Religion or politics

As I'm sure everyone is already aware, the USA has one political party with two names.

Democrats and Republicans are both notorious for wasting taxpayers money, falling short on campaign promises, lying outrightly to everyone within earshot, and basically proving time and again that the last people you should put in charge are the ones who ask to be put there. But today I came to the realization that the two sides of the coin have decided to lump into one big ugly, distorted one.

NPR ran a bit today during All Things Considered which followed the attempts of several democratic candidates to reach out to "Persons of Faith"--i.e. the Christian Coalition, to try and get some more blue asses in chairs next month. They realized in 2004 that they were losing votes to Jesus W. Bush et al and it was time to try and steal back some punch cards. The message is clear: "Two can play at this game."

Yeah, Democrats, real smooth. two can play at social intolerance, prejudice, and using bible verses to justify just about anything we put our minds to.

What will it take to convince the general populace that Religion has no place in Politics?

I still find it funny that there are millions of people out there who continue to encourage the Government, that pillar of good intentions, to regulate morality. They try time and again to entrust this laughingstock, the usual gang of idiots, with the task of deciding what is right and wrong for every single American. Moreover, they expect them to base this decision on the pages of the Bible, a book which is notorious for its tendency to be out of date, jarringly inaccurate, full of loopholes, auto-contradictory, glaringly prejudiced, and, much unlike the Geneva Convention, open to interpretation.

Yeah, W's in trouble with the UN (again) for signing the fun new law which suspends habeas corpus for suspected terrorists, allowing pretty much anybody W and his cronies dislike to be sentenced without anything resembling a fair trial, be tortured, or simply held indefinitely without being charged with anything. The Supreme Court said no to this two years ago, but what does W care? he's king of the world. The international community referred to this action as "interpreting the Geneva Convention" (i.e. picking and choosing which articles to abide by or disregard.) and, in due fashion, are scheduled to start squabbling, bitching, and accomplishing nothing on the topic shortly.

If I may, I'd like to take a moment here to mention something that has become more obvious and funny the older I've gotten. Mind you, I'm the ripe old age of 22 and i'm taking my time to explore the world and figure out where I fit in it, which I expect will take the rest of my life. I'm not in any hurry to settle down and stop learning, and I feel that I'm currently among friends in this. But I took a glance through the ol' Facebook yesterday and realized that this is not the case for everyone. A huge chunk of the kids i knew in high school have stayed in south carolina, put down roots, gotten hitched, and in four short years have nurtured their xenophobia into full flower. I'd like to mention a few of the more prominent issues which I noticed in my search.

I thought the whole idea of erecting a wall along the US/Mexico border was a joke. I didn't realize people--educated people--had actually established Facebook groups lauding this effort and encouraging it to grow.

There are several groups, established in highly defensive terms, which support the Iraq war as the best thing we could be doing with our time, money, and lives. The group's name is actually "Support the War in Iraq--if you don't support the war, you don't support our troops!" in brave defiance of all evidence to the contrary. Even as these people's representatives acknowledge that this isn't a good idea and its about time we apologised, the sincerely gung-ho keep praying their friends and relations stay in the line of fire.

There are people who will vote for any candidate who wants to make homosexuality a felony, even if its the same candidate who believes we should make it harder for African countries to get medicine for AIDS, establish sanctions against Venezuela because Chavez is outspoken in his dislike for Bush, embezzle massive amounts of money, and call everyone who isn't white a terrorist. Oh wait, those ARE the candidates who want to ban visible homosexuality!

Many people who join the campaign group "Pro-Life" also join the campaign group "Pro Death Penalty." I get it--you think the government should decide who gets to live. You know, those cool guys who've killed hundreds of innocent women and children in Iraq this MONTH.

Some of these people have also joined groups for "Pro Gun Rights" and this is where it gets really funny. You want the government to force women to have unwanted children, who'll spend their lives in poverty, in foster care, and/or hated by the people who have to raise them. You will then allow these abused, neglected people to own and use firearms at their convenience, and then you will demand that the government kill them when they use them against you! Cheeky!

There is a Facebook group called "Anti Hillary Clinton 2008." Funny seeing as she hasn't said she's going to run for it. Equally as funny, there's other groups entitled "Jon Stewart for President 2008."

Looks like I'm voting for Alfred E. Neuman again.


The best encouragement I can offer anyone in how they vote is this. Before you choose your deciding issues, ask yourself: "Am I voting for what I think is best for Everyone in this country, or am I voting for what I enforce upon myself already? Will this policy benefit or harm good people--sane, taxpaying, well-behaved citizens--who don't live the same way I do?" At no point is it appropriate to think "is this the way Jesus would vote?" or anything along those lines. There are too many religions in this country--indeed, in each state, for anyone to vote so arrogantly as to think that its appropriate to inflict their religious lifestyle upon anyone else. The fact that you live that way does not mean it is necessary for anyone else to.

So in November, vote with your brain, not with your soul. Do your research, and figure out just how many times our incumbent God-tastic government has lied to us and screwed us over. If you can vote without considering what the candidate did or did not say about Jesus, your vote will go a long way toward helping our country and preventing terrorism.

Deuce-Deuce

Today is my birthday (Pacific Time.) I am twenty-two.

Super Bad

Today I realized that, of all the music in all the world that i've ever heard, the one song i will claim I absolutely detest is James Brown's "I got Soul (And I'm Super Bad.)" This may in fact be the worst song in existence. It has a good bass line and is sufficiently funky to get the ear jamming, but it turns a complete 180 several times in the recording when Brown...shrieks.

He does not shriek in a good way, or even in a way that could be percieved as an expression of excitement. At least three times in this song Brown makes a noise I didn't know human beings could make.

Someone who keeps a predatory animal as a pet (Boots is recovering nicely) may have heard this sound once or twice in their yard--the sound of a bunny losing its life. This high pitched squeal is at once horrifying and pathetic--the sound is loud, sudden, and unearthly, eerie enough to give you goosebumps--but at the same time you know it is the last, terrified utterance of a small, harmless animal who didn't do a thing wrong except look tasty to a hungry cat. One well-placed chomp and its over, often without much of a fight.

James Brown mastered this spine-tingling, eardrum-shattering noise and chose to demonstrate it in this otherwise inoffensive song. Every time I hear it i reflexively grimace, as though fifty seventh-grade teachers are scratching a chalkboard simultaneously with their long, horrible nails. Eeeeeurgh.

goals

I have decided to start a list of goals that I have set for my life, in order that I'd like to achieve them.

1. Get job that pays enough for:

shared rent nearby OR shared rent further away and transit fees
food
internet
soap


2. Work way up to job that pays enough for:

List 1
repayment of student loans
gin

3. Retire.

pad thai

I'm a really lousy cook.

life's little pleasures

I really like books that have a piece of ribbon sewn into the binding to serve as a permanent book-mark. I consistently lose the loose variety.

tiptoe through the terrorists

Today it was announced that a Berlin opera cancelled its controversial modified "Idomeneo"--a piece in which Greek sea god Poseidon commands the mortal king of Crete, Idomeneo, to murder his own son. The king gets out of it when his son's girlfriend, in an act of altruism, rushes up to be beheaded in his stead and some how it works out that Poseidon's command is overruled and they all live happily ever after. In the modified Berlin opera Idomeneo appears onstage accompanied by the heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha, and the prophet Mohammed, in a visual representation of Mankind's victory over the gods.

The piece was cancelled due to the producers' concern that showing Mohammed's severed head on a chair may offend some Muslims and it could put theatre employees and patrons at risk for car bombings.

May I make a small request, please, of all religious radicals?

Could y'all kindly get down off your damn high horse?

First you got your panties in a wad because people included Mohammed in cartoons. Then your wedgies further shimmied between your cheeks when the Pope mentioned that the Big M was a douchebag. Now you've got the european theatre circuit scared out of their boots to say anything that might irk you in the slightest because its very bad PR to have your theatre blow up on opening night.

Dammit... KNOCK IT OFF ALREADY!

Most people--all religions alike--can take a joke. "So Jesus and Satan walk into a bar..." and "So Buddha is in a candy store..." are not uncommon openers for them. If the joke is good enough, everyone gets a charge out of it, and even the really religous people smile and hope their diety of choice enjoyed it too. Very rarely there's some uptight turd at the next table who scuttles over and expresses just how offensive they found that, you faithless heathen, and i'd appreciate it very much if you went and blew yourself, but that's typically the extent of it. Everyone gets a good laugh at the twit's expense and nothing ever comes of it. This is what we call "not letting one's religion get in the way of living." Because lets' face it--if we all lived the way it says we should in those ancient texts, life would really, really suck.

Now, however, it is not so easy to kid. Now we know that there's some Muslims out there who have a real chip on their shoulder about their religion, and they want to make sure everyone knows it. Mohammed is like every fanatic's little brother--you say anything mean about him, they're gonna fight you. En masse.

what makes you so goddamned special that you feel you have the right to take offense when people who Disagree with your beliefs express them? "We're the only right religion, all the rest of you are going to hell--in fact, i'm going to kill you now so you can be Hellward bound even sooner."--GUESS WHAT.

ALL RELIGIOUS PEOPLE THINK THEIR OWN RELIGION IS THE RIGHT ONE.

Otherwise they wouldn't buy into it.

a=b. the statements are synonymous. I believe it because I believe it.

The planet Earth is rapidly spinning out of the time of gods. We don't need them anymore--we've figured out that the gods we invented in our sacred texts don't actually encompass--or even shed light on--the true enormity of the universe. The incomprehensibility of infinity. Where babies come from.

The staggering number of wacko religious people is getting to be a good indicator that its time for change. These people are terrified that the world no longer has room for them. That their outdated ideas are rapidly fading from quaint to backwards, like when you realize that grandpa's war stories are actually the unintelligable babblings of a syphilis-rotted brain. The religious fanatic chooses to reject the truth of progress and resents all who have happily passed him by. Rather than fade quietly away or join the movement ahead, however, he gets angry at everyone and reacts violently. The zealot would rather have negative attention than no attention at all.

This does not mean, however, that we should be patient with them--try and coddle them into behaving and quietly going about their lives like everyone else. No--just like the child who has learned that throwing a temper tantrum in the grocery store gets him candy, the only way to break the vicious cycle of violence and appeasement is to ignore it entirely. Eventually they'll have to cry themselves out, get up off the floor, and come along quietly.

I may have mentioned this before, but I find religion offensive and would rather not have easily-recognizable houses of worship in my town. Same goes for the Golden Arches of McDonald's joints. Both establishments convince people that the most staggeringly outlandish lies are true in spite of heaps of evidence to the contrary (for organized religions, its that the Earth is the focal point of the universe; for McDonalds, its that their chicken sandwiches are now somehow good for you.) They do it with the cunning use of crayons. Yes, Big Church and Big Business have figured out that if you lure in children with promises of fun, colorful baubles and unconditional love, they'll stick with you for life.

Congratulations, Deutsche Oper, you caved. You did exactly what the terrorists would want you to do--you compromised your artistic integrity, you let down your patrons, and you fuelled the zealots' fire by going out of your way to not offend them. You censored yourselves because you were afraid--terrified--that the big bad Muslims would spank you for saying something mean about their idol.

A more mature way of handling this situation would have been to identify that a threat was possible, tighten security at the entrance, and go on with the show. Tighten it around the block if you'd like. Anyone who's flown in the past five years is used to queueing in security lines. Its a necessary evil these days that we all hate and all blame on W...but its either that or change who we are to appease the men with bombs.

I WILL FIND YOU

whatever psychotic IDIOT it is who shot my cat, I will find you. I will hunt you down. I will give you the beating of a lifetime. If you're lucky, you'll only wind up committed to a lunatic asylum for the rest of your life for expressing very clear sociopathic tendencies (i.e. deliberate, unfeeling cruelty to animals). If the rest of the world is lucky, I'll kill you. If you think its funny to hurt a cat, you probably think its funny to hurt a person, too.

At the very least, the police are involved. You fired a deadly weapon in a highly populated residential area--an area in which dozens of school-aged and younger children live--in the middle of the day at an animal that was minding its own business. This is not the kind of thing that neighborhood folk like to hear.

MY CAT IS 16 YEARS OLD. If you DARE to tell me that she attacked someone, got into your garbage, or even so much as left my yard...frankly, you're lying.

YOU DID IT ON PURPOSE. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. YOU ARE A DANGEROUS CRIMINAL.

To say the least, I take it personally. My cat has lived in this neighborhood longer than you--this i can guarantee. To say you didn't know what Boots looked like is to say you didn't know you had a left hand. She wasn't some random stray making trouble. She doesn't wander further than thirty yards from my house.

Moreover, I guarantee you that our neighbors like my cat better than they like you.

YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON. YOU ARE INSANE. I HATE YOU.

My cat is in critical condition. If she dies, or has to be put down because to keep her alive would be torture, I will fly home and crack skulls together until I find you. Boots has been a better friend to me than you will ever be to anyone, and the least anyone could offer her was the chance to die with dignity on her own terms.

You should be in prison, or at the very least an asylum. You're a sick individual and you should not be allowed in the presence of children. I hope there is such a thing as Karma and your leg is shattered when you're hit by a bus in the near future.

If I never do have proof of who you are, know this for the rest of your life: at the best of times, there are a dozen people who hate you. I'm one.

not on drugs

Say you have a car that's in bad shape. In tinkering with it, over the course of decades, you manage to replace every single component of it. Not a single washer, wire, or drop of oil was actually part of this car when it left the factory.

...is it legal to not change the licensing, taxation, and insurance information on it? Could you conceivably pass it off as the same car you bought? I mean I know every car has a VIN visible through the windscreen, printed on that inaccessable part of the dashboard, but if you replace even the frame of the car...but it takes so long that each little fix and change would be minute and barely noticeable, if at all. I mean is it the same car? Perhaps, if you took into account the amount of time each replacement part spent among components of the original vehicle you could claim that the spirit of the original was carried, by varying degrees, in the replacements. But then it gets all blurry and metaphysical.

If you replaced the odometer I think it would make it ineligeable for legal resale.

I'm trying to figure out at what point it becomes a different car. To use another example, when I was a kid my dad bought a computer. Over the years we replaced the memory, the disk drives, the motherboard, all the wiring, the OS, all the software, the keyboard, the mouse, the printer...even the Monitor, before we scrapped the tower and its components and replaced them. But the keyboard, the mouse, and the monitor are all the original replacements which worked with the old tower--under the old regime, if you will. But when the tower changed, it was a new computer.

What do you have to replace to make it a new car?

Or in a person. Your cells refresh constantly. Over the course of a decade all the cells in your body will have died and been replaced. Except maybe the brain cells--nobody's ever really given me a straight answer about that. (The brain grows with the head when the body grows, and it is constantly being fed with blood, and you continue learning and making neurological connections every day, and yet people will tell you that when you kill brain cells, they're gone. That your brain is constantly boiling away whenever you take drugs or smoke cigarettes (though interestingly nobody ever mentions pollution in this equation.) I have a hard time buying that. If that were the case then how could adults get brain tumors (and how could carcinogens be to blame for this?) And moreover, people do recover from head injuries. The concussed are not always doomed. Folks can have their ability to read knocked out of them, but it can come back. People can forget and re-learn. To imply that the brain reaches a levelling point and then just dies off from there is folly. Or a bold-faced lie.) But if every component of you is replaced, does that make you a new person?

I think so. I think people's personalities, habits, and appearances change at about the same rate as their overall cellular refreshment. Some people call this "maturing" but i've known many people who have "matured" into assholes. I think once a person's entire self has renewed, they should get a new name. New social security number, new driver's license--everything. Because they've changed. Calling someone by the same name after they've transformed like that is the equivalent of showing up on Manhattan Island and wondering why nobody is wearing wooden shoes and speaking Dutch. (er, well, why nobody who isn't talking to themselves in gibberish is wearing wooden shoes.) The city has changed. The name has changed. It is no longer the same thing.

Going Places

I find it interesting--here I am, a new resident of a land previously only thought of as Far Far Away. I remember the drive, I watched as the entire landmass of the United States rolled away beneath my tires, I took pictures in every state and spent the early evenings of each day's drive dazzled by the setting sun. I know I have to look at the other side of the map now, but somehow...I don't believe it. My sense of "here" hasn't caught up with me yet. You'd think I'd get used to this by now--I've lived in four drastically different places in the past two years.

In other news, my old roommate lives in Seoul, South Korea now. I'm in California. My parents are in South Carolina. My boyfriend is in London. I live simultaneously in 4 different time zones, which encompass two days. The sun sets in the west, so you'd think the further west from California you got the sunset would get earlier, but it gets so much earlier that somehow it gets to being tomorrow. It hurts my brain to think of. All I can do to keep from getting a headache is to remind myself that time is not just relative--it is non-existant. An abstract, subjective concept that mankind has invented to try and make sense of a completely incomprehensible universe, like peace, justice, beauty, utility, right, and wrong. I'm all for eliminating abstraction completely. It would make life much less stressful--not only would ageing be moot, but you could never be too ugly or too lazy!

...and it occurs to me that my opinions, voiced here, would be rendered somehow more moot than they already are by the elimination of abstraction. Can there be varying degrees of moot-itude? maybe if something gets too moot it implodes and creates a little rift in the space-time continuum (which is also abstract and therefore moot) and disturbs no-one in particular.

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -Ford Prefect

yeowza!

well, to put it simply, i now live in California.

to go into a bit more detail...i drove 4,000 miles to get here.

to trace out my route, you need a big map of the entire USA. Then, using a pencil, two pins, and a piece of string 1.25x the width of the country, draw a boolean curve between East Hampton and San Francisco. Then turn your pencil over to its trusty eraser side and rub out any curve between mid Arkansas and eastern California, and grab a ruler. Draw a straight line from Conway, AK to Barstow, CA and step back. What you've got there is a fairly accurate model of my trip across country. WHAM.

The collective presidential purchases of Thomas Jefferson and James K Polk amounted to the acquisition of a helluva lot of land--more land than we really knew what to do with. Much of Jefferson's purchase (what was then known as Louisiana) was useful farmland in the heart of the continent. A good chunk of Polk's, however, was arid, empty desert, that would turn out to be completely unuseable except for a little sliver along the coast in modern-day California. These huge landmasses, at the time largely uninhabited, were marked out on a map in giant squares. These squares were divided into smaller squares, and then smaller, and frontier-bound families were offered these stakes free of charge provided they just got out there.

Not that many people bothered.

So roads were built along the original map divisions. If you look at a close-up of Oklahoma, what you see there are not "generalizations" or roads that have been somewhat smoothed out. What you see is exactly what you get. And no, they haven't left out some of the smaller towns. If I moved there and built a shack on a quarter-acre of land, sat on my front porch with a shotgun and declared it "Kristenton, Population 1" chances are it'd make it onto the full-page map of the state with a dot indicating "medium-sized town."

Little has changed in New Mexico since Polk decided to fulfil the US's Manifest Destiny except for the addition of a 4-lane interstate and a few thousand miles of power cables, which make a side-by-side beeline for southern California and disturb little of the vast emptiness which passes for scenery around here. This hypnosis-inducing stretch is known as I-40 and is the best route from the East to the West, provided you're comfortable with never making contact with inhabited human settlements, trees, water, or temperatures below 110F. Posted speed limits have been replaced with signs reading "Go Faster." Wide, smooth curves in the road, visible for hundreds of miles before you reach them, are heavily signposted with "CURVE AHEAD: STAY ALERT." In place of county lines or city limits, you will see big outlines of the state with a dot to indicate "you are here."

In the Mojave Desert I had the pleasure of encountering a large yellow sign emblazoned with "WELCOME TO NOWHERE! Center: 250 miles" and an arrow pointing ahead.

I may be making that up.

The car did fine, and my navigator, on loan from London, had the difficult task of tracing the way across Texas. "I think, at this next mile marker...you should continue straight ahead for 2,000 miles."

We would have done well to set the cruise control, lock The Club on the steering wheel, and climb in the back to make out.

We traversed (in order):
New York (2 days, if you omit the 3 months i lived there--I picked up my foreigner from JFK and visited my sister in Harlem)

New Jersey (8 minutes to look at the map)

Pennsylvania (10 minutes to get gas)

Maryland (no stops)

West Virginia (no stops, and kept an eye out for yokels)

Virginia (stayed the night just outside of DC)

Washington DC (1 afternoon, toured the monuments and got the hell out)

North Carolina (no stops--it smelled entirely too bad. I think it must have been official Wildlife Road Crossing Day, but motorists didn't get the memo)

South Carolina (3 days to visit the folks, have free food, tour my university, pick up a shirt i made for a class, and hang out with my neighbors)

Tennessee (a few stops for lunch, gas, and dinner. Might i recommend, to anyone crossing that years-long state, a little restaurant on the Pigeon River called The Beantree. Picturesque, good service, good food, and inexpensive. We really liked it.)

Arkansas (with a one-night stopover at Grandma's where the Brit got an unexpected cultural awareness credit involving firearms. My vegetarian uncle cooked us some fabulous steaks and my Panamanian aunt made this wonderful beet-and-potato salad that kept us full till Albuquerque. And it wouldn't be a trip to Grandma's if she didn't send us off with a cooler full of food for the road. Cheapest gas on the trip was found here--$2.58 about 60 miles west of Conway)

Oklahoma (did we stop? i set the cruise control to 85 and mentally checked out.)

Texas (two stops--one in Shamrock at a very overpriced Best Western, and at a neat rest station with a beautiful view of a cragged, ravaged landscape.)

New Mexico (one stop in Albuquerque's historic Old Town, where we had a lovely mid-afternoon lunch at a neat Mexican place called La Placita. It had a big ol tree growing through the roof. another stop for gas in Tucumcari, the epicentre of nowhere, which has a gift shop full of junk)

Arizona (slept two nights in this state. First Holbrook, where we passed out in the middle of the night after I bypassed trashy Gallup, NM earlier in the evening. It was only after we crossed the AZ border that I realized the next motel was nearly 100 miles away. Then, after a fabulous day at the Grand Canyon (the most awe-inspiring ditch you'll ever lay eyes on. seriously, the depth and breadth of this thing are entirely too much for the human mind to comprehend in one try.) and a fortuitous wrong turn into the Navajo Nation and the equally beautiful Painted Desert (an area where you just have to stop the car every 500 feet, get out, walk a few feet, and gaze) we found a motel in Kingman in the middle of the night. Kingman is one of those odd western oases that is only a few decades old--the town was born during the construction of the Hoover Dam and just stuck around. There's not a whole lot there but we did find a Mobil station.)

California (yay! we made it! now on through the Mojave Desert, a land that gives clout to conspiracy theorists' claims that the Mars landings were staged. Interestingly, when whe hit the CA border the speed limit dropped but the average auto speed doubled. You'd swear these drivers were on fire. It was around here that my TD called to check up on my progress and suggested that I turn north at my earliest convenience, drive straight to Vegas, and put all my money on Red. or Black. Barstow was a wide space in the road, and Bakersfield was so industrial and inhospitable that i started driving faster, too. Interstate 5 wasn't particularly interesting but the clerk at the Los Banos Econo Lodge was fun. The drive into Berkeley was creative, as I'd failed to consult anyone on just how to get to the theatre until then, but to say the least I found my job and friendly faces who were happy to welcome me.)

I've been working for a little over a week now and I'm really enjoying myself. My coworkers are great, the weather is beautiful, and I'm starting to learn my way around. My better half has returned to his native land, which was a bit of a thunderstorm on my parade, but i'm keeping busy and hopefully i'll have a functional bike in the next few days.

Whew. that's been my last two weeks, in a nutshell.

happy labor day.

When you think you're all alone...

One of my roommates has absolutely horrible taste in music. What makes it funny, though, is that he has no idea that i'm in the next room and he's singing along with it at the top of his lungs. To be polite, lets just say--he's no Frank Sinatra. Hell, he's no Shakira either. He wouldn't even do well in Milli Vanilli.

Adventures in Arkansas

I've just returned from a four-day sojurn in the depths of the American heartland, accompanied by the greater majority of my paternal extended family. The purpose was simple--to welcome my uncle's new wife into the family. The execution thereof was somewhat more difficult, as Tia Olivia is Panamanian and does not speak English. (its okay, my uncle speaks Spanish--its not like he just shanghaied her. No really! he was in the Peace Corps down there and they met in an internet cafe.) (damn i miss my Mac--i don't remember the numerical code for making an accent acute over the final e in "cafe")

Arkansas is one of those lost, pathetic places that started off poor and lost money from there. Travel magazines may refer to its "untouched, rugged beauty" but all it really means is "none of these toothless hill people have the know-how, much less the funding, necessity, or will, to build a skyscraper." Main routes throughout the Ozarks are dotted with failed townships and empty, collapsing aluminium buildings--"welcome to Shirley, population 64." 64 inbred, illiterate, God-fearing, Bush-loving fourth grade dropout voters who work hard in the field every day only to find that the soybean yield is low again this year and Tyson chicken farms are driving a hard bargain for their land. Arkansas is a state that is trapped in 1934--they never really pulled clear of the Depression and as a result education, art, and haute cuisine have suffered crushing blows.

My grandma's town--a vast Ozark metropolis with a population of just over 2,000--has three main hangouts for kids of all ages: church, the retirement center, and the world's cultural mecca, Wal-Mart. You simply can't go a day without braving the scorching asphalt of the Wally World parking lot to enter upon a trove of flimsy plastic furniture and dye-injected, guest-worker picked vegetables.

At the village Wal-Mart you are apt to encounter absolutely everyone who isn't comatose in the entire county. And a few of the comatose ones too. The teenage, morbidly obese, makeup-caked moms of three tend to congregate in the lingerie department. You'll find the young, lean, tanned, slack-jawed farm boys near the back in the firearm department, but don't linger--they all turn a glassy stare on any woman who dares venture back there (much like cattle when a car turns down their stretch of road.) The pasty, duck-footed, dangerously obese (and dangerously emaciated) middle-aged men can be found in the automotive department, mindlessly comparing prices on plastic hubcaps in their "git-r-done" printed tee shirts and hunter orange ballcaps. Everyone else wanders around the store in dumb-struck amazement at the sheer quantities of corn syrup and trans-fat available on the shelves, with which they can stuff their quivering cheeks the moment they get home.

Speaking of Wal-Mart: MACINTOSH! SHAME ON YOU! they've sold out to the corporate demons and now allow their white-earplugged mini status symbols to be peddled by the very Man their initial tree-hugging customer base so vehemently rejected. I'm disappointed.

Yes, Arkansas. The land that time forgot. The unpolluted breadbasket that may be the only place left standing after the rest of the world finishes shooting itself in the face with overpopulation and consumption of fossil fuels. But until that time, it will continue to be a beautiful state inhabited by a bunch of mindless, bigoted jerks who don't deserve it.

law enforcement

i think i'm going to join the highway department just so i can ticket people for going too slow. it has reached epidemic proportions around here.

creepy crawlie

my house is infested with ants. big'uns. they're tracing trails over my dining room table and beating a strange, constant path across the living room floor. they seem very intent on something very important, as though the universe may cease to exist if they fail to follow the established path Exactly. there is a wine bottle on the table which holds a rose, and all of the anties actually go around it twice before continuing on.

kinda puts things into a sense of perspective--to other life forms bigger than earth, chances are they're really confused as to why metal objects move on black lines in the same direction at the same time in a condensed, frustrating, exhaust-riddled manner when there's so much more space around that we could move through. the dining room table is Covered in interesting things to explore, but the ants just follow the same path as the first ant, keep trudging right along, never questioning the life that has been established for them by their society, believing only what they're told...kinda pathetic, in a way.

popup

Can anyone explain to me the continued existence of the pop-up advertisement? I can't think of a more effective way to discourage anyone from wanting my product than the pop-up ad. I can tolerate google's text-only border ads, and now that I've found Firefox's Flashblocker the number of ads that move, change color, and make noise on my desktop has diminished significantly. I recognize that advertisement is a necessary evil--the bills have to be paid somehow, and advertisers are willing to foot the bill for you so long as they can get something out of it too. Fine. But Haven't people figured out by now that absolutely no one is going to have a positive reaction to a pop-up ad?

Think about it--they get in the way. On some sites they actually block what you're trying to read and simply will not go away, even when you do click to close them. There are some that scroll down the page or slide out at random from corners. The pop-behind ad is just as bad--sometimes they are sensitive to your mouse clicks on the page in front and spin you into unending chains of garbage, one opening the moment you close another. Now AIM runs ads that spontaneously run video with sound, which occupies your network space and slows down your data transfer rate.

Who came up with this nuisance? And why? Did they honestly think it would be a good idea? Any legitimate company that resorts to pop-up advertisement is shooting itself in the foot--pop ups distinctly and invariably discourage consumers from wanting the product advertised. And anyone who hasn't been living in a cave since the 1990's has figured out how to spot the scam ads. If their effectiveness has been reduced to nil (or indeed, negative figures), what is perpetuating the existence of the pop-up ad?

On this line of thought, one is reminded of the controversy currently surrounding TiVo service. Consumers pay a considerable sum monthly for the ability to record shows and treat them like dvd videos, meaning they can fast forward through ads. Advertisers claim they have taken a blow in profits from this ('cos before TiVo, people apparently couldn't figure out how to change the channel, leave the room, or hit Mute) and have begun a huge, expensive campaign to undermine the viewer's clear message ("I don't want to watch ads")by going a step beyond product placement in television shows. Major companies are now paying tv producers to actively incorporate their product into the plot of the show. Now actors are not only holding the bag of Dorito's--they're talking about how much they like them, and using Dorito's brand seasoned tortilla chips to get into the heart of another character.

You know what this sounds like? Peer pressure. Advertisers are trying to convince viewers that they want their product by showing that all the really cool kids already have it. Y'know what? Anybody who falls for that sort of crap deserves the pile of artificially-scented plastic refuse they wind up with.

It just doesn't make sense. TiVo users PAY TO AVOID ADS, so advertisers make it so their crap can't be avoided. Meanwhile internet users and web developers spend heaps of money developing software to block popup and email advertisements, so advertisers spend even more money to circumvent adblocking software. It is a vicious and pointless cycle, as it means the average consumer becomes less and less likely to want products from or even respect companies that advertise to them in spite of their efforts to avoid just that. Consumers are literally being chased and hunted by advertisers these days. It is only a matter of time to see if the monster will be bested, or if it will feed.

Learn to Friggin...!

Good GRIEF nobody here can drive. I narrowly avoided no fewer than eight (8) accidents on my way back from the theatre today--its an eight-mile drive, two in the afternoon, clear skies for crying out loud. None of them would have been in any way my fault--i just drive along at (or often below, figuring traffic is a nightmare) the speed limit, have the obvious right of way (i.e. the other asshole has a STOP SIGN) and people just pull out inches in front of me like i'm not even there, causing me to slam on the brakes and even swerve to avoid hitting their Mercedes. Do i need to blow my horn constantly or something? By The Way there's other motorists on the road? Some bimbo in a very expensive foreign vehicle tried to merge straight into me--we were sitting, Stopped, at a red light, and she decides she's gonna change lanes--i wasn't in her blind spot, i could clearly see the dumb look on her face through her passenger window. I entertained the idea of letting the moron hit me but figured with a car like that she could probably hire a better lawyer than me. If this happened once a day i could say its just normal--people screw up. but this many times a day i'm really starting to think either new york should reassess their driving test or i should just stop hitting the brakes.

about a month

i have worked at the theatre for a little over a month now, and i have had one day off. (which i spent completely hungover. It was the kind of hangover that makes your legs twitch, leaves you so dehydrated that you can't sweat and even your hair hurts. sad thing is i really didn't drink that much the night before--i just mixed my poisons. it is naughty and irresponsible to have wine and gin the same night.) but yes, one day off in a month--and that's not all. about a week of that has involved working over 18 hours a day, and one that went over 24.

i think i am justified now in saying that this is the most poorly-run theatre i have ever encountered. the administration's scheduling capacity is pathetic. they made no semblance of time accommodation for the biggest, heaviest, most technically involved show in the theatre's history, meaning we had to cram a month's worth of work into two weeks. it is very cool now, on the brink of its premiere, but nobody in the crew really appreciates it because we've spent too damn much time fighting with it. thousands of dollars and labor hours have gone into it, its full of high-tech mechanized lighting and pneumatic lifts...and for what? some really pathetic choreography, mediocre singing, boring direction, and a completely incomprehensible story. at least the band is good. the dancers are very talented but you'd never guess from what they're having to do. Its the highest-budget high school musical you'll ever see.

On a lighter note, i watched a sunset on the beach the other day. By myself, of course, figuring everyone who is remotely friendly toward me is currently about 700 miles away, but it was still beautiful. The iridescent sky opened and extended beyond the limits of my comprehension. I could see the curvature of the atmosphere. I looked so far out i could see behind me. The brevity of our solar system was thrown into sharp relief for the briefest of moments and I understood my place in the universe.

Then the sun dipped below the horizon and i snapped out of it. I picked up a couple of pretty stones, stretched, and drove away.

5 days

i've worked at my new theatre for five days. very different work ethic than i'm used to. very much non-union. i don't know how long each workday is. when i come in in the morning, i don't know when i'm going to leave in the afternoon--moreover, i don't even know if i'll get a day off in the next month. some days its 9-6, others 9-8, others 10-3. sometimes lunch is an hour, sometimes lunch is twenty minutes. this whole theatre works like that. and whereas that's fine sometimes when there's a whole lot going on, that's been my introduction to how things work here--i don't know if it'll ever chill out or at least gain some semblance of regularity. some rules are strictly adhered to, others are disregarded. some techniques and terminologies i'm used to, some are completely foreign, and everybody has crazy accents that mean i'm spending most of my time staring at their mouths waiting for some recognizable syllable to come out. i had an easier time understanding folks in England. its the replacement of "A" with "oi" that gets me. the word "Ball" in the phrase "i'm having a ball" to me normally sounds like "ayme haaveeng ay bahl" but here its more of a "oime avin uh buh-ol" the whole thing almost sounds like a bad cockney, but the primary way in which it differs from Dick van Dyke's presentation in Mary Poppins is that you have to shove all of those unwritten syllables out of your nose. seriously--i think this may be one of several american accents that increase difficulty in speaking.

i think the biggest difference between academic theatre and non-union professional theatre is the attention paid to safety. in URTA theatres you better make damn sure everybody who is working around saws has shatterproof glasses on, everyone in an area where folks are cutting metal is wearing earplugs, every ladder has been inspected recently and is used according to its labeling, all scaffolding is put together properly with locked wheels when folks are on it, cables are dressed and any which may pose a tripping hazard are clearly indicated and floor matted (yeah, you cover them in carpet), and all paints and other materials that may emit fumes are used only in well-ventilated areas by people wearing respiratory protection. i don't know if this place even Has respirators. someone went out and bought safety glasses yesterday. the only way to get up where you need to hang curtains is by using ladders improperly and there's simply nowhere to paint except outside and it pours down rain here all the time. i've also gotten dozens of cuts and punctures from oversized screws poking through the back of wood and have tripped over countless ankle-height things on the floor in the dark. its just a matter of little things that i have to get used to.

So. I've been Busy

Hi, readership. Good of you to drop in, just to see if maybe that ranty girl has updated in the past month. To say the least, stuff's been going on. I shall do my best to briefly itemize those events here.

1. I graduated from university. Magna cum laude. This past saturday. go me. My grandma, a few other relatives, and some neighbors came, and we drank and had a good time. My dad gave me a banjo. I've been learning to play it but I've decided I don't like the way the book teaches it so I've been figuring out scales and arpeggios and working out where the notes are by playing old oboe music from high school. I still use the book, which does not teach scales or fret/string note correlations but instead focuses on plucking out tunes and building up speed, but I don't feel like i can really play the instrument until i know how it works.

2. My car blew a head gasket and died. Magna cum Suck. This past sunday. In the rain. On the freeway. With all my stuff in it as I was moving out of my house on campus. A bit of back-story--when i was in high school my parents bought me a car, and told me that all they really wanted it to do was get me through college. Now the car has blown out some belts and hoses, i've had to add oil to her every couple of weeks, and recently i've had to start adding water and coolant thanks to a new leak, but despite her 180,000+ miles and a few events on the side of the road my car has done pretty well for herself these past six years--better than perhaps she should have. Every time there was a problem this..mantra, of sorts, would be repeated--"just get her through college." It'll be fine if this car can just get her through college. Well. She got me through college--and not a second longer. The car actually broke down ten miles out of the town in which my uni was situated and started spewing smoke. "That's it," she said. "I did exactly as you asked. I ain't gonna move another inch." My mom came and got me, and now the car is in the process of being donated to the Kidney Foundation. (Its tax-deductable. The foundation actually sells the cars for scrap and makes money that way--unfortunately they do not replace people's kidneys with car parts.)

3. I'm moving to New York on Saturday for an internship in the Hamptons. I have a gig slingin' hammers this summer--perfect work for a college graduate. This will last until mid August.

4. I'm moving to San Francisco in August for a second internship, also in the hammer-slinging field, which will last a year.

5. This week i have done laundry, written thank-you notes, and generally just gorked out. I hadn't done that in a while so its been nice, but i'm ready to go do something now. I'm getting fat and inflexible again. I need to find somewhere to take yoga.

Brainy Nonsense

The techno next door is keeping me awake for the 16th week running, but rather than get angry about it again I figured I'd spend this early-morning time (for which I'd be up anyway) paying attention to my poor neglected blog.

I drank my day away at a very fun end-of-year gathering on the lake. The food, company, and amusements were all brilliant and I was on the whole very happy. Some wrong turns en route to the house, however, led to heated tempers, which distracted the driver enough that she made some spectacularly reckless errors that would have proved painful had other people not been paying attention and shouting "BRAKES!" I say "other people" 'cos it sure as hell wasn't me--I forgot to eat before getting in the car and was at that point the mental equivalent of jell-o.

After I'd eaten though I realized that the person in question is routinely a dangerously distracted driver. She runs red lights, sits at green lights, crosses intersections without looking, gets lost easily and is known for her tendency to gradually decelerate on the freeway as her foot wanders from the pedal. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was risking my life letting her drive as one day her errors might prove fatal.

What makes this somewhat funny is the fact that I believe a lot of this distraction is on account of a medication she takes to prevent it. The pill in question is called Aderol, and is prescribed by psychiatrists to patients who appear to have difficulty paying attention, or "Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)." Somehow it rearranges the taker's chaotic neurological firings into logical sequences that lengthen his or her ability to focus. Many hyperactive, disorderly, and ill-attentive children have shown marked improvements in their behavior and grades with the introduction of Aderol or other ADD medication to their cereal, and it is a well-known study aid among collge students around exam time.

That said. (Intro my opinion.)

ADD is a myth. It is a pathetic excuse for poor parenting and a child's genuine disinterest in academic pursuits. ADD's counterpart, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), is an indication of even worse parenting and a complete failure on the part of society to properly and effectively teach desirable behavior in children. In no way does a child's inability or unwillingness to pay attention to or care about academic pursuits indicate that there is something wrong with their neurological function or that they require mind-altering drugs in order to do well in school.

There are several behaviors that are mistakenly diagnosed as AD(H)D. I wish to itemize a few of them here and give my opinion on them.

Example 1: Apathy-Related "ADD"
Little Timmy is not doing too well in school. He is not interested in maths or history and he rarely does his homework because he's too easily distracted by the TV, the video game console, the dog, or even the carpet. His teachers have commented that Timmy seems distracted and irritable in class. Little Timmy's parents worry that he will not go on to be a brain surgeon like his father. Hell, at the rate he's going chances are he won't even pick up any literature more mentally taxing than People Weekly after he graduates.

Guess What, Mr. and Mrs. Brain Surgeon--Its OKAY!!

Timmy is not handicapped. He's not a bad child, he's not stupid, and there's nothing wrong with his teachers. Timmy is one of billions of human beings who just DONT CARE ABOUT ACADEMICS. Timmy doesn't read books because he simply doesn't enjoy reading. He doesn't pay attention in math class because frankly, math is the least interesting abstract concept in the history of thought. Timmy got in trouble for dicing the frog he was supposed to be dissecting because it is more fun to hack things to pieces than to identify their components. Timmy doesn't want to do his homework because its a FREAKING BEAUTIFUL DAY OUTSIDE. Lets face it--school is boring. Timmy has every right to be bored.

Something we, as a society, have lost appreciation for is non-academic intelligence. Timmy may be very capable in pursuits which we have deemed un-intellectual. Perhaps he has a knack for running, building cabinets, painting, or plumbing. The fact that Timmy has no innate ability for memorizing names and dates of historic figures does not mean that he is stupid--he just doesn't belong in the kind of school he is required to attend by law. It is unfortunate that many blue-collar type jobs are sneered at in todays society while pointless number-crunching money-moving jobs are idealized when its the blue-collar folks who are actually productive.

Schools today do not teach anything that will benefit most children in adulthood. They teach pointless abstractions (mathematics), generally useless trivia (history), and even leisure activities (literature). The second two have no practical value, and the first is really only useful in mechanical design, which most people don't do anyway.

If a child seems bright--not just to a parent's eye--but doesn't give a rip about school, chances are he's not learning anything that interests him.

No amount of Aderol is going to make Timmy like or care about school. It will only make him hyper-focus on whatever you put in front of him. That doesn't mean he's interested in it. You've just drugged him to make him conform to an education system that he has no business being in. Square peg, round hole.

Modern society's insistence upon putting all children through an identical education system is less an effort to make us productive members of society and more an attempt to make us all conform to some silly ideal of how a human is "supposed" to think and behave. Fact remains, there is no "right" way to do anything, because "right," "wrong", and "supposed to" are abstract manifestations of the intellectual elite. People are different. Many people are not intellectual.

A much more effective education system that has, unfortunately, been abandoned in favor of state-regulated assembly-line style schooling was the apprenticeship system. Children who appear to have an aptitude for or interest in some field study under a master in said field until they can do it too. Likewise if the child is interested in academics he or she is sent to an academic institution, and if he or she has no apparent useful aptitude, interest, or inclination, he or she can join the military. Zing.

Example 2: Pain-in-the-ass Brat
Suzy Q makes noise. she bounces around incessantly, hits other children, makes farting noises with her hands and generally makes a nuisance of herself. She spends more of her day in time-out than her desk and has to take notes home to her mother regularly to have signed. She rarely finishes tests before turning them in and is distracted by shiny objects. She has difficulty carrying a conversation and shouts when she wants to be heard.

Two words--Bad Parenting. Suzy is one of millions of American children who have been raised by a television set, day-care center, and parents who's jobs or personal lives get in the way of establishing a good relationship with their daughter.

The constant flicker and color of the TV display have established a basis of activity to stimulate Suzy's mind and keep her interested, making sitting quietly while the teacher reads Where The Red Fern Grows intolerably boring. Nothing is moving! Where are the flashing lights? Dancing numbers and singing puppets? Chances are if she goes to any school that doesn't require its teachers to have a MFA in performance she is going to get frustrated. She will fidget, she will look around, she will tap her fingers and eventually ask, impatiently, for the teacher to pick up the pace already.

Many children who grow up in day care are loud. They have to be if they want any sort of attention from the staff--there are simply too many other children around for them to be heard any other way. Suzy has to compete constantly for any sort of attention, and when she actually gets it she's going to soak it up in a distinctly spongelike manner. Positive or negative--it doesn't matter. She craves any sort of attention she can get from grown-ups because by the time mommy and daddy get home at night, they're tired, hungry, and as much as they love their daughter, they just can't muster up the energy to play with or talk to her. Suzy may become angry with her parents for not loving her enough, and when she brings this up (in her day-care style) they may become frustrated and shout at her. Because mommy and daddy know that they're neglecting her, but they also know they can't afford to live in a nice neighborhood where Suzy is safe if they don't both work full-time. They feel guilty for not having a good relationship with their daughter, they hate the insane costs of day care, they have no idea what she's eating most of the time, but they can't find any other way to make ends meet. Suzy barely knows her parents and has never encountered real, consistent, understandable discipline from them. Sometimes she gets shouted at for talking, sometimes she's completely ignored, and on some occasions she's even encouraged to yell and run around.
No, Suzy is being raised in a group of thirty by one frazzled primary school teacher who simply does not have the opportunity to give any child individual attention unless there's a problem. (I have a new name for ADHD: SWS. Squeaky Wheel Syndrome.) At night she is entertained by children's television, the bright colors and flashing lights of which would give an adult a seizure. And in the morning she eats pink-marshmallow cereal because, though her mother knows it isn't good for her, she feels guilty enough for neglecting her child to buy her whatever she wants.

I recognize that "good parenting"--a situation in which the parent is in control of a child's diet, takes responsibility for the child's behavior, is helpful in the child's intellectual and moral growth, and inspires the child to imagine and aspire...is hard to come by. its simply too expensive to raise children in America for a parent to leave work and do any of said raising. I recognize that education tailored to each child's strengths and interests is impossible in America because of rampant overpopulation, strictly enforced statutes of universal conformism, consistently under-staffed schools and under-qualified teachers...but is drugging children the right means of accommodating this problem?

So. The kids who are already here--i feel for you. I understand how hard it is to be you, with society and the media molding you one way and school expecting you to behave in another. I know your interests rarely include theorems, sentence diagrams, the life cycle of trees, or Willard Fillmore's contributions to the American welfare state. And you know what? This kind of knowledge won't get you anywhere anyhow. Its what you learn when you earn a liberal arts degree--the degree that overeducates and underqualifies you for every job on the planet. You might as well not learn it, without frustration or guilt.

But to those adults thinking of having children--stop. Think. Can you afford to have kids and raise them too? Can you be home when they're home? Can you say No without crying? Can you keep them out of day care? Can you help them with their homework? Can you play with them outside? Can you be present to influence their growth and development? If you're not sure, or if you're sure you can't...maybe you should reconsider. Our population is in no danger of collapsing. Why have kids just so they can be drugged and brainwashed by governments and corporations?

Apartheid

There really is nothing quite like watching hundreds of schoolchildren being beaten, gassed, and shot at by police and military officials to make you feel guilty for being Western. I don't consider myself racist and I don't condone anyone harming anyone else for any reason, but nevertheless I feel like my very existence as an educated, white American is so unfair that it's wrong in light of other people's misfortune.

Today I watched a film entitled "Witness to Apartheid" for my African History class. It consisted of interviews and live footage of large-scale political violence in South Africa in 1985. I don't know how readily available this film is and if anyone else has seen it but the images it shows are utterly terrifying, and made more so by the fact that they're real. To say the least it'll stay with me for a while. The race-based violence, consisting almost entirely (in the film) of white military attacks on peaceful black protests was so nonsensical that you'd think it impossible. They were shot because they wanted equality, the ability to have a job, the ability to provide for themselves and their families, the ability to be educated and fed and left alone. It never occurred to me until today that I should appreciate the fact that it is safe for me to go to school. That I don't wonder if my class is going to be disrupted by armed men and my classmates and I hauled to jail because they caught wind that we disagreed with public policy.

If anything in this country we are wary of our schoolmates who might get disgruntled for no readily apparent reason and bring a gun to school. But at least in that situation there's an outcry. There's a public inquiry. The law gets involved and there are criminal repercussions. In South Africa, under Apartheid, there was nothing. Not even an attempt at or pretense of justice. No comfort for the bereaved and often no medical aid for the wounded. Doctors who offered their services to those hurt in these clashes would be jailed.

One's own problems seem so petty by contrast. I wonder where I'll be in five years, if i'll be making enough money to make ends meet. A small part of me fears I'll be so unsuccessful that I'll end up on the street, but I don't really believe it. I join the rallying against injustice in my own country, but where does it stand in comparison? Millions of people forced into cramped, unplumbed, unelectrified, fenced and frequently firebombed camps because folks of the opposite color believe they're somehow better than them. Laws enacted against them to prevent them from getting jobs because white folks fear they'll work for cheaper and their employment would be at risk. White people convincing themselves--or being outrightly told by their politicians and teachers--that black people are happy in their situation, or that they're genetically inclined toward violence so they must be strictly supervised for their own safety.

I don't have a leg to stand on in complaining. I'm never going to be rich or famous, beautiful, brilliant, or any way special. I don't expect i'll ever have a beautiful house or be able to keep a good companion. These are things I think and worry about because they're what my society values. The thing we seem to fear most here is mediocrity, the quality of not being better than those around us. But I really should appreciate my sensibly-shod, bodily-clad, overweight American mediocrity.

I'm not going to fall down on my knees and thank my maker for the bounteous gifts i've received in my life because frankly that's selfish. One of the most obvious debunkers of religion is the abject horror of so many people's daily lives in light of our own roofed and furnished existence. The fact that most of it is inflicted on them by other humans only heightens my awareness that we are floating through the universe unsupervised. Justice is a nice idea that we came up with to make sense of the anger we feel when we are harmed. I am not thankful for the life I lead because the only reason I know it is pretty easy is because I see people who don't have things as nice as I do. Because people exist who know nothing but suffering. I don't appreciate it. I feel bad for it. Bad that I didn't...i dunno, pay extra for it somehow. Bad because I don't deserve it, just like black South Africans don't deserve to be punished for wanting it. Bad because I'm one of the "haves" and I still manage to be discontent, angry, and afraid though I know others have it much worse. Bad because I'm wealthy, which is interesting, because I'm not.

I know that Apartheid ended. It shouldn't have ever started, but it only took about a century of enforced represison of an entire race for a few people to finally warm to the idea of inalienable human rights. Things aren't vastly improved, but they're a little better. They've gotten worse elsewhere and when that improves they'll suck further somewhere else again, but at least one situation had the capacity to get a little better. It is a strange, frustrating world we live in.

"This planet has, or rather had, a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

"And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches." -- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

better...ish

my stomach bug has been replaced with a mild head-cold. this is getting annoying. So still kinda dizzy, but now in an inner-ear sort of way.

ill

I've caught some sort of stomach bug that's kept me from eating for three days. I've been drinking water and some drinks with sugar in them but the mere sight of food makes me queasy. As if i wasn't before, i feel like an utter space cadet today. Dizzzzzzzzy.

rope? check. square hat? check.

that's right friends and neighbors--i'm graduating from university in less than a month. i've already gotten my sexy black dress and its matching square of cardboard, my drawer pull and yes, two lengths of yellow nylon rope. seriously, i look like a drapery store just threw up on me. But What is it with these horrible "gowns" you have to wear? They're about the least flattering garment known to man--i look like a bag lady in it (by which i mean a lady...in a bag), they're itchy as hell and made of the least comfortable fabric possibly ever, and they're made on the cheap to low quality standards but you pay a fortune for them. I guess its the university's way of screwing you over one last time before they let you go. This dress alone is a good reason to not go to grad school.

You know who looks good in a mortarboard and gown? Me neither. I look like i'm wearing a tent. They should come with anchoring stakes and a lantern. And the flat cap with a tassle...just a bizarre, bizarre tradition.

I think the concept of honor cords is funny--i get them because i'm graduating magna cum laude. What better way to identify your honor graduates than to...dangle rope around their necks? the damn rope is so slippery you can't even tie knots in it. Useless. and its got even more tassles on the ends--i guess they assume students with high GPAs have cats they need to entertain. I know my cat will certainly enjoy them--indeed, they're the only components of this $40 purchase that'll actually be used more than once. Terrific.

flutter-by

I saw a butterfly today while walking between classes--it was happily flitting along near the center of campus and I turned my head to look at it. I say "turned my head" but my body came along too and I made a complete u-turn in the middle of the path to follow my new little friend as it ambled toward some flowering shrubs. I very nearly climbed into the brick-lined planter over who's wall it flew but was stopped short by good sense. and the fact that there was a professor watching me.

generica

I rarely buy national brand products at the store. I'm happy with my Top Care Ibuprofen and my K-Mart brand shoes. Not only am I a cheapskate, but i've actually developed a taste for the cheap. I don't just eat Piggly Wiggly cottage cheese, I actually Prefer it to the Breakstone's variety. Publix-brand tonic water tastes better because its two dollars cheaper than Schweppes or Canada Dry. Food Lion tater tots fry up just as greasy as Ore Ida's, and i don't care what you say, Bi-Lo cotton swabs are just as q-tippy as Q-tips.

That said.

About a month ago I splurged. I had an "impulse buy" which is to say I'd wanted it for a while, told myself i didn't need it, but bought it when my conscience wasn't looking. Its silly. Its overpriced. Its advertised.

Its lemon-flavored toothpaste.

Everyone I've mentioned this to so far has given me a look of utter repulsion. Lemon? Toothpaste? Why that's just...wrong. My own mother even gave me the Look--that mom-look of simultaneous distaste and disappointment--when she saw it on my countertop. But Crest must have heard there was a market for it, because they produced it and even had the gall to make a TV advert about it. It had something to do with it being refreshing like lemonade.

It is not refreshing like lemonade.

It is, however, very nice toothpaste. It tastes half minty half lemony and is yellow with sparkles. It looks, in essence, like something a four-year old would put on her purple light-up Barney toothbrush.

I don't understand folks's automatic dislike for the idea of lemon toothpaste. I love Lemon-flavored gum (though I have only found it in France--anyone care to mail me a packet of Hollywood Citron?) and nobody seems to mind lemon-scented dish detergent. They make lemon Skittles, candied lemon wedges, lemon Jolly Ranchers, and if you're lucky you might even find an actual lemon on the rim of your glass. People Like lemons. much more than most folks seem to like South Carolina, in any case. Just not my yellow toothpaste.

I'll stand up for you, lemon-flavored toothpaste. Its you and me against the world.

today i destroyed a sofa

it was a rather nice sofa--less than ten years old, i'd heard--but it had been ruined (*ahem* stuffed full of corn) during a production of Sam Shepard's Buried Child. A lack of space for it paired with the considerable number of "modifications" (rips, tears, and corn) it endured for the purposes of the play meant that it was not worth fixing or keeping. It made me sad, in a way--an otherwise fine and well-built piece of furniture was forced into early retirement (*ahem* pulverised with sledgehammers and put in a dumpster in small pieces) because it had outlived its usefulness. shame.

that's not to say the sofa just submitted to its end peacefully--that somebitch put up a fight. the number of skin-grabbing exposed staples and splinters of wood increased with every downward swing of the hammer. Its simple wooden frame was springy and resistant to breaking even when angled and jumped upon by a fairly sizeable man. It may have known its doom, but it was determined to go out in a blaze of glory.

hallway party

there really is nothing quite like being surrounded by four massive, hunky, blond haired, blue-eyed German men...in togas.

Hey Missionaries: the fact that I do not think like you is not an invitation for you to try and change me. The Good Lord did not put us in the hallway together in togas for you to save my soul. I respect you regardless of your religion--it is only decent for you to offer me the same courtesy.

My toga went from properly wrapped to tied to stay up to an interesting dress with an empire waist to a rather attractive kimono with large, flowing sleeves. behold the multi-form bedsheet.

If you translate "run a red light" into Swedish it means "(go for a run, jog, etc.) a red light," which is completely incomprehensible. However, if you translate "you reap what you sow" or "you've made your bed, now you have to lie in it" into Swedish, they both mean "you must pay the consequences for your actions."

In Africa people like to start their birthdays early.

Swords may in fact be the most phallic weapons known to man, which explains a lot about Roman history.

two faces of...me

I've had a startling revelation. I, your humble narrator, am completely two-faced. Its amazing just how artificial I am in every social and psychological sense of the word. I'm one of those people who's really friendly with you when you're around and then talks smack about you behind your back. So nice and believably genuine that you honestly believe I like you and enjoy being around you, then the moment you've left my general vicinity I rant and rave and let off all the steam that's built up since the moment you opened your mouth.

Take my recent blog entries, for example. You think I ever call my flatmates "the kiddies" to their faces? You think I'm anything but sweet and helpful, jovial and even playful with them? (unless I'm drunk--then I just complain about the guv'ment at them).

Unless I directly tell people otherwise, I imagine they go along their daily lives not in any way aware that their slightly strange friend with short hair is cringeing inside at the very sight of them.

I'd love to tell a good 80% of the people I know where to shove it. I'd love them to know that at all times I'm barely restraining myself from ripping their throat out (with my tattered, bloody fingernails, all bitten to the quick from sheerest frustration at trying to contain the truth of my opinions).

I maintain surface-healthy friendships with people for years, decades even, while secretly loathing everything about them from their taste in clothes to that small crossover of their central and lateral incisors on the left side of their mouth. (note: this is not actually a reference to anyone i know, that i know of.) I resent my friends that are prettier than me. I abhor my friends who are smarter than me. Everyone I know is better than I am at something and I'd really just like to take their instruments, paint brushes, model bridges, trim thighs, cute clothes, nice handwriting, and perfect fucking skin and just tear them into tiny bits, and then I'll jump on them until..until...i've had enough.

But will they ever know this? Oh no. I'm so good at acting over the truth that not only my friends but even meticulous analysts wouldn't have a clue. I've had neighbors and co-workers go years thinking I considered someone a dear friend until I finally let loose the truth to them in a jumping, screaming fit.

My poor mother endures the majority of these outbursts. The one person who knows when I'm being artificial because she taught me how to do it. To keep face, to smile, to keep tabs, to restrain myself to the point that my temples throb rather than just tell the person to fuck themselves and get on with my life.

Its not like I just smile and hold back the string of insults when I briefly run into people socially. No no. I'll hang out with them for hours. I'll talk and laugh and get into deeply political debates and drink and party and hug and act real excited when I see folks. I'll seek them out. And then I come on here and complain about them all.

This is not benefitting anyone. Not the people I purport to be friends with, as they're being deceived. Not me, as I'm going insane and beating myself up with pent-up anger about it. Not the people I actually want to be friends with, 'cos the moment they find or figure out that I'm an utter phony they stop trusting my interactions with them. I don't have the balls to tell anyone to their faces that I can't stand the sight of them. I don't even have the nerve to be acridly sarcastic with them so they feel slighted. I have difficulty avoiding them or cutting them out of my life. I'm fucking NICE.

Attn: Rant. read only if you have a lot of free time.

I should mention that I'm home for spring break and i finally get a chance to relax--by which i mean jump around and scream and vent out all the frustration that comes from 12-hour workdays and sleep in fifteen minute intervals between train horns. Unfortunately my mother doesn't really agree with this definition of the word "relax" and, after about two solid hours of me babbling about how atheism is the answer to all the world's problems she finally put down her newspaper, put her fingers in her ears, and shouted "Enough already!"

so. i guess that leaves me the blog.

*ahem*

I begin by making a declaration of fact: America is peopled with jerks. The US government, the law enforcement community, my friends and neigbors, me. One huge landmass of nothing but jerks. You still with me? I thought so.

But i've noticed there's two different breeds of jerk--those being the Master Jerk and the Slave Jerk. Master Jerks are the ones screwing people over and Slave Jerks are the ones being screwed over and whining about it. I fall into the second category.

My "discussion" today is spurned from a series of tv adverts carefully misnamed "Public Service Announcements." I'm sure everyone has seen them--government-sponsored montages of beautiful people telling kids not to do drugs. And don't forget the montages of haggard, spent-looking people telling parents to tell their kids not to do drugs. They discuss the dangers of drugs and comment on how peer pressure is going to convince your middle schooler to drink, have sex, and get addicted to heroin before they're 15. Way to brighten my day.

Public Service Announcements (PSAs) have several different purposes all at once. Under the smokescreen of "providing positive encouragement for families to remain healthy" which i'm certain nobody with an IQ above that of a cabbage is going to believe, we have at least three different headings as to their function.

1. PSAs are an example of "Your Tax Dollars At Work"--visible proof that the government is really giving something back to the community. Where the other thirteen trillion dollars a year are going we're not exactly sure, but Something has been spent (with a couple of contributions from Philip Morris Co.) to offer a positive message to the population at large. Great.

2. PSAs are an example of the modern judicial system's CYA (Cover-Your-Ass) Policy. So long as the tobacco and healthcare companies make the dangers of smoking and drugs public knowledge, they are not at fault when people get into the advanced stages of lung cancer. Thus they are under no obligation to provide affordable health care to middle aged folks who come into the hospital coughing up bits of their aesophagus. Its this beautiful "told ya so" idea that also keeps the US from developing a NHS (this is where things start to get complicated.)

The government announces that "smoking/drug use/alcohol is bad for you."
Thus if people continue to smoke/inject/drink/etc its their own fault if they get sick.
To tell people they cannot smoke, drink, or whatever and pass laws about it would be a return to prohibition, which gave rise to the organized crime rings now forever glorified in smudgy 1930s' detective films. (i.e. to make normal behavior a crime is to make everyone a criminal.)
But at the same time, if you offer free healthcare to people who willfully give themselves lung cancer and cirrhosis of the liver (and hepatitis and obesity and AIDS and anything else you might pick up from living immoderately or imprudently) it gets pretty damned expensive. On the flip side, making healthcare really ridiculously expensive does encourage people, to some degree, to behave in moderation to reduce the chance of incurring hospital fees. Those who have accidents that are not their fault are just SOL*.
To offer free healthcare to only those people who don't smoke, drink alcohol, use drugs, overeat, undereat, share needles, have casual sex, pursue a career with known occupational hazards, breathe pollution or secondhand smoke, spend undue amounts of time in the sun, dress or drive inappropriately for weather conditions, or fail to floss twice a day is to offer free healthcare to one five-year-old in Idaho.
If it is not the government's fault that you get sick, the government concludes that its not the government's responsibility to make you better.
So there. No NHS for you.

*(When you buy private insurance you are betting on your illness or injury being someone else's fault. The idea is, if you pay them a lot of money, if someone hurts you, you can almost afford the hospital fees that your insurance doesn't cover. Unfortunately, if you hurt someone else, you pay the insurance company more--for a long time--so the person you hurt can almost afford the hospital fees that their insurance company doesn't cover. Worse, if you hurt someone else and yourself, you're screwed.)

3. PSAs are a well-crafted form of reverse-psychology. Many are targeted at the 10-17 year old demographic--pubescents and adolescents who's hormones are encouraging them to leave their parents and reproduce, as humans had been doing up until the eighteenth century when their bodies said they were ready. Parental retention of teenagers--often into the third decade of life--is counter to this biological impulse and so generates high levels of anxiety and claustrophobia which culminate in the urge to escape this suffocating pressure. (Just like being hungry is contrary to what feels right, so you look for food.) The fact that there is no outlet for these prolonged children to get away without running (and knowing that once flown, they will be completely unprotected and left to starve as they have no skills or money and no law-abiding American will employ them anyway) they must find means of escaping parental constraints without trying to make it on the street. This behavior is known as "rebellion" and is one of the primary reasons for petty crime and drug abuse among teenagers today.
It works like this:
You don't do drugs.
Mom and Dad say "don't do drugs."
The government and your teachers say "don't do drugs."
You get tired of being told what to do.
You do exactly what they say not to.
You do drugs.

This is not, however, the same process that occurs in teenage sexual behavior. That looks more like this:
You don't have sex.
Mom and Dad say "don't have sex."
The government and your teachers say "don't have sex."
Your body says "FOR FUCK'S SAKE HAVE SEX."
Your body has always been right before, it probably is now.
You have sex.

Though this very simply explains why premarital sex and drug use are incorrectly grouped in the same category of "rebellious behavior" i have veered very far from my point.

Anyone who has gone through puberty (read: any adult) knows that, from about age 10 to age 18, "No=Yes." Usually people who are in government and advertising are adults, so they know that for the PSA target demographic, "No=Yes." And they put ads on television--the easiest way of reaching their target demographic--and say "No."

Now this is not to say that they should say "yes"--it doesn't work the other way around. Advertising is an amazing form of mind control. Say you want to advertise your new antidepressant. For the sake of discussion, let us call it "HappyDrug." You start your ad by posing the question "Do you frequently feel down in the dumps? Like no matter what you do, your life will not improve?" And of course 99% of viewers say "you know, i do!" because chances are, they're barely making ends meet, they work too hard, they haven't gotten a good night's sleep in months because their house is right next to the wrong side of the tracks, and all their hopes and dreams of one day being rich and famous have collapsed. They feel down in the dumps, and rightly so. So you continue your ad. "If your life sucks, HappyDrug will make it better! Talk to your doctor about getting addicted to our product that gives you a false sense of complacency by artificially telling your brain to fire off endorphins and detach you from reality! For as little as $30 a day your life won't suck! (until you try to wean yourself from our product.) May cause nausea, decreased sex drive, inability to operate a vehicle, coma, or death."
Of course, all the average viewer has heard of this is "If your life sucks, HappyDrug will make it better!" so they tell their doctor they want HappyDrug and get hooked on it. When they don't have it they have headaches and nausea and body aches and feel grumpy and annoy the hell out of everyone around them. When they do have it they're usually tolerable if often inattentive and glazed over, or giggling incessantly.
That actually sounds a whole lot worse than saying "If your life sucks, Marijuana will make it better! May cause paranoia, weight gain, decreased(or increased) sex drive, inability to operate a vehicle, poor judgement, or nausea if taken with alchohol." But people take the risks with HappyDrug, even though it may cause loose and oily stools and is known to be habit-forming. Whatever.

So with humans, "No=Yes", but "Yes=Yes" too. Just like my cat--i just told her "no it is not dinnertime" but i know all she heard was "dinnertime!"

So, taking teenage rebellious behavior into account, we may concur that PSAs are encouraging the nation's youth to try drugs. Why? There are numerous theories to explain this. I will itemize a few.

a. It gives kids and police officers something to do.
b. It prolongs drug trading relations with third world countries, which keeps their populations employed (if repressed.)
c. It keeps adults distracted so they don't make a fuss when the department of homeland security takes away more of our civil liberties. College students probably will, but nobody listens to them anyway.
d. As long as young, rebellious kids are stoned out of their minds in front of the television, they're not out slashing tires and stealing road signs.
e. It placates the religious right who casually forgot that they were once rebellious youths too and believe that the Man is really looking out for them and their children.
f. It makes what would be a common weed with some medicinal properties, a beverage blessed by the Christian God himself, and a normal bodily function into generation-damning Problems (with a capital P)--the touting of which keeps more people than is probably healthy employed.
g. "He'll just use it to feed his addiction to crack" is a good excuse to not give money to panhandlers.

(If anyone has reached this point in reading, I encourage you to submit a few reasons of your own!)

Now here comes the fun part. Get your conspiracy-theorizing caps on, squeeze a fresh lemon, and get ready to think i'm insane.

There is a link between PSAs and Terrorism.

beyond the expected "well they're both keeping the government busy."

They are both means by which the government is trying to control us. And may even be succeeding.

I recently read a piece by Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts describing an event on 2 February in the Little Falls, Maryland public library. Apparently two security officers, in the name of Homeland Security, burst in and announced that it is forbidden to use the library's computers to view internet pornography. One then looked over a computer user's shoulder, found the website he was viewing unsuitable, and asked him to step outside for a little chat.

The librarian called the police, who came in, found the officials to be out of their jurisdiction, and politely told them to fuck off. Well done Maryland.

But what do i think might happen if this same scenario occurred in the Fort Milll, South Carolina public library? Officials burst in and say "dont you even think about watching pornography--here or anywhere. It gives money to terrorists." You'd have ass-kissers and morons alike screaming "hear, hear!" and "hallelujah!" and congratulating W and his team of freedom fighters for protecting ourselves from our sinful selves. And if they'd found someone reading a medical journal on the symptoms of breast cancer on the internet the citizen would be lifted from her chair by the scruff of her neck and dragged outside and berated for her filthy, filthy mind. And then Jaysus himself would descend from on high and...okay, i may be exaggerating a bit. But i guarantee you a good chunk of the population wouldn't care, or would think the officials justified.

Why on earth, you ask? Why would people embrace the removal of their civil liberties to watch pornography, smoke a joint, drink a pull of whiskey or spank their children when they misbehave?

Because so long as the officials are preventing behavior that you don't approve of, you dont mind that others, who may not mind it, can't.

There's a delicate balance here. On the one hand you can argue that some people might not mind murder or arson, so is it right for them to be free to kill people and start fires? But on the other you can argue that a group of people might disapprove of alcohol use, so is it right for their will to be imposed upon others either?

This delicate balance between acceptable and unacceptable is the reason we have government. To represent and enforce what the majority of people have decided is right and wrong. The majority may not always have the best idea--i'm sure if you dig back in my quotation book you'll find the name that goes along with the line "It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be a member of the majority--by definition, there are already enough people to do that."--but one of the flaws of the human condition is our herd mindset. Most of us will go along with what everyone else is doing. If most everyone agrees to one mentality, most everyone is content with it. Those who disagree feel screwed over but there's not enough of them to matter or sway public opinion.

Unfortunately, another commonly-believed line "if you don't like it, you can leave" does not seem to apply here. There's not really anywhere better to go.

So anyway. The Department of Homeland Security screws with your brain by running ads which say "watching porn gives money to terrorists." This affects your mindset next time you sit down to enjoy some, even when you know it doesn't. Likewise, ads tell you "smoking, drinking, and sex are bad." This affects how you feel next time you decide to smoke, drink, or screw, even if you're able to do it in moderation. They also tell parents to distrust their children and permit schools to teach myths and outright bullshit as truth. What does all of this have in common? its all MEDDLING. Carefully moving in and attempting to control what the population puts in their bodies and minds. Trying to regulate what information we have access to, and of that, what we believe. Using guilt as a means of controlling the population's sex drive. Using scare tactics to associate the word "terrorism" with a departure from desired behavior. Using the television to perpetuate cycles of addiction and abuse for children and disgruntled adults.

TV isn't evil. It is just frequently used by jerks to control you.

UPDATE!! DAMN KIDS

Dear repeat reader,

I would like to apologise for my continued use of my weblog as an airing area for the stress developed from my continued co-habitation with two freshmen.

Sorry,
Kristen.




that said...

ONE OF THE KIDDIES NEARLY BURNED DOWN THE BUILDING TODAY.

Backtrack--2nd March 2006. My grown-up housemate and I had a good time making cake and brownies and buying beer for a birthday party for our co-worker today (3 March). We baked up everything and had it looking pretty, decorated it to read "Happy Birthday Nick" and put saran wrap over it to sit overnight.

I guess we failed to idiot-proof our confections because, like most academic housing, we don't have much yardage when it comes to countertops. We put the baked items on the stove (turned off) to wait overnight for the party today.

We didn't think a thing about it.

3rd March, 2006. I got up at 8, like normal, to go to class. I had a very long, brain-draining exam so when i got home, i set an alarm for 1:00 and crawled back into bed.

at 12:20 i was Rudely awoken by the piercing scream of the fire alarm. I found it odd, after the initial shock (it's several decibels beyond painfully loud) because it began ringing in my house, then the hallway siren went off. Confused (and mostly asleep) I stumbled out of bed and began putting on shoes.

Then i smelled it. That acrid, pungent, eye-watering smell of burning..something. Plastic, metal, food, hair--i didn't know what.

In my frustration at being awakened, and in further irritation at figuring out that it was someone in my house who had set the damn thing off, i made a hasty new rule for my household: "No more toaster priveleges for children."

I quickly pulled on some trousers and stepped out into the house. And saw it. A cloud of smoke that had filled the ceiling and had made its way to eye-level. And a pathetic child standing over the stove, soaking wet and wrapped in a towel, with a streak of soap suds on her cheek.

"I turned on the wrong burner. It was the wrong burner."

After wasting a couple of seconds stammering "What...the...hell?" I jumped over some chairs and quickly opened the windows in the common room. The smell was awful. Coupled with the eardrum-piercing noise and my eight-seconds-awake confusion the whole event progressed in still-frame panels, like a comic book depiction of an alleyway murder.

I remember telling the child to put a shirt on and get outside. The air was toxic and some residual lifeguard instinct told me I had to evacuate everyone. She nodded halfway and continued to stand, as though struck dumb.

The doorbell rang. The residence hall director stepped in to make sure we were all right. I said we were and the guilty party sneaked away to the bathroom while I grabbed some shoes and my keys. I returned to the hall to find the shower back on, the kid back in it, finishing what she was doing when she should have been keeping an eye on the burners. Flabberghasted, I exited the building.

The fire department arrived in the space of a few minutes. Or hours. I couldn't rightly tell as my brain was just then beginning to switch on and run some diagnostic tests. I stood for at least five minutes with my fly undone before i happened to glance down and notice my aquamarine-hued underwear glinting in the noonday sun. "Great," I thought. "Way to impress one's neighbors. Real smooth."

The child never left the building. I returned to the house after the firemen gave the all-clear to find the RHD waiting for me. Like this was my fault. After a brief conversation concerning the circumstances of the alarm and a scolding concerning the child's pet rodent in the common room, he wandered off, his conscience cleared of responsibility for the event.

After the door closed the child came out of her room and went to the stove. I got a clearer idea of what had transpired while i slept--she wanted to make hard-boiled eggs. The brownies and cake were on the stove, so rather than move these things from the stovetop, she just made space and put the (MY) pot, filled with water and eggs, on the down-right burner.

And turned on the up-left burner.

Mistaking down-right for up-right is completely understandable. It happens. You miss by an inch and turn on the burner behind or in front of the one you meant to. But missing down-right for up-left is almost impossible without spinning around with your head pressed against a baseball bat for thirty seconds while playing goofy golf. The right-burner knobs are on the right side of the stove. Likewise, the left-burner knobs are on the left side of the stove. Doesn't take a whole lot of brain power to understand the difference. But she turned on the burner that was under my pan of brownies.

Then--and this is the beautiful part--rather than stay a moment and watch to make sure everything is getting started properly, she apparently just trotted off to the shower before the burner even began to warm. So she was jarred from her activity by the fire alarm at just the same time as i was waking up.

She has claimed she will replace my 8" baking pan, which, needless to say, has been ruined. But on the whole, she doesn't seem particularly upset by this whole event. She came out of her room on the phone, talking and laughing about plans for the upcoming week. She continued boiling her eggs.

Everything in my house reeks. I have to get my comforter cleaned now--a long, boring process that i like to avoid when at all possible. My mildly-dirty laundry is now amazingly dirty. My 4 fabric wall hangings absorbed the smoke odor like freakin' cat litter. All the upholstered furniture in the living room smells. I'm sure the carpet will take its time airing out as well.

All because a child--who is expressly forbidden from living in my house but was granted housing here anyway--did a very moronic thing. Which is to be expected from children living in freshman dormitories--thats why freshman dorms don't have stoves, ovens, or anything else built in that the kiddies can hurt themselves on. This event proves the housing system's functionality--you put children in grown-up houses, they behave like children and break the grown-ups' things.

Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.

Centimeters

Uff. Imperial measurements SUCK. they are completely impractical and hold no useful mathematical function--you have to do math to adapt your math to the scale. Who was the git who decided that "hey, we have 10 fingers, 10 toes, 5 points on a starfish...lets go with 12 inches in a foot."

I am trying to design a tilt-table to fit a small robot. (don't ask--it involves chickens in lab coats.) Now as you know the base of a tilt-table needs to be a very stable structure in order to prevent the table from falling over--the base needs to provide an exactly-centered fulcrum for a smooth, balanced tilt. And what's the most stable structure in geometry that can also act as a fulcrum? An equilateral triangle.

so i do the math. I start with a 30-60-90 triangle because i know if you mirror one you get an equilateral triangle with all the angles proper--60°--without a compass or a protractor. (i have both but i always manage to screw it up somehow.) I start...okay lets have a leg (hypotenuse) of 3 feet, which means the base would be a foot and a half (1'6") and the vertical bit would be (1/2x3') x (√3) ≈1.7 feet.

this is NOT 1 foot 7 inches. that would be too practical.

So i multiply 1.7(and some change) by 12. this gets me 20.78 inches. I know that 24 inches is 2 feet so 20 inches is 1'8". fine. now i have this .78 to play with.

Inches are divided into 16ths. as a carpenter who works with real materials of varying lengths, i have no need to cut down to anything smaller than a 16th of an inch because its not going to make much difference unless i'm building a lazer or something. i work with wood.

so i multiply .78 by 16 and get 12.48. i'm going to ignore the .48 because geez, man. so 12/16. on a measuring tape that comes up as 3/4. 1'8 3/4". Close to 1.7, but not quite.

Now that i've worked that out i realize that .78 is right near .75 which is 3/4, but it takes luck for that to work out. i mean if it came up as .6 i'd be lost.

this is so counter-freaking-productive. I like centimeters. You can do real math with them without adjustment. 1.7 cm is 1cm 7mm. or just 1.7 cm. unlike 1.7 feet which is 1' 8 3/4." REE TAR DED.

In a moment of idiocy, i drew my triangle...in centimeters. it just made so much more sense. and this would work fine except for the fact that my scale rule is in feet. so now i have to go back and draw it again using the other side of the ruler so i can do it to 1/2" scale so other carpenters in this country can understand it.

Adventures in Babysitting

Brief update on the developments in tolerating my ickle freshman roommates:

After being repeatedly ignored when i asked the girlies to wash my frickin' dishes when they use them, i realized my system of "treat them like grown-ups" wasn't working. so i tried a new tactic.

I made little signs.

Every pre-school teacher knows that if you put rules like "use your inside voice" and "share!" on the walls in large, friendly letters, perhaps even with a little graphic of a bear and an octopus passing a toy train between them, it means its law. It stands as a constant reminder of what expected behavior is, and can serve as a specific reminder if you put a child in time-out directly under said sign. I've taken Teacher Cadets and Driver's Ed--i know the power of signs.

So i wrote out a sign in large, friendly letters which read "Failure to Promptly Wash Kristen's Dishes will Result in Your Prevention from their Use." A bit wordy, i'll admit, but it looks more polite than "NO WASH=NO USE."

Now let me interject something important here--I own 90% of the dishes in this house. Plates, cups, utensils, pots, pans, cutting boards, measuring spoons, collanders--i got it all. i even have a squeezy metal tea infuser and plastic chopsticks. I own the kitchen scissors and the oven mitt. I also keep the place stocked with sponges and paper towels and even have refrigerator storage containers if anyone wants to use them. I offered to share my bountiful store of kitchen goodness with the girls on the one condition "that you wash the dishes as soon as possible when you're done using them."

My dishes sat for a week before the cute little sign arrived.

The cute little sign hung for a good eight hours before Somebody's grubby little paws tore it from the cabinet.

And tore it to shreds.

Little shreds.

I think somebody took it personally. This amuses me to no end--how better to react to my calling you out for behaving like a child...than to Behave Like A Child? "Oh Kristen is such a bitch accusing me of never washing her dishes damn tyrant thinks she runs the place putting up condescending notes all over the place..." while my dishes, that i didn't use, sit filthily in the sink.

by the time i got home from class the dishes had been washed, though.

I really hope now that the kiddies will stop using my dishes entirely--to spite me. I don't mind if they curse me, call me a slave driver, convince themselves i'm making them clean up after me somehow, so long as they don't leave my stuff a mess.

I just really don't want to have to store my dishes under my bed--my one grown-up roommate takes individual responsibility and washes them, and i'd hate to keep her from them. And its inconvenient for me to crawl under there (we don't have any other storage in the rooms, and i gave my head a good thwack with my bedframe just yesterday going under there for a tube of deodorant.) But if i have to go another day unable to find a spoon to eat my cereal with because all ten of them are dirty i may just have to.

Damn Kids.