of stuff, just pass it on. Both of my parents places of work have it. Why not?

Until Tuesday,
Emily

el Bug

I need to travel. If someone doesn't let me out of this USC bubble soon, I may explode.RIP, here lies Emily, the tragic victim of routine.

I just downed an ungodly amount of sugar and caffine and feel like I could Forrest Gump my way across the universe, on foot, with no particular destination.

Yet i remain seated--15 years of education has trained me well. I'm not that straight edge, I'm reclining. Reclining in a chair which looks luxerious and exudes the allusion of comfort but it's just another mirage in this collegiate desert of nice looking shiney things that actually suck. For instance, this Mac computer I'm musing on. It's a toy. iAnd as I am reading about early selective attention, I'm realizing that my attention is wafting up and away from my studies and floating amidst the strange concoction of smells that is oh-so characteristic of Commons.

Distracted--

Have you ever noticed how everything in commons is plastic? Most things are platsic imitations of what they should be ( example: plastic tables painted like wood and plastic plants) and everything else is prosessed chemicals made to be comsumed. Some have been picked, cooked, chemically modified and injected with an aroma and color, frozed, put into a vehicle or plane and flown with premium petrolum to a plant where it was packaged in more plastic. Then,it was boxed, taped, sealed in plastic, picked up driven even further before it was dropped of, unwrapped, put onto plastic shelves and either bought and noshed on before it was thrown away in a plastic garbage bin or 'expired' and thrown away into a plastic garbage bin, then taken to a dump and left to rot, which it never will. Plastic will never age. It is our fountain of youth. All hail plastic. Plastic is religous. Plastic is finite. What will happen first: the plastic apocolypse or the world actually being destroyed? Maybe the first will lead to the second. I don't think the second would lead to the first...ew, gross. Only plastic, cockroaches and the chemosynthesis of the blacksteamers in the Ocean survive the apocolypse, imagine. Or don't. Maybe turning a blind eye is the only way to get by today without letting the darkness of the world seep inside you and letting your mood become as black as the gurgeling petroleum being slurped out of the oil rigs. We rig our outlook to be sunny, they rig their oil, everyone wins.
win win win.

Application Proclamation

Aside from one chapter in The Textbook from Hell ( aka the principles of cognitive neuroscience), the extent of my work today was filling out two long applications. Done.I want a medal. No, a trophy. Better yet, a Medallion made of fools gold and the teethmarks of angry San Franscisco hopefuls. Is that so much to ask? I guess some Victory Advil will do. Alarm set. 8:30 a.m. And I quote Mr. Bubba Sparxxx when I say, " Ain't Life Grand."

flashback of the night

Look. I had a terrific, productive, relaxing day. It is now 2:30 am. I’ve surpassed tired, defeated depleted, curb stomped exhausted, and find myself buoyant, hovering over the water line dividing consciousness and unconsciousness. Every sheep I count is a buoy in disguise, every meditative thought is another set of water wings, compounding and weighting me up, up and away in a frustrated fit of levitated bliss. All I want is a gentle dissent back down to my restless body, harmonize and reconnect, warm up the ill-oiled joints and melt away the mental peaks and valleys. Redefine Mellow, a patient energetic yellow that I used to know before like my own reflection. My battery pack and my snooze button have run away, racing the The Cow and ET to the dark side of the moon made of a cobblestone conglomerate comprised of youthful and drug induced musing and misconceptions. They play up there because I had lost my confidence to do just that on earth, and so shoved them out with the earnest naivety of a curious child. And in days caught in a maze without Buzz Lightyear to lift me up and out and bring me home, I realize that Woody wouldn't have, couldn’t have, left my side and there was never a need to modify the wheel to begin with. Too late, so late, storm awaits as I lie awake now and know that I'll be failing at fighting sleep tomorrow.

Life is funny. I'm so happy, so sleepily giddy even at my own self-handicapping shortcomings.

Zodiac

I am a Gemini. If there is a difference between a horoscope and a vaugely cotoured proverb of the day, the distinction is lost on me. Zodiac as I see it has no inherent predictive value; however, its prescriptive nature primes a perfect situation for a self-fullfilling prophecy. Horoscope ingested--> introspective lens applys horoscope to self and life--> thoughts, feelings, and behaviors experianced are more likly to reflect horoscope. That being said, zodiac isn't a modern day, commercial, overprinted Nastradamas, but it isn't completly worthless and irrelevant either. Sexism and gender roles work in the same way; women and men are fed societal ideas of what it means to be masculine and feminine, and grow to embody those characteristics. Today I looked at my horoscope, which is sent to me everyday by the wise Junk E-Mail Gods of the Stars. Gemini's in general are the communicators and non-conformists of the zodiac. Most people assume we're fickle and have the jeckle-hyde Twin effect. I'm calling bullshit-show me one person who isn't multi-faceted and complex.

Here is my horoSCope (...oh god..) today. Let's see if I actually make it a reality as this kernel of 'knowledge' about myself is planted into the back of my mind:
"Gemini-It's more important today to know what you want than it is to believe that you can get by with a spur of the moment decision. You really need a concrete plan, even if this isn't your typical style. Advanced preparations now can increase your success potential for the future. Ultimately, you can obtain freedom if you work with discipline from the beginning."

Right below clairvoyant message is a weight loss advertisment, i could lost 10 pounds in about 48 hours!!!! No thanks. And that sums up pretty well the agency and authenticity that I attribute to zodiac.

The Means, The Ends and Meaningless Meaning

One man's trash is another man's treasure. Perhaps--every stupid cliche and idiom is applicable in the right context.By simply amplifying that saying with some hyperbole, a scarey doctorine arises: one man's mindless musings is another man's emotional oxygen. Impossible situation? I think not. Ignore the highways this question could lead you to wander down and instead let us saunter this narrow alleyway under the Champagne Supernova in the Sky. What? Precisley.

Tonight, lounging and chatting around the assorted bohemia-meets-grandmothers attic-meets-lazy clutter of my appartment, an old cherished song of mine, Champagne Supernova, was exposed for the Fraud that it really is. It's a song of exclusivly pretty noises and whimsical, abstract lyrics, which together allude towards a hint of significance, but alas, none. According to Wikipedia (the latest and greatest Prophet, shhh don't tell jesus), the writer of the song, Noel, " claimed in a 2005 interview that he has still not made up his mind as to what the song actually is about, though he thinks it might be about reincarnation." Aren't you supposed to know what the song is about sometime before or during the whole writing process? Maybe? Perciever dictates meaning. Meaning is not fact, it's fluid. But usually the dissonance in the meaning sent and taken in of author and perciever differ in significance, not existance. This song used to move me, inspire me, make me feel. Nothing moved me, nothing made me feel. Nothing. Champagne Supernova, you are a tricky little son of a bitch.

Tired and Inspired Musings

Words are the most tireless toy mankind has created. Words are a mosaic of mirrors reflecting our thoughts, dynamic and distinct, distinguishing me from you from them. Words are as clever, potent and genuine as the individual crafts them to be, and therein lies the inherent flaw in the function of language: words are the middlemen of communication, and even the most sincere writen or spoken message is just a shadow of the sentiment and idea in it's original form.

The eye-to-eye conversation, naked and honest, shares in silence. Deaf to tone, translucent in intention and unable to mask it's motive, it reveals. Light and dark wrestleing and tumbling, ricoche off of your eye and onto theirs, illuminating brilliant hidden shades of gray obscured by the routine and simplifying effects of everyday language. Forced to absorb meaning and stumble into understanding, soujourning into a deep well, intimate cosmic empathy, superceeding borders and identities, connect. Efficient breath taking, breath saving, breathing palpating humanity. Translating novels of experiance and omitting the trial and error of words, clumsy and cluttered, a cacophany of desires detered by the wasted wishes and trivialities of assinine assumptions of the known and unknown. Stick figure conclusions rule supreme, silloueteing a full figured reality, gracefully dancing around truth and meaning and naieve to their brilliant preformance art of deception. Break Through. Penetrate through webs of words borrowed into a higher tier of looks owned, unmistaken and orginial, broadcasting at a frequency, too frequently too high to reach communal clairty through the bashful, blushing cheeks of the majority, small-talking, dog-walking over rehersed Schemas and Scripts ,under-estimating the purifying effects of panorama, hearing their neighbor without listening and writing a letter without revealing, reverting to a rubric set in society like a cookie cut out of a cut out, cloned and cemented, stained into the sky and sea by Outdated Traditions. Outdated Traditions, supported by tyranny,tears and tiers of transmitted Truths, unequivicoaly scribed and spoken in scripture and sermons, written and redacted, reinforcing rhyme and reason for rules and regulations and other ideas whose existance blossomed from and relys on language and litigation. And Numb to our senses we follow the leader, blindly bah'ing and babbeling, literature a luxury and limited to a lexicon of laymens lessons and never once do we dare look the librarian in the eye and demand more. Settle, we settle, we sink and we settle, quicksand society swirling and gurgleing, consuming, insatiable appitite.

Knock-offs are for purses and chemically altered no calorie sugar packets. Language, writen and spoken, negotiates the authenticy of meaning proposed with the meaning interpreted. Use the eyes more often--as I'm learning, they really are little portals...

Blink

Dear Emily of the future weekend,
This is Emily, from Tuesday. Well, technically it's Wednesday i suppose but the smog has yet to illuminate a hazy rosy fingered dawn creeping over the downtown high-rises and skyskrapers. I don't have much time to fill you in ( this is an all-nighter for a reason) but to gist of it is this: variability is exciting because it makes you appriciate stability. Will the scantron spit out the test im about to take, offended by the taste of idiocracy? Perhaps. Life wouldn't end, I'm well aware. And if it did end, if the apocolypse came and I was the sole catalyst, there is no way i could feel poorly about that. There is no way I could feel at all--i'd be dead...or reincarnated into a turtle ( shoutout to my buddhist friends...and when you break it down, a turtles life is grand. When i was at the long beach aquarium on saturday, similar thoughts teeter-tottered in my mental playground. A jellyfish's life is grand. They have no self concept of being a distinct entitiy from the jelly next to them. Their was just something so pure and perfectly balanced about their lives, unconciously existing, maintaining homeostasis, aroused and challenged by survival and reproduction. Nothing is convoluting they way they are programmed to function as animals. They have no fashion schemas or personality schemas that affect their behavior and inter-jellyfish relations. They just be.

I gotta get me a Jelly man. Learn from the invertebrea kings of the sea.

elapsed

It's been a while.

First order of business: someone recently left an anonymous comment on an older post telling me to learn to spell. Valid point, I would like to learn if I could. But willpower is only so useful when I'm batteling genetics and long history of phoneme-inept habits. Unlike homework, I don't re-read or spell check what i type in this blog. If i put any more effort than letting the words flow from my rambling inner monolouge onto the keyboard and push 'publish', i doubt i'd still be into this. If i felt like structured writing, I'd start a class essay early. I get that grammer, spelling and punctuation slip ups infuriate some people, and you, Brave Anonymous Commenteer, could be one of those people. So my advice to you, in response to your unsolicited advice to me, is if you don't like it, don't read it. I'm not really following the logic in you harrassing me into changing something which annoys you, when you can master your own destiny and rid the annoyance by not reading my blog.

white rabbit

I feel like watching Moulin Rouge.

So much to sayyyyyy. So little time. The percent of time i have to say it is about 5% of my waking hours left, or X5= Xl+(((.o5)(N)-cfl)/fi)(i) .

I know this because it just took me a half hour to start getting this formula to calculate correctly. Stats midterm is in T-11 hours. I'm late!

Best Paragraph of the Day

The start of my weekday routine usually follows this generic ruberic. I pre-game the folly of my early afternoon classes with the fun of a late morning class. Exciting, right? But oh, I have a secret: the real magic happens between the lectures during Turbo Get Shit Done Time. I drown myself in the days caffine of choice and get into the zone. Today, during that very time-out from reality, I took a minute to lift my nose out of my law book and just laugh out loud, right in the middle of commons. This is, emperically, the best paragraph of the week:

Backstory: I was reading about the constitutional parameters of parental authority in the case Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education. Essentially, an Angry Christfearing PTA Mother challenged that her child school was breaking the free execize clause in the first amendment with optional family planning sexual education, evolution, the works.The supreme court held in favor of the school district, duh, because exposure is different than endoctrination yada yada, and the case goes on to explain the details in detail, including...
" Mrs. Frost testified that many politicalissues have theological toors and that there would be "no way" certain themes could e pressented without violating her religous beliefs. she identified such themes as EVOLUTION, FALSE SUPERNATURALISM, FEMINISM, TELEPATHY, AND MAGIC as matters that could not be presented in any way without offending her beliefs."

Awesome.

By the way...I decided. I'm voting tomorrow, at the Cathlioc Center, with my eyes wide open, hand steady, and without the intelligence of eenie-meenie-minie-moe. I'll break it down. The united states is removed from my imaginary utopian democracy. Thomas Jefferson wanted me ( or a white, land owning male version of me) to be educated so I could make the best informed and thought out decisions I knew how when submitting a ballot. Tommy boy, that was a nice idea, but it wasn't even until the industrial revolution in the early 20th century when an influx of blue collared immigrants unionized got angry that snot-nosed children were snatching their jobs for lower wages that the federal government mandated all kids up to 16 have to go to school. So much for Jefferson's romantic means towards the same ends. I spent 11 years in compulsory education, decived by the false motivation of heroism through informed citizenship. Now I know I wasn't even required to go to school to learn how to be a good cog in the machine, it just took me off the job market. Moreover, schools are even more of a facade than I previously imagined; they lawfully have no obligation to teach me anything and their sole duety and purpose is to be a physically safe space. Essentially, what I thought were the points of rationale behind my schooling--a base education for the sake of satisfying human curisoity, getting a diverse groups of peoples on the same page, preparing a young demographic to become the best cogs in the societal machine they could be, and enabling a basic democracy--all pale in comparrison to the threat of me as cheap labor. Keep me off the job market, keep me safe, and school can keep their funding. I find myself in a laughable position. My most informed vote, based on all of my logic, reasoning, educational background and research, is still a vote of consessions and naievity. School until now only taught me what school wanted me to know, basically the western world through the whitewashed lens of a judeo-christian wealthy man. At least I was safe...save Springfeild, Columbine, and the rest of the scattered school massacres. Knowing that I don't have the proper skills, knowledge or resources to make an informed vote, I'm forced to vote for rhetoric, voting records and proposed stances on hot-topic issues.Basically, voting for a campaign. Which is lame. Hence, my domino effect of consessions.I should be voting Green Party because i agree with their principles they develop policies off of, but I am not due to this (anti-grassroots) bipartisian system; I shoud be voting for the dem who is not going to win but who i agree with most, but i'm not; who i'm voting for is the pretty good candidate from the party of which im a fair-wheater fan. A compromise. At least not all of Jefferson's ideals were lost...