Thursday, October 31, 2002

I have eight minutes to write this blog. Eight minutes should be sufficient. The forty minutes I will have left myself to prepare for school may prove insufficient, however.

Bah, I stopped to read someone else's blog. I now have three minutes to write this blog. Frustratingly, I have almost nothing to write about. I've been trying to think of good anecdotes and I'm coming up with nothing. All I can think of to tell is a story that most of you have already heard. Ahh, well, you'll hear it again.

Time: Good Friday, 2000.
Location: My Friend Sarah's Room.
Backdrop: My friends and I decided we'd get good and drunk for the first time. My friend's father was providing the alcohol; his wife would've been incredibly angry about the fact had she known it. So we were all sneaking around and shut in Sarah's tiny room.

So, we're putting Jelly Beans in Zima and like drinks, to make them fizz up to drink them fast (Yeah, we're bright kids). Anyway, it's Zima so it's not like we're really getting drunk. We are, however, getting silly and stupid. Friend trips over a candle, everybody jumps up to see if the house is on fire. I'm on the top bunk of her bed; it's dark. I lean way over the side of the bunk and THWAP something smacks me in the head hard. I let loose a flow of obscenities. Everyone wants to know what's wrong, I don't know exactly. Turn on the light. Turns out I smacked my head on the ceiling fan.

D'oh.

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

"Life is suffering,
tee-hee ha ha."

What does it mean to grow up? How do you known when you’ve grown?

My mother had twin daughters at fifteen years old. She wasn’t a grown up, but she sure had to act like one. At fifteen, she had far more responsibility than I do now at twenty.

My sisters both had children before their seventeenth birthdays. I don’t think they were grown up really. But at some point they must have started to consider themselves adults.

I’m twenty. When will I become an adult? I don’t have children; I’m not responsible for any lives except my own. I live with my mother. I don’t have a job. I only go to school.

I’m three years older than my sisters were when they became adults. I’m five years older than when my mother did. Will I be a child until I have a child myself?

The other day I heard someone at school say: “If a woman’s 25 and not married, you know there’s something wrong with her.”

I plan to get my undergraduate degree when I’m 21. That gives me the four years I’ll likely spend in grad school to find a husband before I’m deemed defective.

Maybe I don’t want to get married. I want children someday, but I don’t really want a husband. Does that sound cold?

It seems like everyone I know is desperate to find someone to love them. I don’t feel like I need anyone to love me. I’m happy so long as I know that I approve of what I’m making of myself. Granted, it would be terrific if somebody did love me. But I don’t expect that anyone will. I know that I don’t love anybody in a passionate sort of way; why should I expect anyone to love me in a way that I’m incapable of reciprocating?

Why do I want children? I don’t really want them to love me unconditionally. I know that if I did want them to do that, I’d only be deluding myself. Children naturally have to hate their parents a little or they find themselves incapable of exercising independence. I don’t want to make little clones of myself. Heaven forbid, in fact, my children to act and think in the rotten patterns that I do. So why is it important to have children?

I’m twenty years old as I write this. I have very little direction in life. I don’t know what I believe, or how I feel about life, or really, what I want to do with my existence. I need to figure these things out. Soon I’ll have to make some serious decisions about what paths I choose to follow. I know that “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans,” but I don’t want the core of my being to be determined by a string of accidents. I don’t know if I can escape accidents determining my fate, but I want to exercise as much free will as possible anyway. It’s my life after all, and I’ve only got one of them to live (so far as I know). It's time to start asking the big questions.

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

According to Reuters, Myriad Genetics discovered a gene which directly causes human obesity.

I’m overjoyed.

Not for any really noble reason. Not because I’ll be glad to see people who’ve struggled with weight issues now able to stop them. Not because I’ll be glad to see people who’ve suffered weight related disease made well. No, I’m glad because it’s just more proof that those smug, thin, “I’ve always eaten everything I wanted and I’m not fat” jerks, are not morally superior to their fatter brethren.

See, folks, I’ve always held that fat people are the pinnacle of human evolution. Throughout history, famine has always come. And the people who survived famine were the people who managed to live off their body fat when there wasn’t any food around to eat. Human genes learned to conserve fat when times were good. Superior people were, and are, the people who had genes smart enough to keep them obese when there’s food enough around to get obese on.

When the great famine comes, my skinny friends, I’ll be kicking back, busting into my Snickers stash. And your proud, lanky frames will quickly wither away. Ahh, how the proud will be brought down low!

Okay, so, today we're talking about our ages in class. I'm, as usual, the youngest.

Me: I’m 20. Won't be 21 until June.
Girl: WHAT?
Me: Uhh, I’m 20.
Girl: Are you SERIOUS? You look WAY older than that!
Me: Yeah, I’m told I come off a little older.
Girl: A little? Girl! I thought you were OLDER!
Me: heh, how old?
Girl: ::nervous laughter:: Older.

Sweet God! I’m not ready for the nursing home yet people!

An, admittedly sort of senile old man, thought I was my father's girlfriend last year. There's a nearly 35 year age difference between my father and myself. And I've had other comments from people thinking I'm "older," too.

Why do you all seem to think I'm so ancient? My hair, to the best of my knowledge, is far from graying. I don't have any wrinkles; admittedly, I allow my large pores to run free without hindrance from makeup or pore reduction creams. But I don't wear button-up sweaters around; I don't discuss the fine points of knitting or my cats or grandchildren or anything. So what comes off as old about me?

I don't exactly mind being thought of as somewhat older than 20. But it annoys me that I look "way older than 20," and yet, still somehow manage to get carded every time I try to see a rated R film.

Woke up early today to study for my exam.

So am I studying? Of course not. I am, however, regretting that I woke up early to try.

Maybe I'll delete yesterday's entry. I sound sort of...ahh, Republican. Truth be told, I'm on the Republican side of Libertarian. But that doesn't mean I have to sound like it. Next thing you know I'll be telling you your kids can't read Harry Potter because those books, like Pokemon, Rock and/or Roll Music and Gum Chewing, are Satanic (or as my father puts it Satanic; as in, I'd like a gin and Satonic, please).

I have a funny way of writing in here sometimes. I've publically declared my dislike for backstabbers, racists, terrorists and fascists. What's next? Child molestors? I'm hardly putting myself out on a limb here. Funny though, I've still gotten some negative feedback.

Monday, October 28, 2002

I’m in a good mood. I think I did well on my German exam. I got my Early Christian History paper back and I scored an A-. There was a time when an A- wouldn’t have been good enough for me. But Dr. Tanner grades papers incredibly hard. Since I usually pull mid B’s, an A- is enough to make me get up and dance. Well, History exam tomorrow, History exam Thursday, and that’s it for midterms. Yay!

I’m quite hungry at the moment. I think I’m going to bring a bag of Doritos with me to Brianne’s house. Yes, my healthy diet does contribute to my smashing good looks, girls.

Final note about school. Crimony, Jeff’s annoying. He’ll whine and whine about how hard his life is, and if you say something as small as “I’m tired,” he does this poor baby skit. I thought it was something he did to just me because he didn’t like me or he thought that I was spoiled or something. But I’ve seen him do it to other people too; people he doesn’t even know and who certainly have lives and problems far greater than his. No wonder so many people hate him and won’t talk to him.

Today in class he was whining about how I get good grades. “What’s that? Sarah spoke in class? Give her 20 bonus points!” Fat chance, mate. I work hard to get good grades. I spent 11 hours working on my A- paper, he spent five on his C+ paper; now, do you figure the difference in grade is just that our teacher likes me more? No, I work for good grades. I’d rather be watching television than working on papers too, just like anybody else. But instead I work hard and my reward is higher grades. If he applied himself more, I’m sure he’d do just as well. And don’t give me crap about how I’m intelligent and school work is harder for other people. Granted, people have different natural abilities. But I wasn’t born one whit smarter than Jeff, or anybody. So if I’m more intelligent than they are now, it’s only because I worked to become more intelligent.

Life isn’t easy. If you want something, anything, you have to work for it. I’m fine with people who don’t feel like working (hell, I graduated high school with a 2.1 or so GPA). I’m fine with people who put forth some effort and whine because their actual result was less than the result anticipated. But if all you want to do is drag somebody else down because they worked harder and achieved something greater than you, shut the hell up and work harder next time. If you seriously believe that a teacher’s playing favorites and screwing you over, take it to the administration. If you just want to use that as an excuse to justify your own lack of effort and poor results, I don’t want to hear about it.

How’d I get from “I’m in a good mood” to “shut the hell up?” ::shrugs::

Frustrating night in some respects.

My German exam has a take-home section. I hadn’t worked on it cause I figured German would be easy. It usually is, so long as you can double check your conjugation charts. However, giving it a good look over the night before it’s due, I see that we’ve never done approximately half of this junk. So, I can either spend a lot of time looking things up and teaching myself or I can takes me chances and hope that nobody else understood how to do it either. If none of us understands it, certainly the good Dr. will let us out of that part of the exam. However, if I just wasn’t paying attention in class or something, or if everybody else all copied off each other’s papers, which is more likely, I may be pretty screwed when I get to class. Notice, I’m only writing about German at the moment and not actually working on it. How do you say: Ich studiere Deutsche nicht! Heh, that’s probably wrong. Oh well, we haven’t learned the rules governing word order yet.

In other news, my car is finally at least partially fixed. I can see to drive at night now. This is a good thing, since I drive at night nearly every night.

This weekend went too fast. It doesn’t feel like I’ve done anything at all. And I haven’t really. I ran around quite a bit for others, but I didn’t do anything much that I needed to have done. I don’t feel ready to go back to school. I wonder how many weeks I’m in now. God, I think it’s sixth week. That sucks. Cause, as much as I like time passing, I think my schedule’s going to suck next quarter. Biology, Critical Writing and more German sound less than promising. Bah, my first class is going to be at 9am in the Winter. What a horrible time to be awake! I’m going to have to be all getting up at like 7:30! Good Lord.

Sunday, October 27, 2002

Eight Books I Think Everybody Ought to Have Read Before They Die:

The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Notes From the Undergound – Fyodor Dostoevsky.

The Complete Stories – Flannery O’Connor.

Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction – J.D. Salinger.

Nine Stories – J.D. Salinger.

Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton.

The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran - Kahlil Gibran.

The Way of a Pilgrim – Anonymous Russian Pilgrim.

I had fun tonight.

I’d forgotten how scary Nightmare on Elm Street was. You know, scary in that sort of silly, not really scary unless you ignore how bad the special effects and plot are, and concentrate on the general idea of a nightmare dude coming to get you when you sleep, sort of way.

I saw the tragic death of a possum tonight. I felt rather bad. King of the Hill is right. Preteens have serious blood lust. I’m glad they inflict pain on animals instead of people. But I still feel bad. I don’t even kill spiders, personally, and spiders are the enemy.

April and I totally danced in her living room tonight. It was crazy. You know that scene in movies about teenagers in the 60’s where the girls squeal and dance like jackasses and talk about hot dudes? It was one of those nights. We had milk shakes; friggin’ A, man.

Heh, my television is possessed. It randomly turned itself to TBS. I’m not even near a remote. I don’t mind exactly, because I hate that Santana song with the chick singer, which is what was playing before it flipped over. On the other hand, I’m not really looking forward to watching the National Dog Championships either. MAN! Bark in the Park just got eliminated!

My poor mother is working a double shift tonight. I should be nice and clean up the house a little. But…I’m so tired and lazy. And I hate cleaning. Bah…I could at least pick up the paper I guess…and my shoes…

I wish mom would stop working so hard, so I could stop feeling guilty about being such a slacker.

Saturday, October 26, 2002

I had weird dreams about Nazis last night. The weird part isn't that I had dreams about Nazis. But rather that they were pleasant dreams about Nazis.

I've had a life long phobia of Nazis. I know a lot of people sort of do. But being the little Jewkin that I am, with the particularly morbid sort of reading habits I've always had, I read a number of books about the Holocaust when I was way too young to have done so without incurring serious emotional damage. I started having Nazi dreams when I was five or six years old, and they've always been terrible nightmares from which I've woke up crying or screaming or shaking and terrified to move. When I was growing up, just hearing the German language spoken was enough to put me on edge.

But last night, I had rather pleasant dreams about dining with Nazis in full military regalia. They were such polite people; they were very kind to me. We danced and had a terrific time being on top of the world.

I don't know if that dream has any hidden unconscious meaning. I can think of a few interpretations. But I imagine it was just the influence of too much German History on a brain. I'm learning German language in school now. I have an exam Monday that I've been sort of studying for, so it was on my mind right before I went to bed. I'm taking a German History in the 20th Century course in school now too, and we're studying WWII and the rise of Nazism. For the moment, we're not talking about the Holocaust. We're very consciously trying to keep it separate from other studies of the event; We'll study the Holocaust as a separate unit, after we've covered the war. It's strange to think of Germany in WWII without thinking of the Holocaust.

Hitler has always been the ultimate embodiment of human evil to me. I have never been able to imagine a more cruel or sinister man. But as a student of history, I may have run across a few contenders for the title. It's strange that I don't have bad dreams about Stalin. I've read some nasty accounts of the Gulag Archipelago. I'm a huge fan of Aleksandr Solzehnitsyn. Of course, I didn't really become a fan of Solzehnitsyn until college whereas I'd read accounts of the Holocaust when I was five.

In a total change of subject, I think that movies mess up your brain perhaps. When I’m reading a book, I feel it more than picture it. And if I do picture it, it’s always a scene in still-frame, or a single bit of movement by a character. Never a movie-like reel of moving pictures and plot lines. I vastly prefer books to movies. I don’t need to see everything to feel everything, and in fact, seeing everything encumbers my ability to feel it.

BAH! Dad's here and won’t shut up. Will have to stop rambling again. Old man is annoying today. He took my car, when he darn well knew I had to be in town at three, and brought the thing back at three and wondered why I was upset. Annoying old man. Must go.

So, big day today.

Took Brianne driving. Her friend didn't come along so it was pretty cool. Have to do it again tomorrow. Her friend is supposed to come. It'll probably suck. Ahh, well, my niece is well worth the sacrifice, eh?

Went to the football game. It was cold and wet and we won by like fifty points. Jody invited me to go visit some friends of hers in Canada this weekend, but I couldn't go because I have two midterms on Monday I'd have to miss. But, on the bright side, stuff is planned for tomorrow with April. Pizza, mediocre movies, and cookie dough. Sounds like a good time! Angela also wanted to do stuff this weekend. When does anyone ever want to do anything with me? Why four people vying for time in one weekend? It's not my sparkling personality. This much is certain.

I love little Pete’s haircut on Pete and Pete. Early 90’s haircuts for boys were great. I miss grunge. My dog needs to stop barking; I can’t make it stop raining. I imagine the dog community is rather disappointed with human inability to control the weather. After all, we make houses warm in winter, dry in rain, cool in the summer. Why not also outside, where the hunting's better? How about it science?

I love reruns of The Electric Company.

Dad: They’ll sell like hot cakes!
Me: Yeah. But the hot cake market’s been in something of a slump.
Dad: Damn! Foiled Again!

Friday, October 25, 2002

Three Goals For The Very Near Future:

I will become more assertive. I will let others know exactly what my wishes are without being overly concerned that they’ll find me pushy or demanding.

I will become more expressive. I will let people know how I feel even when my feelings are negative.

I will not debilitate myself so that others can feel more secure around me. Insofar as I consider myself a generally good person, I see little reason to hide my fundamental qualities in a futile effort to ensure that those around me do not feel threatened.

Dear Mr. County Worker on a Back Road,

I realize that your job is a most difficult one. Who would envy your task? Certainly not I, dear Mr. County Worker on a Back Road. No, indeed, I should not like your position at all. It must be difficult to take up the whole road with machinery designed only to take up half of the road. Indeed, it must have required some initiative on your part to block my path so utterly and completely. And for the length of time you managed it, too! People often complain about government workers, but I was indeed impressed by your tremendous effort and effective results. It is not hard to imagine why America leads the world in industry and innovation when geniuses of your magnitude staff even the lowest echelons of the lowest echelons of government.

Indeed, dear Mr. County Worker on a Back Road, the mere fact that you waved me on in spite of the fact that it required me to drive into a ditch and scratch the side of my car on the tree branches you had sprawled about the road, is just one of the oh so many examples of your vast industrial superiority. Why should the fact that there was not enough room on the road for my rather smallish vehicle to pass encumber your labors? You have a job to do, Mr. County Worker on a Back Road. America is depending on you to trim those branches. Let not the needs of this humble traveler stand in your way!

My dearest Mr. County Worker on a Back Road, it is my most fervent prayer that God should bless you with a multitude of children. For indeed, a line as fine as yours deserves to be continued on.

Thursday, October 24, 2002

Bah, it's almost three in the morning.

This summer, three in the morning was the equivalent of early evening for me. I made a habit of falling asleep shortly before dawn. But it's incredibly stupid for me to be writing this now when I have to wake up in the morning for the dreaded seven hour day.

Yeah, sounds pretty scary and all, a seven hour day. But school hours, and especially intensely discussion oriented school hours, are a lot more tiring for me than a normal work day. Especially when I've been lazy and falling behind in my reading and I have to struggle to keep up.

I had a rough night. Someone, we'll call Friend X, angered me. Friend X was insulted this evening by someone he/she has to deal with at work. As Friend X was telling me the story, I felt quite bad for him/her. Then Friend X said something along the lines of "stupid Jew." I said, "what?" And Friend X said "She looked like a Jew."

I lost it at this point, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. I'm not usually overly sensitive to ethnic slurs. But it annoyed me. Friend X should know better than to say things like this, and I found it disappointing. Friend X has probably never met a real Jew in his/her life. I'm the closest thing Friend X has to a Jew, and my family's been all good and turncoated for three generations. Jews have never done anything to Friend X. Friend X has no justification for hating Jews. When Friend X makes nasty comments about Jews, or as was the occasion of our last such spat, when people speak a foreign language in public, it annoys me. Particularly because, given our locale, the chance that this person was actually a Jew is next to nil. Friend X likely never thought this person was a Jew at all, but was merely covering for the fact he/she had used the phrase "stupid Jew" to describe someone he/she was mad at.

A few minutes later, I was acting withdrawn. Friend X says “are you mad?” And I promise that I’m not. Why would I promise I’m not, when I am? Because I don’t want to come off as being all PC? More likely, because, I always say that I’m not mad because I hate fighting. Plus, why should I get all up in arms about Friend X’s bigotry? He/she has a right to it. It’s a free country after all.

No.

You know what, Friend X? Don’t use that language around me again. Don’t insult people because they’re different than you. Don’t justify your hate by saying that someone hated you first. That kind of stuff is poison, and I don’t need it in my life. I have enough trouble wrestling my own hypocrisy without having yours creep into my mind unaware.

Speaking of my own hypocrisy...I'm feeling self-conscious for having written this. But I think I'm right on this one, I really do. So I'm going to go ahead and post it and allow myself to feel all the guilt I'm wont to feel over it.

God, I'd better be able to fall asleep soon.

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

I had strange dreams last night.

The first one happened right before my alarm clock went off. It was more like a vision than a dream, or it seemed more like one because it was just a flash of an image. I looked out of a window, and a gas station was on fire. Not normal fire. Explosion fire. When my alarm clock went off, I jumped all the way out of my bed; it took me a while to figure out where I was.

I decided to go back to sleep for another hour. I dreamed I went to a football game, and all my friends were there, except none of them would talk to me really. It wasn't that they were snubbing me. They had just been doing stuff before I arrived, and my presence clearly inhibited their ability to keep up. I left the game, walked the short distance to my grandmother's house (which, in reality, is many miles of course), I was so depressed I was almost in tears. I sat in my grandmother's chair, and she came out and sat in the one beside me. She's 90, but she seemed to have the mentality of a child. She saw, for the first time that her own chair was blue. She laughed and giggled. And my depression grew expotentially. My alarm clock went off and woke me up. I was glad.

I can't shake the sleep from my brain. I'm having a hard time discerning reality and dream still.

::sighs:: This might be a repost, I'll delete it tomorrow if it is. I asked the bugger to publish, and it didn't. Anger. I didn't feel like posting the first damn time.

I'm tired, and stressed and rather irritable tonight. I don't feel like doing this. I don't feel like doing anything.

Friday I have to take my niece Brianne to practice for her driver's test. I helped my nephew, so this shouldn't make me nervous. But it does. I don't think it's because we'll be using my car instead of my mom's this time. I think it's that Brianne's friend Heather is coming along, and I'm so antisocial and backward, that it freaks me out to have to meet her. New people are scary. Plus, excess gas money doesn't really fit into my budget right now, but that's a totally different concern.

My head hurts. My muscles are all tense and my eye's started twitching again. I have chest pains. Between my stress and my diet, I'm seriously going to have a heart attack before I'm 25.

Monday, October 21, 2002

You know, I don’t come from an overeducated family. Only one of my four grandparents finished high school; only one of my two parents did. Of my mother’s five children, only the youngest two received diplomas. But I don’t consider anyone in my family as being particularly ignorant – or, as we said it when I was young, “ignant.” I expect everyone in my family to have a basic curiosity about the world. And in general, every one of us lives up to that expectation. We’re far from scholarly, sure, but we all appreciate knowledge and respect it and strive to acquire more of it.

I guess that’s why it always surprises me when I find people who lack even the most basic seeds of intellectual curiosity. Because I didn’t come from an overeducated family, I expect that people who come from more middle and upper class backgrounds will surpass all of us in these leanings, but I’m nearly always surprised to find that this isn’t so.

For instance, at a friend’s party last summer, I met a lady in, perhaps, her late 20’s or early 30’s. She was a little overweight, a little bit pushy, a little bit of a big mouth. Not at all the type of person I like to talk to, but when she started to talk to me, I thought it only polite to respond. She was angry because her six-year old daughter had been learning Spanish in school.

I should have known better, of course, and I’m a little ashamed of myself for falling into the trap of expecting that sort of person to be reasonable, but I gave a response. “I don’t think teaching Spanish to young children is such a bad thing. I mean, little kids pick language up quite a bit faster and easier than older children do, and there are so many benefits of learning a foreign language.”

She looked at me like I’d said the dumbest thing anyone had ever said to her in her life. She rolled her eyes and said, “My daughter’s never going to Spain. Why does she need Spanish?”

I was shocked on multiple levels. First, didn’t this lady know that Spain isn’t the only country in the world that spoke Spanish? How could she possibly say that her child would never go to a Spanish speaking country? The kid was only six. Didn’t she know how many Spanish-speaking people there are in America?

I smiled politely; Maybe a little nervously. “Well, you know, they’ve done studies which prove that bilingual children are better able to analyze new words for meaning. They also find it easier to learn more languages later in life if they ever need to. And Spanish is a good language to learn, because they say that, in our lifetime, we’ll probably see such a huge shift in population that more people will be native speakers of Spanish than English.”

She seemed angry. “Those people need to learn English! Why should my kid learn Spanish? She’s an American! Americans speak English! She doesn’t ever need to learn Spanish! She’s never going to Spain! If she wants to find out what a word means, she can read the dictionary! In English!”

I wanted to smack her. For so many reasons. But I shrugged. Why fight with an idiot? I said, blandly and unthinkingly, “I think I’m going to get a pop. Want anything?” She said no, and acted superior. Later, I saw her with her little girl. She was chewing the kid out for getting dirty. Imagine a child at an outdoor party, at a pond in fact, dressed all in white, managing to get dirty. I hated that lady.

I’ve not always been happy to be from the family I’m from. But that day, I was pretty grateful. It’s not that my family’s perfect or anything; far from it, in fact. But I can’t imagine my mother complaining because my teachers were teaching me some Spanish. I can’t imagine my father deciding, when I was six, that I’d never leave the United States. I certainly can’t imagine my parents taking me out to play and then freaking out if I got a little dirty.

Want to see why my head aches with the pounding of a thousand...things that pound...whaddya call 'em....hammers!...?

Yes, my paper that I've been working on for the last 11 hours SUCKS! SUCKS!

Click here to view my frustration.

Sunday, October 20, 2002

April: I don't breathe like a man!
Me: You so do!
April: I don't have big nostrils like you, I have to breathe through my mouth!
Me: Whatever, I'll keep my big nostrils you man breather!

Editorial Note: April sucks so I can't put the next part, because she's embarassed about it. But not as embarassed as the time I posted the picture of her butt on my webpage. I don't know what she was so worried about, it was password protected!

Entry Deleted.

Why?

Because I enjoy torturing you.

I just had a long discussion with my mother. I must be annoying to go to for advice. Damn, I don’t shut up. It usually starts with us fighting over my dad, and I win, and then eventually, we talk about me and my many problems in life.

I don’t like talking to my mother about my problems in life. She doesn’t know me terribly well. Most people don’t actually. I guess that’s my fault. Usually when you’re mad at literally everyone else you know for something, you can only blame yourself. I don’t know how I manage to alienate so many people. But I do.

Fun things I found out tonight about how my mom doesn’t really know me:

1. She didn’t know I had a steady boyfriend for three years when I was in high school. Where was she during this time period?
2. She knew that I wrote stories and poetry, but she didn’t know I wrote “such” stories and poetry. She’s afraid of me now. And I didn’t even know they were depressive sounding.
3. She didn’t know that I have friends that I talk to at school. What, I have the plague or something?
4. She’s convinced I’ll find a boyfriend and never talk to her again. People who met me mere seconds ago should know better than this.
5. She thinks that I’m a follower and do whatever I’m told. Though, seemingly contradictory, she also believes that I’m terribly stubborn and refuse to listen to anyone about anything. I don’t see how these go together, but she claims they do.
6. She thinks I’m somehow less mature than this girl I went to high school with that she knows, because said girl has had oral sex with at least 10 different men in the last few months and has an STD, whereas, for all she knows anyway (and this happens to be accurate), I have had no oral sex, and have no STDs.
7. She thinks there’s something “funny” about my heterosexuality. She also thinks nearly all my friends and John Travolta are gay. She thinks other people are gay too, but I can’t list who they are here, because it might hurt their feelings if they read it (Here’s a hint, if you’re over 16 and not married, you’re gay). Her feelings about my “funny” heterosexuality changed somewhat when she realized that I’d had a boyfriend for three years that she had somehow forgotten, but were reinstated when I told her I had no desire to get married.

April called, so I can’t think anymore to write. But there were oh so many more. Sort of depressing. But then, also quite funny. You know, I could’ve gotten away with a lot more as a kid, if I only would’ve realized how oblivious my parents were about stuff. Of course, since I never had any rules anyway, I never had to try to get away with anything. ::shrug::

Saturday, October 19, 2002

Exegesis With Dad.
Matthew 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39.

Me: You know how, in the Gospels, Jesus banishes the demons into the swine?
Dad: Yeah, I know that story.
Me: Okay, I vaguely get the banishing them into swine thing. Pigs are unclean and all. But why, once the demons get into the swine, do they go tossing themselves into the water just to die? They'll just have to re-host themselves again.
Dad: You're reading that story all wrong. Whose pigs were they?
Me: It doesn’t really say. But I assume just some Jewish swineherd's, since Jesus mostly went around to Jews in Jewish towns.
Dad: And what were Jews doing with pigs?
Me: Uh, I don’t know. Raising them for Romans?
Dad: There you go! See! It’s a political act! He banished the demons into some Roman pigs, and then made them kill themselves! Economic rebellion!
Me: Doesn't seem very nice. Those Romans would be pretty mad when they came back to find their pigs dead. What happens to the poor Jewish swineherds?
Dad: What does Jesus care? He cast out some demons, killed some pigs, made some Romans mad! A day well spent!
Me: Well, it does say that people begged Jesus to leave their neighborhood afterward. He got into his boat and sailed away. Not his problem, eh? No wonder they killed him. It's one thing to claim to be God, and quite another to go about terrorizing innocent swine.
Dad: ::laughs:: Imagine having to row through all those pig corpses!

My father and I talking about business.

Me: We’re smart people. Why aren’t we rich?
Dad: I’ve often wondered that myself.
Me: Seems there ought to be something we can do to make money.
Dad: Yeah, what are our talents?
Me: Well, I can write.
Dad: And I can read!
Me: You know, once upon a time that would’ve been a guarantee of income.
Dad: Damn! Born too late again!
Me: Cruel fates!

I want Mexican food! I'm hungry. I'm always hungry. I think, most of the time, if I wasn't either thinking about food, or actually eating some, I'd pass out of existence. I'd simply cease to be. All my desirings would be extinguished and there would be nothing left.

All my socks have holes in them. I've literally just tried on three pairs of socks, and all of them have holes. I just bought new socks. Could I possibly have gotten holes in them in the course of a week? What the hell do I do to socks?

I feel a little guilty, because I'm making my dad take me out for Mexican food. I shouldn't, I know, because he worries so much about money. But damn, I'm hungry! And it's not like he spends a lot of money on me usually. I bought my car, I pay my tuition (heh, or the government and scholarships do actually, but if they weren't, I would be), I buy my clothes (which explains why I own nothing that costs more than $20), I buy my own gas and when/if something breaks on my car, I pay for that too. In an average week, I estimate that he spends $10 on my upkeep. Those $10 are usually food related. Yeah, so I'm 20, and maybe my dad shouldn't spend any money on me at all. But he owes me for my cheap childhood. What the hell nice things did I ever get for Christmas? And honestly, all of my friends have parents who help them pay for college and stuff. Even though I don't need that, the fact is, their parents are laying a lot more out for them than mine are. So if you don't like that I make my dad buy me stuff on occasion, screw you, 'cause you don't know, man. Yeah, so that's an empty justification. I'll offer to pay; he won't let me. I can still lay the blame on him. He's an enabler, he is.

I'm tired. It feels like a Sunday and not a Saturday. I feel like I ought to be writing my paper. Perhaps I'll really start it today, because on Sundays, I'm never quite in the mood to do anything at all. It's a holy day. I refuse to work on it. Yeah, that's the ticket...

heh, only click here if you're filthy minded and don't object to profane religious imagery...muahaha!

Yeah, so, reposting something is hard. I should write these elsewhere and copy and paste them in. But I'll try to get the jist. My damn mood went and changed, so I don't have quite the...thing I had going before. Plus, I'm on the phone now, and nobody can be very...the way I was, on the phone. It's impossible. At least it is for me. Put April down, will try to write quickly.

Tonight, I could write the saddest blog. I'm feeling alone and uncared for. I see my life as one long string of meaningless relationships with self-centered people who couldn't care less about who I am. They don't even know me. And I don't suppose they want to because it can't be that hard.

I don't want to come off sounding all poor me-ish. I've wasted a lot of time in my life waiting for a drop of pity. And worse yet, I've watched at least one person I care about waste their life on it. I dont want to be that/this way. But sometimes I'm so unhappy.

Sometimes I imagine people in churches as the happiest people. All packed in together, singing hallelujah. It must feel nice to be part of a hallelujah. It must feel nice to believe that you've been set apart - not individually, but as a group. It must be nice to think, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" and be sure that He is mindful of you. I've always wanted to be part of a hallelujah. And it just isn't in me to be.

Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote: "So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find something to worship...[W]hat is essential is that all may be together in it. The craving for community worship is the chief misery of...all humanity. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword."

I could never slay anyone, but I feel the misery sometimes. It's hard when you feel self-conscious so much as clapping at a football game. I've always felt that the key to intelligence was a certain alienation. I blame/credit my parents for my alienation. They raised me oddly, and I've always felt different. Sometimes I'm glad because I feel it gives me as an advantage as an observer. And sometimes I feel angry that I have no idea how to act or feel. Tonight, it makes me feel lonely.

What good is intelligence if it only makes you feel miserable? And it does make you miserable. The Preacher once wrote: "And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind. For in much wisdom is much grief, And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow."

Tonight, if I could vomit up every piece of that damn apple we ate in the garden, I would. Maybe it would make me less than human. Maybe that would be okay.

Are there answers which don't lead to larger questions? Is it possible to stop asking? Is it wrong to want to?

Damnit! I just posted a really long entry that's not showing up. I hate that, I seriously do. BAH. Will try again. It won't be the same though. God, write your heart out and blog swallows it up. Blood sucking piece of...

Thursday, October 17, 2002

Have to post something to check my template.

Umm...to make this worth your while, I'll tell you a joke. Joke courtesy of my brother Brett:

Two hats are hanging on a wall. The first hat says to the other hat: "I'll hang here, you go on ahead."

Muahahahaha....! A...head...! It's better told than read, I'm afraid.

Now! To check my template!

I'm ill. I'm ill. I'm ill. Lord of heaven and earth, come take me now, I'm frigging ILL!

Bah, it's cruel that people with stress-related disorders should suffer so much from stress! It's an unbreakable cycle of doom. DOOM I say! The more stressed out I get, the sicker I become; the sicker I become, the more stressed out I get. So unfair. Hate. Hate. Hate.

This school week is almost over. One more class and I'm done. Unfortunately, it's the most boring class of all. As I speak I should be catching up on the two hundred or so pages of reading that I'm behind on, but instead I'm blogging. 20th Century German History just plain isn't interesting. Yes, Germany's integral in WWI and WWII, and they're great subjects, they really are. But I'm just burned out on them. I took a Holocaust course last Spring, Goebbels no longer holds my interest. I'm ready to move on. Hitler was batty and I didn't need a lengthy discussion period to determine the fact.

I have to link to my friend April's blog Fat Girl Time. As you can probably guess, from the post below this, food jokes are a speciality amongst my friends, and especially April. The name of her blog comes from a conversation that went something along the lines of:

Me: You're going to eat that whole box of nuggets?
A: Hell, yeah, I am! I haven't eaten in like an hour. That's like three days in fat girl time!

And, if you're wondering, yes, her blog does pretty accurately portray her life. She's my best friend, and I talk to her for hours on the phone nearly every night, literally. And most of our conversations sound very, very much like her blog.

::thinks::

I need to change the template on this bad boy. 15 minutes before I have to leave, will work on it til then.

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Rory and April Conversation:

A: Do you ever get cravings for something you just can’t quite put your finger on?
R: No.
A: I do! It sucks! I just keep eating until I figure out what it is.
R: ::laughs:: What?
A: You know, I get down to the bottom of a bag of popcorn and I think “No, that wasn’t it. On to the cake…”

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

I had a surprisingly good day today.

I didn’t wake up in a pleasant mood. It was hell pulling myself out of bed. But school was less painful today than yesterday. I managed to pay some attention in German. Admittedly, I embarrassed myself by not being able to find page 75 in our textbook. But, you know, I got the question right once I found it. I can read German questions pretty well, but I don’t seem to be able to listen to them. They just don’t process and I can’t figure out why.

Maybe the reason I have so many problems processing questions is that I have some slight autistic tendencies. Now, I’m not full blown autistic or anything. But I do have a cousin who is full blown autistic, and I guess certain traits run in families. Though I’m a fairly decent English student, I do often misinterpret things that people say to me. And I was definitely slow picking up on social cues growing up. I also have an aversion to touch and eye contact; I’m a big believer in personal space. I also pace quite a bit and am completely incapable of sitting still. Not to mention the fact that I loathe tight or scratchy clothing to the point that I can’t stand watches or bracelets or necklaces or what have you. Don’t get me started on my obsessive thought patterns. God, I’m weird, come to think of it.

But back to German, I got an A- on our first exam. I was a little disappointed at first because I really wanted an A. But I was right on the line, and I see no reason to freak over one missed question. Seriously, though I often beat myself over stuff like that, there’s no reason to complain because I got a high A- on my first exam in a subject that doesn’t come to me easily. I’m pretty happy, though I guess I’m going to have to apply myself a little more. I hate having to work for grades.

I’m not working very hard in my History of Early Christianity course. I got an extension on my first term paper today, just because I felt lazy. Everybody else seemed to be doing it and I had no desire to sit up late on a Wednesday night making myself sick trying to write a last minute paper when I could get an extra weekend to write it with no penalty whatsoever. Look for me to complain about this decision Sunday night, when I’m sitting up all night making myself sick trying to write a last minute paper.

I’m sort of nervous because a friend of mine wrote me an email about how he/she has something serious to talk to me about and he/she doesn’t trust anyone else with the information. I hope it’s nothing crazy like he/she’s grown a superfluous testicle or something. I’m always expecting some simple problem like “I lost my job and I’m going to have to quit school and sell my children for drug money.” But instead of something all bad ass like that, my friends always have problems involving superfluous testicles.

Rory just made me take the Implicit Attitude Test. Apparently, I have a moderate preference toward white people, no bias in gender issues and I prefer old age over youth. Most Americans prefer white people over black, associate males with science and women with liberal arts, and associate youth with goodness and old age with negativity. So, I beat the odds on two out of three, not bad.

So I have to leave for school in like five minutes and I'm not ready at all, but I wanted to get this blog off first.

Yesterday was a funny day. It was great in the sense that, "woot," I slacked off on my Early Christian History readings really bad, and somehow managed to pull my best discussion grade yet this quarter. I'm not sure that reflects well on my real reading abilities, when I score higher with bs than with my actual observations and reflections. It was bad in the sense that I looked "different" and smelled "fruity." I didn't intend to look different or smell like fruit, but apparently I did because both my mother and my friend April, in unrelated circumstance, related the fact. I don't like different. I like the same. Same is good. Predictible and musty, that's how I like to be remembered!

After class, April, Mike and I were out and about for a while. Pictures from the mall can be found here as soon as I upload them. It was strange sort of. Felt like high school fun again. I'm not used to doing stuff after school. That reflects poorly on my social life, I know.

I'm unhappy. But nothing new there. Maybe I'll be happier in a few hours. As for now, I'm going to have to speed to school to get there anywhere close to on time. ::shrugs::

Sunday, October 13, 2002

Negatory on the food, so I'm back to blogging (and still not writing my paper).

Yeah, so, on to current events. What's new in the world? Bombing in Bali, serial shooting spree, riots in India, war in Iraq...all very cheerful stuff. I'm supposed to be going to Europe this summer, and I was talking to somebody, probably my dad, about terrorism over there and Islamic fundamentalism and Communism and the like.

I don't know if it's because I see it on the news now 24/7 (Yeah, I read that in Valley Girl voice too), but I'm getting a little freaked about world travel and terrorism these days. I wasn't exactly surprised that terrorists attacked America on September 11th. I mean, I didn't predict a date or anything, but I know we're not popular in a lot of the world and especially in the third world. But I miss the comforting American obliviousness to the rest of the planet on our news programs. It isn't as if the problems we see right now are brand new; it's just that we were too busy watching O.J. and the Clinton scandals to have noticed them before. I used to think that self-centeredness was a rotten attitude for us to have, but you know, I used to not be afraid of going to Israel for a visit either.

The problem with the news is that it's sensationalized, and you see it over and over and over and over again. I'm far more likely to be affected personally by a car accident than I am a hijacking or a bombing, but I don't think twice about hopping into my car every day. But I think I'm going to hold off on visiting Israel for a while. I'll probably never see Nepal. India will have to wait too. Hell, I get nervous about Greece and France...

Jiminy, my father won't shut up. I guess I can't justify ignoring family members to write a blog, so you're all spared my ramblings for a while. BAH. Mom's on a cleaning spree. Tonight, I'm so going to vent, just you wait and see! Peace out, girl scouts...

So, first blog. Yay!

I woke up at like 7:30 this morning. That's not crazy unusual or anything, given I fell asleep at like midnight. But I've never been over disposed to getting out of bed, so it's still a bit odd. It's almost noon now, and I've accomplished approximately jack. I have a paper on the Early Christian Church I really ought to be working on, but I've been trolling through blogs instead. This weekend's been different, and I think that's why today's been so stupid and why I don't feel like working on my paper.

Friday night I had hot chocolate with my friend Jody and started plotting our potential (So, it's supposed to be sort of rock solid, but I don't believe it'll come off, I really don't) trip to Europe this summer. The funny thing about Jody is that I...sort of don't really know her that well. We talked some like six years ago, when I was a freshman in high school and she was a senior, but we were never like best pals, so it's sort of crazy that we just up and decided to go off to Europe together. And we're different. Imagine this tall, pretty, Aryan-looking lady in a dress walking into a coffee shop with a short, sort of stereotypically Jewish-looking, rather plump kid dressed in what I like to describe as angry geek wear, together. She's a born again type, my nickname in high school was Satan...you know, it's all Odd Couple-esque. But I like her okay because she doesn't make fun of me for sounding like Cliff from Cheers. Plus, she wants to go to Europe, unlike my other sissy friends.

After hot chocolate (yeah, I hate coffee...I know it's supposed to be all cool to drink it and stuff, but I don't like it, so there), I came home and felt sick. I slept all day Saturday practically, and went to a lousy football game with my father and brother Saturday night. I go to a lot of high school football games, not because I'm a huge fan of them, but because my social life sucks and they're something cheap to do that makes people I care about happy. But last night sucked because I was sick and sort of generally depressed. I was asleep again by midnight, so it feels like Saturday never happened at all. And now it's Sunday and I'm supposed to be attending my school work. But I'm starting a blog instead.

This is very likely to be a boring blog. Even as I write this, I'm considering posting my general distaste for, you know...the world and life as we know it and laundry and the like. But maybe I'll do it in a little while. I'm not a journal kind of person after all. My life's too frigging boring for that. Besides, either my dad, or my brother, or somebody just drove in. And I'm hungry, so maybe I can beg my supper.