Wednesday, October 26, 2005

cool

finally the weather has cooled a bit! it may only be temporary but right now it's about 59°F (15°C) and the sky is a clear, vibrant blue. the color i'd love to paint my walls, if only you could bottle it. The hue of the sky enhances the verdance of the foliage, offering a very attractive contrast to the viewer and making even Columbia look like a nice place to live. Every so often i don't mind living here.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Hoegaarden

Happy Birthday to ME!! 21. finally. i'm dignified and old.

hoegaarden tastes the way lilies smell. i enjoy it.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

chekhov

this blog may encounter some neglect until the middle of november as i am currently an assistant stage manager for my university's production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and its taking up more time than actually exists in a day. what a shame.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

did your momma teach you...

when i was five, my mother told me not to cry over spilled milk. she also told me to get a sponge and clean it up when i did spill it. the same went for my garbage--it went in the trash can. my mother, wonderful though she is, is not extraordinary in this regard. I have never in my life heard any parent tell their child "oh no, you don't have to use the garbage can. you're above that. just throw it on the ground."

WHY THEN

are so damn many people so selfish and lazy that they leave their garbage--non biodegradable, insect-attracting, sticky, smelly, tripping hazard-y garbage--anywhere but where it belongs? I just saw a melted ice cream in a giant plastic tub wedged firmly between a pipe and a cinderblock halfway up a wall. very creative, but still litter. i've tripped over countless styrofoam cups and soda bottles in the middle of paths. some were obviously dropped on accident, but they still weren't picked up and thrown into a garbage can--which, in columbia, are rarely more than half a block apart.

you know its wrong. you know its rude. your momma taught you that much before you turned eleven, dyed your hair blue, and stopped listening to her. you have no excuse.

there is one group of people--probably .000001% of the global population who have an excuse to not know any better. because their momma didn't teach them to. and their names generally begin with Queen, King, Emperor.... these people are (generally) plenty smart enough to not anyway and frequently have lackies who will pick up their garbage whenever they go out, so they are not a significant part of the problem. But anybody else. Even if your last name is Hilton or Kennedy or fucking Bush. someone in your life ought to have taught you not to throw your refuse on the ground.

but frequently litterbugs are the same idiots who don't flush public toilets. I say idiots, not to soften the blow of a word like "assholes" but to express that these people are not of normal human intelligence. if you throw your styrofoam cup in the middle of the sidewalk chances are you're likely to shit on the sidewalk too. and get into fights with your reflection. and chase raccoons and your tail. the only reason one might have to not be considerate enough toward their fellow human to pick up after themself is that they are not in fact human at all. My friggin CAT buries her foeces. i mean sure for her its a safety precaution so other animals have a harder time finding her, but the fact remains.

i don't have a solution to this problem. columbia is filthy because humans are lazy. i'm not going to pick up other people's garbage nor will i encourage anyone else to--not only do i have the immune system of a 90 year old and catch cold from merely looking at a doorknob but frankly i don't think we should. garbage is something for a society to be embarrassed of. we don't need civil nannies to go around picking up after public sloth. litter should remain in its place to punish society for raising and welcoming the low lifes who are willing to put it there. it should piss you off. so that the next time you watch someone toss their garbage on the ground you grab them round the shoulders, point at their waste, and say "pick that up. now."


smokers, this goes for you too. cigarette butts take years to break down--if you drop it today, it'll be there tomorrow, don't fool yourself about their biodegradability.

your taxes go to pay civil servants to pick up garbage that has been collected and bagged. these people do not get paid nearly enough to chase down your dixie cup as it rolls across a four lane highway. don't muse to yourself "well, someone gets paid to take care of this--i'm keeping people employed" to justify your actions. you're wrong. its nobody's job. prisoners keeping the sides of the freeway clean are being punished double: for their special crime and for yours against society. you should thank them.

i admit it. i'm rather anal-retentively clean. i feel justified in writing this because--and anyone who has come within thirty feet of me can vouch for this--i don't litter. if i make a mess i clean it up immediately and thoroughly. but i daresay that's preferable to the sloth i see on this campus.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Breakfast

I'm still speech-impaired, and though i have enough tea for an army, the only souplike product i have in my cupboard is a can of peas. well i have pot noodles and cereal but those are emergency rations and breakfast food, respectively.

well, actually, seeing as its the middle of the day and i just had a bowl of cereal and tea, and breakfast consisted of a turkey and hummus sandwich on the way to class...perhaps i should rethink the meaning of "breakfast". Besides being one of those words that loses its meaning when you look at it for too long (breakfast. break fast. break quickly? to suddenly collapse? this sounds dangerous. like a treehouse in a hurricane.) this cute little compound word, in its noun form, only really means "the first thing eaten upon waking." you interrupt the fasting that goes along with sleep. fine. But what does breakfast mean to me?

As a university student, to me breakfast means "whatever i can grab or make in under 30 seconds and eat on the way to class." this could be a toaster pastry, a sandwich, the occasional slice of cold pizza, a handful of almonds, or even a small bag of cold cuts and cheese (on grocery day when i've run out of bread). But rarely, when asked, will i list any of these as a favourite breakfast food. a good breakfast to me is an omelet full of mushrooms, sautéed onions, broccoli, sausage, and fresh mozzarella with a cup of black coffee and a glass of milk.

I have eggs, mushrooms, onions, broccoli, meat, and cheese in my refrigerator. i have milk and coffee. i even have a stove, pans, a spatula, a kettle and a mug.

Have I ever made myself an omelet for breakfast?

no. I don't wake up in time. I eat crap that i can grab or make in under 30 seconds so that i can actually make it to class. Damn the snooze button. If i woke up with my alarm i would always have time to make breakfast. I could make a friggin banquet. But i don't, because i want that extra 27 minutes of fitful, half-waking sleep i can get by pushing the snooze button three times. So i can spend the next 4 minutes frantically sniffing through my dresser to find something clean to wear, the following 30 seconds scrounging around my room looking for shoes (and the moment i give up on trying to find them i manage to trip over them and do an almighty face-plant into said dresser), a further 8 seconds smearing on deodorant and grabbing a mint and vowing i'll brush tomorrow, grabbing whatever grabbable food item i have and my books and rushing out the door.

when i could have had 27 minutes to calmly make an omelet and eat it too.

on an unrelated note, i'm a big fan of berry-flavoured antacid tablets. I think they should be called "calci-yummies."

Monday, October 03, 2005

Silence

my ability to speak has been forceably removed from me this weekend. what began as a mere head cold turned into what must be one of the most frustrating things in the universe--to have something to say but to be unable to convey it. it won't raise above an airy whisper--one that bypasses the larynx entirely--without becoming an incomprehensible screech (varying from the incomprehensible screech that is my usual speaking voice) that occasionally wavers into silence. its like screaming under water. my mom just told me that when you lose your voice its an indicator of a viral infection. bacterial i'd just be hacking up a lung. joy.