this is where time comes to die

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:07:31 GMT

Life is good. Lesbians, drinking, massages and Chicago's summer wonderfulness are lulling me into a life of delicious hedonism, the consequences of which are still to be seen. After two months in the gorgeous mountains of Guatemala, I've succeeded in bringing back a few important things-- three pounds of chocolate (which cost me less than $2), an addiction to fresh fruit, the ability to understand and communicate entirely in Spanish with little difficulty, and an awareness and interest in politics and public health/education. Where I'd been apathetic, cynical, and depressed about how nothing seemed to be going in the right direction in either my life or the world's problems, now I see a bit more of the bigger picture and understand that 1) it is getting better, 2) plenty of people at least care, even if they're not willing or able to really contribute to this change, and 3) just cause things are shitty sometimes, even all the time, that's not a good reason to give up.

So essentially, going to Guatemala cured my depression.

This is what it was supposed to do, and even though there were times of depression while I was there, I started to understand what I have to do to stay out of that hole. Simple things, really. Get up in the morning and do something useful, surround myself with people I love, don't beat myself up over my flaws or others for their flaws, it's better to accept that they exist and deal with them as best I can.

I learned that I have to give myself things to look forward to, books to read and people to see and new experiences.
I learned how to be content by myself, or when outside my comfort zone. How to make myself a comfort zone wherever I am. How to not be afraid of people judging me. How to focus on the world as opposed to myself, and how powerful this makes me feel.

I learned to accept that friends are worthwhile even if you're only friends with them for a year, a week, even an hour.

Since I've been back I've rediscovered my friends here. A few complications of the best kind seem to be unfolding. What I mean by that, for the most part, is that my love life is exactly as complicated and enjoyable as I like it. Objectively speaking, I've abstained from all types of sex with anyone for over three months now, since before I left. In that, my love life is very simple.

In reality though, I've been spending time with a few people and these relationships can't truthfully be called platonic.

- Greg (the long-term cuddle buddy of old) is now dating someone, so our quasi-relationship has come to a close. We hung out a week ago for an afternoon, caught up on each other's lives, but we both recognized that it was probably a very bad idea to have sex (so we didn't, just to be clear). I was thinking I was totally ok with this, having known it was coming for a while. But then near the end of the evening he hugged me and I started getting teary. To be held, by someone who has held you and comforted you and slept with you so many times, after not touching them for months, knowing you're probably never going to cuddle and sleep together ever again-- yeah. I've always seen our relationship as kind of casual, though we've said we love each other once or twice and are close, so this kind of surprised me.

- David and I have been talking on the phone for a couple hours a week since I've been back in Chicago. He's about my oldest and closest friend, or at least someone I tell things I don't tell anyone else (and only the second boy I ever kissed, for what that's worth). Also he's in Cincinnati now instead of Alabama, which makes visits a lot easier. This, our twice a year hookups, is about the closest thing I have to something "real" right now, though I'm not wild about the idea of a long-distance "real" (i.e. exclusive) relationship, and don't think he is either. Going to see him this weekend though, and really looking forward to it. I need sex in my life, and would much rather break my streak of abstinence with him than with some random guy, or with friend-cest.

- still crushing on this one guy here, and that's still in a state of limbo since he's dating one of my friends. I'm not touching that, even though I'm pretty certain he's into me too, and that their relationship isn't going to last much longer. So we give each other *looks* and finagle to be around each other, but always in the presence of his girlfriend / my friend. The more I learn about him, the more I like him and think we'd be great together. But without ruining my friendship with his girlfriend, very little can be done about that now.
Now, the interesting part-- a couple days ago, we'd run into each other (me with my gay friends who were in town for Pride weekend, him and his girl) and made vague plans to hang out later that day. After the Dyke March and a bit of the Taste of Chicago, we text back and forth and decide to meet at her place to, you know, smoke some drugs. Importantly, this is her and me making these plans. The guy and I have never directly contacted each other, I guess by unspoken agreement that that would upset the precarious balance. This time was actually one of the few times it's been just me and them, most of the time other friends are there too.
Then, after an hour or two of hanging out, she wants to play drinking games. Ok, now it's me and her and him, getting tipsy and high and sitting on the floor. Her roommates came back about then though, but I got the feeling that if it'd just been us three for much longer, something would have maybe happened. I don't know, really, but there was a palpable sexual tension in that room. So now what? Is he realizing, and trying to enact, what I'd thought of months ago as the only way he and I could hook up without hurting her (i.e. include her)? And if so, what'll the consequences be if it does happen?

- and lastly, I think one of my roommates is falling for me. It's just me and James there now, since Bianca and Evan are off visiting family and such like. So we're getting to know each other and spending a lot of time together, which happened to a much lesser extent before. He also just broke up with his girlfriend a couple weeks ago. Since then, we've gone for food a few times, gotten drunk together several times, and he keeps wanting to trade massages. Now, these are things I do with other friends, but definitely not every day. Then there's the complication that, after he left for a week to visit family, he hooks up with this one girl who's a friend of ours. I'm like, ok, this simplifies things if he's getting with her, so now I don't have to worry about him falling for me. But no, he doesn't know if they're going to keep going out, she tells me she's been crushing on him for a while, and then there was this one night where we ordered pizza, she came over with a bottle of Jack, a truly ridiculous game of Scrabble ensued, and then suddenly we're sitting on the floor playing Never Have I Ever and he kisses her, then she kisses me, and then he kisses me. I like them both a lot, but opted out of accompanying them to bed at the end of the night. Roommate-cest is high on my list of things to not do, and I'd much rather be friends with both of them than hook up. Kissing is one thing, it doesn't seem to complicate things too much in the way that sex does.

He invited me to the Museum of Contemporary Art yesterday, free Tuesdays and all, and then we bought wine and cooked dinner and watched late night shows. About midnight he wants to give me a massage. Now, with most guys I would interpret that as "I want you to take your shirt off and let me touch you all over, and then we'll fuck, sound good?" But James isn't that kind of guy, we've traded massages before, and I was sure he wouldn't try anything that I didn't seem to want. Or at least, I was sure he'd be cool with it even if he did try something and I declined.

This massage was really wonderful though-- about the best massage I've ever had, even counting professional ones. Maybe it was the wine, but it definitely felt amazing. He's learning very quickly how to give a great massage. There were a couple moments when I was worried, but his hands never strayed out of bounds. I don't know, I guess it was about the most sensual massage I've ever had with someone I'm not in a relationship with. Afterwards we just talked for a bit and went to sleep in our respective rooms, he didn't try to kiss me again or anything.

So my problem here is that I like him and enjoy spending time with him, but don't want this to go any further. Can I keep trading massages with him without going into dangerous territory? Is that being a tease? Am I putting our friendship at risk just because I want to keep getting really good massages? Argh.

In other news, I'm in a bit of a precarious financial state as a result of not working for two months, but other than that things are going along swimmingly.

Taking Civ this summer, which is intense but very stimulating. It's a lot different than either spanish classes in Guatemala, or the sciencey stuff I usually do here. This is real, Herodotus and Thucydides and Cicero and Aristotle, taught by a Dean who edited the one of the texts we're using. They're teaching us how to be lawyers and senators and presidents of banks, by showing us how people have governed in the past and how well that worked for them. I have a 7-8 page midterm paper due Monday, and I've chosen the topic:

"In what sense did Socrates transcend the bounds of the Greek city-state tradition, and to what extent did he remain a creature of that tradition?"

It's an intimidating topic, even though it seems the simplest one on the list. I have to understand what it meant to be an Athenian citizen, analyze the Apology and Crito, and make this sweeping and highly presumptuous statement. This is a lot different than "Ok, cut open this flatworm and tell if it's a mutant or not," and "(en espanol) This movie was about Juarez, Mexico. It starred Jennifer Lopez. She plays a reporter." This is Greeks slaughtering each other over land and money and freedom, forming the first democracy and watching it crumble. This is Dean Boyer expecting us to read 200 pages every day, understand them, and see the similarities between Polybius' histories (which we read) and Toqueville's "Democracy in America" (which we didn't, but one student pulled this comparison out of his ~~ass~~ past knowledge readily enough). Ah, U of C at it's greatest.

more than you ever wanted to know about Guatemala

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:00:58 GMT

The short version: 332 years after the Mayans were massacred by Spanish conquistadors, the U.S. helps overthrow the democratically elected government, implementing a military regime. We continued supporting this military government financially and politically for decades. Over 200,000 people died during the civil war that lasted 36 years, ending in 1996. Entire Mayan villages were massacred by government troops, including infants, and buried in mass graves. Widespread gang rape, torture, and mutilation, portrayal of the indiginous Mayans (over 60% of the population *today*, after all this) as subhuman...

Did you know about any of this? Why is this not taught in schools alongside the Vietnam War and the Holocaust?

Oh, right. Because the U.S. is the bad guy here.

1523-24 - Spanish adventurer Pedro de Alvarado defeats the indigenous Maya and turns Guatemala into a Spanish colony.

1941 - Guatemala declares war on the Axis powers.

1944 - Juan Jose Arevalo becomes president following the overthrow of Ubico and introduces social-democratic reforms, including setting up a social security system and redistributing land to landless peasants.

Efrain Rios Montt era saw some of the war's worst episodes

Born in 1926

1982: Led military coup

2003: Unsuccessful bid for presidency

2003: Guatemala general beaten in poll

1951 - Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman becomes president, continuing Arevalo's reforms.

1954 - Land reform stops with the accession to power of Colonel Carlos Castillo in a coup backed by the US and prompted by Arbenz's nationalisation of plantations of the United Fruit Company.

Indians make up about 60% of Guatemala's population

2004: Maya culture ahead of its time

2003: Drought triggered Mayan demise

BBC History: Fall of the Mayan civilisation

1998 - Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi, a human rights campaigner, murdered [beaten to death with a concrete block after unearthing evidence that the military massacred thousands of civilians during the civil war. His murderers were never punished]

1999 - UN-backed commission says security forces were behind 93% of all human rights atrocities committed during the civil war, which claimed 200,000 lives, and that senior officials had overseen 626 massacres in Maya villages.

2000 - Alfonso Portillo sworn in as president after winning elections in 1999.

2001 December - President Portillo pays $1.8 millon in compensation to the families of 226 men, women and children killed by soldiers and paramilitaries in the northern village of Las Dos Erres in 1982.

2006 July - A Spanish judge issues a warrant for the arrest of former military leader Efrain Rios Montt and other former officials over atrocities committed during the civil war.

2007 May - Guatemala ratifies an international adoption treaty, committing to make sure babies aren't bought or stolen.

2007 July - Amnesty International urges the government to ratify the CICIG as a first step towards tackling the culture of impunity it says has contributed to Guatemala's soaring murder rate.

2007 August - International election monitors say they are worried about the high murder rate among political candidates and activists in the run-up to the 9 September polls.

2007 November - Alvaro Colom of the center-left National Unity of Hope Party wins presidential elections with nearly 53 percent of the vote.

selectively copy-pasted from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1215811.stm

Still proud to be an American, we do a lot of great things, but we really need to stop torturing and massacring and being complacent or even supportive of genocide. Just a thought.

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:59:41 GMT

So, I'm going to Guatemala in two weeks.
For six weeks.
There's medical Spanish classes involved, and maybe being a gofer in a rural clinic. And it only costs $150/week to do the program and they hook you up with a family who feeds you.

Did you know that Telemundo has the exact freaking same shit as English TV?

Allstate. Estas en buenas manos.
La nueva familia Saturn.
Pretty blonde girls getting cancer.
Yelling game shows with absurdly pretty people.
Soap operas, their telenovelas.
Investsigaciones politicas.
Mas al volver! Mas a las cinco en TeleMUNDo!
Jared from Subway.
McDonald's: me encanta.

Maybe the news has a slightly more international tendency towards south America, while we're more obsessed with Western Europe. But that's about it. Se puede usar su Visa Checkcard en la supermercada, la gasolineria...

Llame ahora para dinero rapido!

Moments when I've felt alive

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:07:01 GMT

There was one class, Comp Lit II I think, with Dr. Busse.

She asked for someone to read Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess" aloud. If you don't know it, it's a Duke telling his guest about a painting of his last duchess. A painting which he keeps curtained so only he sees it, and presumably he had her killed. It's subtle in that "A Modest Proposal" kind of way, horrifying in a

After the first part, I paused, but she didn't ask for another reader, so I continued.

When it was done, there was a couple seconds of silence, and then Dr. Busse said:

"Thank you, Laura. That was beautiful."

for your amusement, footless clowns and Pachelbel

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:07:21 GMT

a nice, happy clown cake for your kid's birthday.

This was in mock_the_stupid, where people offered such in depth analyses as:
"His feet are chopped off. It even looks like blood with the red there"
"Kinda looks like he's playing with himself too... just me, then?"

And then there's a rant about Pachelbel:

the one where I yell "FORESKIN" across a crowded room

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:22:17 GMT

Ecology/Evolution lecture.
somewhere around 150 students, TAs, profs
Just been talking about inheritable traits, and why Lamarckian stuff doesn't work. Cutting off rats' tails doesn't result in future generations of rats with no tails, or even shorter ones.

The question: "So, similarly, what have we been cutting off humans for generations that hasn't resulted in a phenotypic change?"

my hand goes up.
my brain engages, and contributes an exceedingly useful oh, shit.
the prof points to me, all the way in the back, "Yes, you?"
150 eyes turn to me

-cough- "Foreskin?"

"Sorry, what?"

"FORESKIN!"

"Yes, exactly!"

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 04:12:40 GMT

Holy fuck!

I just did Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine and got 430,000 points! I beat my old record by 75,000 points! I had a 200 note streak! I got the crazy ones at the end that are really close together!!

Oh sweet mother of God this is an addiction.

This is bad, but I stopped taking my happy pills. As long as I keep my life filled with people and books and caffeine and food, things are good. Well, they're manic. I cleaned my freaking room which was filled with stuff that hadn't been really put away all quarter, when I dumped my crap in here so James could move back into his/my room.

For a couple days though, I slept. Like, Saturday and Sunday, and last Sunday. But I'm not terribly behind in anything and things are going well.

I'm going to Guatemala for 6 weeks in March/April. This is that thing that I'm going to do Spring quarter, that I've talked about a lot but just now actually set up. This one program only costs $150/week inclusive for 20 hours of spanish (medical Spanish! exactly whaT I need to know for what I want to do with my life!), living with a familiy and meals and laundry and computer access. Volunteer in a clinic in the afternoon for kids with neurological disorders. Again, exactly what I need to do to prepare me for my career as a Dr. Paul Farmer wannabe. That book, Mountains beyond Mountains, if nothing else (and there was much else) it taught me the extreme importance of learning Spanish. He also learned French and the creole patois that Haitians speak, but then again he sleeps 5 hours a night and basically has done everything anyonen could ever hope to do in one or a hundred lifetimes.

Mmm, I just love sleep though. And when the kitties are nestled all snug around my legs and my dreams are so nice, it's wonderful just to go back to sleep. When you sleep for, say, 15 hours though, it's not really sleep-- you doze, you daydream, you roll over and can really control your dreams in a way that REM sleep doesn't do.

aaaaaand, there's another gypsy dance that was hella fun a couple weeks ago. V-day, another one. Loft/bar/stage/people's home kinda place with a gallery and one too few bathrooms, but wonderful people and I haven't seen mostly white people dance like that in forever.

Rugby guy and I are no more, whether we were anthing in a the first place. The one date was great, two months ago, and then the messaging and a few calls, but then Facebook said he's in a relationship and upon asking, it's a "new development" and so that's that. I haven't had to run into him yet. But that'll be ok, these things happen. Was kind of excited for a while, will get over it.

My new favorite movies. Let me show you them.

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:26:46 GMT

Me, You, and Everyone We Know
-- This movie is surreal. Interconnected lives, incredibly believable characters. Made me really happy.

Coffee and Cigarettes
-- Iggy Pop, Alfred Molina, Cate Blanchett, Jack and Meg White, a million others. there's one thing that I know, it's drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and talking talking talking

The Source
-- about the Beat movement, has Johnny Depp and Alan Ginsberg and a million other people.

Bukowski
-- About good old Chuck, who's becoming one of my favorite poets.
The luck of the fool is inviolate

Talk to Her
-- Pedro Almodovar. Girl in coma, good times.

lesbian kitties!

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:16:45 GMT

We have two cats.
Both are female.
One is in heat.

Neither of them are spayed (not my cats really, or they would be). They're never outside, so it's not a pressing issue, but I feel really sorry for Matilda. She goes around the apartment basically screaming "FUCK ME!" and there just aren't any tomcats around to satisfy her.

Thing is,
I keep catching them lezing out hardcore-- like Matilda's on the floor writhing around in her "I'm so sexy" mode, making these awful arrrrAAAAWWRRRLLLL noises, and then Penny comes and jumps on her. She gets on Matilda and bites her neck, which she seems to like. I caught them freaking rounding 3rd the other night. People were over. It felt kinda wrong watching one girl cat licking another girl cat's ass.

candidate for "worst combination ever"

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:58:32 GMT

Just when I thought "Beer is not a mixer" had reached every last head-in-the-sand person in the world, I come across Chelada.

Chelada, dear friends, contains Budweiser and Clamato.
Clamato is "for people who thought V8 just didn't taste clammy enough" -someguy's blog

Beer + tomato juice + clams = party in my mouth, yo. The worst party ever-- everybody stays sober, develops food poisoning, and somehow still ends up with scurvey.

ballistic squirrels!!!!!!!!

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:12:37 GMT

Loving my classes:

Biological Psychology
Cellular Neuroscience
Spanish 103
Ecology & Evolution

Biopsych:
"Everything I'm going to tell you is a lie. Everything is a gross overgeneralization, and there are more instances in which these statements are false than when they're true. But this is the only way it's going to make any sense at all."
I really like this statement. "A brain looks like this diagram" is in fact a lie-- it's not color coded, it's not neat, it's not outside the body, and ALL BRAINS ARE DIFFERENT. It's like saying "A city looks like this" and drawing the skyline of NYC. That is one viewpoint of one city at one point in time-- so yes, it's true in some sense, but it's a lie for every viewpoint of every city at every point in time OTHER than this one. The brain diagram is even more of a lie, since it's an artist's impression of what the "average" brain looks like. The average brain doesn't even exist.

Neuroscience:
"Cardiac glycosides are these things that interfere with your sodium/potassium ATPase system. You find them in foxglove, this beautiful flower. Just don't eat it. I don't recommend going around eating flowers in general, but this one especially. We have some in our backyard actually, along with a few other poisonous plants. It's ok because we don't have any kids in the house, and well I don't eat them.
The squirrels DO eat them, though. Then they go fucking ballistic and destroy all the other plants. Maybe we should get rid of them, come to think of it."

"So there's this internship. Pays something like 3 grand, and to be eligible for it you have to be..." -looks down at the sheet- "breathing." sweet.

In other news,
went to a couple parties last weekend. One was great-- I was a hit, made new friends, kissed a girl, felt hot. The other-- I felt awkward. I wish it were socially acceptable to just watch people at parties. IT was entertaining, a "thrift store chic" theme. Overwhelming amount of noise and people and color.

Jesse from Portland was in Chi-town Sunday, and I played tour guide. Hit a blues club or two, good times. I like that he had to draw a diagram when I asked him about his romantic situation.

It is fucking cold. The high tomorrow is supposed to be 9 degrees F.

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:42:56 GMT

Arnold Schwarzenegger has a $14 billion budget deficit.
What does he want to do?
Take the money from:
- children on welfare
- closing state parks
- giving schools 10% less money

aaaahhhhhhhHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! what is wrong with this picture?!?
I'm all for balancing the budget, but this is about the worst plan for long-term success I can think of. He does want to release some nonviolent prisoners early, which is a great idea. But education? how does that make any sense at all?

words are sexy

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 02:25:38 GMT

Top Scoring Bingos
Word Score Played By
SeQUOIAs 200 Scott Farris-White
FACETIOUS 200 Thomas William Clement
ABNORMITY 200 Garreth Jones
BEZIQUES 200 Thomas William Clement
TERMINOLOGIES 200 Garreth Jones
ROMANTIC 200 Gavin McKercher
GENERALISATIONS 200 Garreth Jones
FABULOUS 200 ScrabbleJunkie McGee
ASHPLANT 200 Private
BLITzKRIEG 200 Mark Yang

Super Bingos
Word Score Played By
DESHYPOTHEQUIEZ 1797 Augustin De Vitry
OXYPHENBUTAZONE 1778 Louise Kidd
OXYPHENBUTAZONE 1778 Stephen James Clement
OXYPHENBUTAZONE 1778 Thomas William Clement
OXYPHENBUTAZONE 1778 Private
OXYPHENBUTAZONE 1778 Private
OXYPHENBUTAZONE 1778 Pete Lux
OXYPHENBUTAZONE 1778 Samuel Chenoweth
OXYPHENBUTAZONE 1778 Karlena Tomc-Barbosa
OXYPHENBUTAZONE 1778 Benjamin Gummer

Now, I do have some scrabble fu. The English language and word puzzles are decidedly my bitches.
I have a big vocabulary and love to whip it out.
NOTE:
This does NOT that I bust out words like "obfuscate" in daily life--I don't need to make people feel dumb to feel smart myself, and think it's just silly to use words that the person/s you're talking to won't understand when your goal is to be understood. Also, most people hate having to have things explained to them in the middle of a conversation (it just interrupts the flow, you know?). Even in an academic paper, you're trying to get a point across to whoever's reading or grading it. It doesn't help this goal if you say "The protagonist is as doomed to fail as an zygote with a faulty JAK/STAT* pathway" in a Lit paper. Even though it may be a perfectly valid analogy, because really understanding the what those terms mean takes literally years of bio classes, this would be really dumb thing to write. I also know perfectly well when to use whom or who, but refuse to use the word whom outside academia because it sounds really fucking pretentious. And I'm DAMN sure not going to correct people's grammar in a conversation.

To keep the sex analogy going, if you have a gigantic schlong, do you walk around with it hanging out and masturbate in public? No. You save it for situations when calling attention to it would be appropriate and appreciated, unless you yourself are also just a huge dick.

My big vocabulary, just like my addiction to and skill at puzzles in general but especially word puzzles, comes out when it is needed.

But in Scrabble, the goal is simple: Get Points. The more, the better.
It does not matter whether you know what the words mean, only that you know whether or not they are words. Knowing that ZA is a word got me 74 points the other day (Z on a double letter, used in ZA and ZONES simultaneously, one of them double worded. Bitch. [Scrabble is my bitch, to be clear, not you or any actual person]). So all the stops are out, I'm not offending anybody even if I do pwn them real hard.

I think my best word was QUARTZES on a triple word, a hundred some odd points.

No one in the last... several years has beaten me at Scrabble. **

**I think. To the best of my recollection. And I'm not counting two games:
1. "speed Scrabble" with Nate, in which we each had a total of 5 minutes to use the entire game, which I lost by less than five points.

2. When Sam and Nate and Andrew and I were playing, and fifteen minutes into the game John-the-rugby-guy arrived. Essentially our first date-thing. He sits *right* next to me, third person on the couch, as in our thighs keep touching. Listening to his stories and trying not to say irreparably stupid things were my priorities then, and I was playing words like RAIN and BAD, just flat out no looking for doubles, no multiple words at once, fucking 8 point words because I was spending all of 30 seconds contemplating each turn. So yes, I came in dead last, but come on.

What I need to do now, and by need I mean want, is actually study the game instead of just reading lotsa books and playing a couple times a month. Like, learn ALL the two-letter words, not depend on just the two or three Q¬U words I know, play with people who are better than me. I'm already playing with UofC students, and Nate is a Lit major and is into Scrabble, but until Scrabulous came around I couldn't find anyone better than me without like entering competitions or something. But now.... dear lord, OXYPHENBUTAZONE for almost two thousand points in one turn???!! DESHYPOTHEQUIEZ???? and in the dozens of games I've played (used to be something my family did together. When I had a family. No, that's way too melodramatic, most of my family is alive and well even if they all live alone and a thousand miles apart. When we were living together, I'll say.) in dozens of games, I've used all 7 letters all of twice. REGATTAS today though, ftw! I have a long way to go before I can really start bragging.

*JAnus Kinases / Signal Transducers and Activators of Transcription, if anyone cares.

Human Slinky!

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 07:20:31 GMT

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:00:40 GMT

I <3 Uncle John-- the note he put in with his Christmas gifts to us is just pure gold:

Dear Jeff,
As you can see, I picked these out in the correct sizes and had them personalized. [the gifts for me and Charlotte were two $50 postal money orders] Note the festive packaging [a UPS envelope].
Hope they contribute to some relaxing Christmas or New Year's frivolity.

Merry Christmas and hour(s) of family time!
Love,
John

poverty and healthcare rant

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 03:22:51 GMT

I definitely don't believe in "From each according to his ability; from each according to his needs." That idea would lead to everyone competing to be seen as the neediest and most unproductive. If you know that every completed task will just result in another one assigned, while a neglected task will result in free time, where's the incentive to work? Welfare works in the same way-- in the absence of a desire to earn what you are given, you get quotes like:

"What, [16-yearold son]? You got a job?!? Don't you go fucking up my welfare!!" (true quote)

These people ruin things for those who are actually in need of assistance through no fault of their own. Hard workers get laid off, scapegoats are needed, bosses' sons get the job, etc. Bankruptcy ruins your credit for a decade. Things are actually a lot more expensive for the poorest people. Example:

Joe earns $60 a day as a waiter. He has no friends or family, and no car. Where does he live?
A. a $300/month apartment
B. a $30/night motel (= $900/month)

Answer: B
Because Joe doesn't have $300. He certainly doesn't have first and last month's rent and a security deposit, or any credit. He does have $30/day.

Joe could spend $50/month on rice and beans, cooking them himself. But he doesn't, he spends $5/day eating at the restaurant he works at, ($150/month) because his motel room doesn't have a kitchen.

If Joe had a car, and it was a piece of shit and broke, and the repairs cost $300 to keep it running for another month, he would pay that because getting a "new" car costs $1000. Or he would just not be able to fix it, and lose his job for lack of a way to work.

And so on, with every aspect of Joe's life. He's lucky though, at least he has a job, and no kids or other dependents. Ever try to get a job when you smell like you live on the streets? And he doesn't drink or smoke or do drugs, though the miserable lifestyle of poverty results in these expensive habits for many if not most poor people. As it is he could theoretically save $10/day for a month and be able to afford a shitty apartment.

What happens when they find out that Joe has a heart condition because the cheeseburger costs $5 and the salad costs $7 where he works, so that's what he eats?

Or a simpler problem, what happens when he breaks his leg falling down stairs?
First of all, he can no longer work.
He doesn't have the option to just live with his affliction, as many poor people do. A broken leg will indeed kill you if not treated, or at least leave you crippled for life. He goes into debt, ensuring that he will probably be poor for the next several years. And you wonder why homeless people play the lottery.

Children do poorly in school for lack of school supplies, or because they're expected to babysit their younger siblings while their mom works her second job in the evenings. They don't go on field trips because they cost $10. They don't have friends because they can't go to movies, or buy food at the mall, or because they wear used clothes.

The beauty of our system is that libraries are free, and schools are free (except for supplies, time, etc.). Doing well in school allows many to go to college for free. Doing well there allows many to get good jobs.

See, the thing is, I was lucky. And it's stupid things that resulted in me being here, at a computer, with a firm grasp on the English language, studying at a great school. Even if I am forty grand in debt. Like, the fact that I chose to read all the time since I had no friends, instead of getting into trouble. The fact that my mom worked at a library, though she did spend several years working shitty jobs even with her degree. Like, answering calls at the Water Board. Imagine being cursed at hundreds of times a day by people whose water was shut off because they didn't pay the bill. I won't even go into the frustration my dad is still going through.

But still-- I didn't take two or three AP tests I could have aced, because they each cost $82. And the only reason I'm at UofC is because ASMS was free. Oh, and owning a computer before my sophomore year of college would've been nice. Visiting colleges before choosing one would have been nice. And though working and not having certain things has, I think, given me valuable perspective, it's still the case that my friends who don't have to work during college tend to do better than those who do. An extra 15 hours a week goes a long way, not to mention the stress that comes with worrying about money all the time.

I remember this one girl, Allison, telling me "My parents are paying for you to go to college." I wanted to punch her. "Why should my parents be punished for working hard and saving money?" Because why would you get a discount on something you can afford to pay for? Why should the limited amount of financial aid not go to those who need it? Fucking bitch.

She was also the one who thinks people who rent are "stupid" because, obviously, her parents bought her a condo so she won't have to "throw away" money in rent, so everybody should be able to do that. She's one of the ones I'm writing to, though she'll never read this. She's someone who thinks that if you work hard and are intelligent, money automatically falls into your lap, and that if you're poor you don't deserve an education. Or Jana from asms who thinks her $100,000/year family is "lower middle class." I don't think rich people are bad, just that many of them have this Social Darwinism thing going on. When people adopt whatever philosophy serves to justify their luxuries, when people convince themselves that they *need* and deserve all these luxuries, and yet somehow people who work longer and harder hours need and deserve extremely little, that's what gets to me.

I understand why CEOs and movie stars make millions while much more difficult and valuable jobs like teaching at public schools pay little. The fact is that maybe a dozen people can do what Brad Pitt or Bill Gates do as well as they can, and these talents make millions and billions of dollars for their companies. But they certainly don't work *harder* than teachers or fast-food, factory, or construction workers, and it takes the same amount of food and water and shelter to keep them alive.

-sigh-

We need a system that gives a limited amount of aid to those who need it, and education and healthcare for everyone as much as they need. Those who can afford luxuries should pay this cost. Personally though, I'd just drastically raise the taxes of vacations, luxury cars and boats and houses, fine dining, etc. to raise this money rather than taxing income directly. I don't think jobs that pay less than $10/hour should be taxed at all, since anyone working them would get it refunded at the end of the year anyway. I think Congress shouldn't have the power to vote themselves raises every year while keeping the minimum wage steady for a decade.

Most of all though, I think that instead of the current healthcare system, wherein doctors are either encouraged to cover their asses by ordering bunches of expensive and unnecessary tests, or obliged to spend as little time and money per patient as possible without overtly breaking the Hippocratic Oath. We need a system that's based on results-- that is, healthy patients at the end of the day, both by the patient's satisfaction and by objectively verifiable measures. Hospitals are rated this way, so why aren't insurance companies?

Monetary rewards for losing weight, or staying at your ideal weight, would help.
Subsidies for growing, transporting, and selling healthy foods. Stop advertising candy and sugary cereals to kids, just like we nixed cigarette ads.
And tax breaks for people who volunteer their time to help others. I'd love it if the rich had more contact with the poor, rather than just writing checks, though that's important too.

And for the love of God, fund medical research. As it is, big pharma *has* to charge ungodly prices for their drugs, otherwise how would they pay for years of trial and error and the time of qualified employees? They know they'll go generic within a few years, and you can't expect them to operate at a loss. Healthy citizens are invaluable to the economy. Connecting monetary incentives and the ideal of healthy people will profit everyone in the end, it's just how to start the ball rolling that I don't kow how to do. Politicians can't get elected by promising socialized healthcare at the cost of raising taxes, because the rich are the ones that donate to their campaigns and compose Congress. Hmm.

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:35:29 GMT

Wrap it up, guys. Mobile County is becoming a more and more dangerous place to get laid:

Sexual diseases flourish in Mobile County
Sunday, September 16, 2007
By NADIA M. TAYLOR
Staff Reporter

Last year in Mobile County, 4,629 new cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were reported -- enough instances of the sexually transmitted diseases to account for one out of every 87 people, according to a Press-Register review of state and federal statistics.

That was about three times the rate in New York City and more than twice as high as Washington, D.C.

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:12:23 GMT

What do you think would have happened if native Americans had discovered and implemented a system of writing before European contact?

As in many UChicago tests, there is no singular right answer.
There are only logical, fact-based answers and answers which either fail the factual, logical, or both qualities.

So?

***Obviously, at least to me, this question is a leading question toward the conclusion that the fact that Europeans had a method of permanently etching their views of history in stone, that this fact has altered the course of human history in a significant way. The history that is read is the history that is written, and if an entire race is wiped out by smallpox, that race's history is not written. The fact that I'm writing in English and not Hopi is because of Mr. Gutenberg and gunpowder.

floss, eat your vegetables, say "please," and...

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:30:04 GMT

DON'T DRIVE TIRED.

Everyone knows not to drive drunk. But they don't show you horror videos of what happens when you doze off on the freeway. It's so easy, too. Your mind wanders, as happens when you're staring ahead at yet another mile of trees and dotted white lines, and then you notice your eyelids drooping and just kind of slap yourself, smoke a cigarette, change the radio station, roll down the windows. Five minutes later it happens again, only this time the thing that snapped you back to reality was the thd-d-d-d-d-d of your tires meandering over the reflectors. There isn't a next time because then you never wake up.

Or worse, you do wake up and your car is 3 feet shorter, you have brain damage, and someone else's life is over.

I'm one lucky bitch, by the way. Examples:
1. Trying to drive from Mobile to Birmingham at 3am, I jerked awake at 75 miles per hour about to hit a sign. I swerved, and 5 seconds later I'm sideways and stopped on I-65 a foot from the concrete barrier that separates northbound/southbound traffic. If it hadn't been the ass-crack of dawn, if there had been *anyone* else on the road right then...

2. On the way from Chicago to Minneapolis, there are suddenly flashing lights behind me. Apparently I'm swerving. The cop was understanding, could see that I was just tired and not drunk or stoned, gave me a warning.

The reason I'm writing this though, is that a couple days ago Dad and I drove up to Charlotte, NC to get my dead grandmama's car. Dad'd gotten about 4 hours of sleep the night before because he's been working nights and his clocks are all messed up. On the way back, about 50 miles before Atlanta, it's dark and I'm following him in his car and he starts swerving a little. Then he edges onto the shoulder and isn't correcting himself and I BEEP the horn and he gets back on the road. This happened a couple more times, one of which involved about half a foot between him and a guardrail. I"ve never been so fucking scared in my life.

He's fine, everything's fine, but jesus fucking christ.

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:49:34 GMT

Something I forgot about being a part of everyday life in the South:
Seeing a cockroach and instinctively screaming "Die! Die! Die!" as you smack at it with a shoe.

Something I absolutely love and cherish about my Dad's apartment:
AT NIGHT, IT'S DARK AND QUIET.
Not an orangey-purple sky intermingled with neon white signs-- darkness.
Not sirens, back-up beeps, and traffic-- silence.

aaahhhh.

mind-rapage

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:53:28 GMT

GRE yesterday

740 Quantitative
690 Verbal
humans have to grade my analytical writing, so those are pending.
82nd and 96th percentiles, respectively.
I learned a *bunch* of new words these last few days! <3 words.

I bet I could get these up though...

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 00:34:37 GMT

I played FREEBIRD on HARD and not only lived through it but 92% accurately!

Freebird is such a ridiculously long song. It's rocktastic in ways that very few songs can claim, and and and it's fast and it's just so long! I mean, most songs on the game have maybe 9 sections, something like:
1. Intro
2. Verse 1
#3. Chorus 1
4. Verse 2
5. Chorus 2
6. Bridge
7. Guitar solo
8. Chorus 3
9. End Wankery

Some have more than one guitar solo, and so there's Guitar solo A, B, C... and there's other things like "slide riffs" or an "outro" thrown in sometimes.

Freebird has practically the entire alphabet in solos!
My stats on Freebird tell me I really need to practice Guitar solos J and N. jay and freaking en.

what has the world come to??!

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:33:54 GMT

So I do the whole 21st century getting-movies-in-the-mail-and-billed-monthly thing. It's good stuff, I end up paying $1 per movie all told. The selling point of Blockbuster vs. Netflix was those extra movies you get right then when you return your old DVDs at the actual store. It's great, I just go a few blocks out of my way and get to browse things and then hand them envelopes instead of $$.

Except:
On this dark and cold winter's day, few leaves still clinging to their twigs, visions of the morning's EcoBio final dancing in my head, I ventured forth.

I walked to the video store, aiming for Dirty Harry and the Disney Alice in Wonderland.
They didn't have either.
Not just that they were both checked out. They simply don't carry those films in store.

Ok, I can queue those later. Called Bianca and Evan to see what else they were interested in seeing:
Star Wars (A New Hope), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or Indiana Jones.

They don't carry Star Wars.
Just the new three. W. T. F.?

Out of those five incredibly famous and timeless movies, the only one(s) available was (were) Indiana Jones (Raiders and Last Crusade).

It's like they're not even trying-- I mean, who was it that thought to himself, "Hmm. Star Wars? Nah, gotta make room for Bring it On (Again). Alice in Wonderland, the Disney one that everybody knows and loves? Nah, how about these TWO live-action versions of Alice in Wonderland made in the 80's? Yeah, those'll fly off the shelves."

jesus fucking christ.

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:59:24 GMT

I've always had kind of a cavalier attitude about living here. It's Chicago, you're not really safe anywhere you go, so I just kind of go about my business and it's worked pretty well.

Things just seem to keep getting more violent and closer and closer to where I live. Like that grad student who was killed last week, that's gotten everybody all shaken up-- that was three blocks south of here.
I need a break from cities.

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:41:22 GMT

- He definitely knows of my existence, my name, and remembers things that I've said.
- I got up the balls to friend him on Facebook (i know, omg, how brave).
- He friended me back.
- He's Facebook single and looking for a relationship or dating
- He did musical theater. From the pics he was the lead or close to.
- he's hugging or kissing half the people pictured with him. I like that.
- he's soooo cute. i want him to touch me.

oh, this is so much more fun to think about than finals.

and umm biochem is making sense which scares me.
it's interesting. that scares me more. I haven't been remotely intrigued or not lost by a class with "chemistry" in the name in 3 1/2 years of taking it.

spanish is possibly i hope i hope going to be an A which will be my first A in so goddamn long.

EcoBio I just need to catch up on readings a little, but as a Bio girl I have an advantage over the Eco people-- they get lost in the math, I don't.

Apparently if I want to do anything with ecology or bio I need to learn differential equations, linear algebra, and a LOT more statistics. whodathunkit. at this point though, all we do is set differential equations to zero and solve for the equilibrium values, which is easy enough.

The roommates started cleaning. I swear I saw Bianca both take glasses from the living room to the kitchen AND wash them!!

lastly, I applied to live in this cooperative. Though it took them over a week to decide this, since there were "lots" of applicants, they CHOSE ME!
only thing is, the room that was available is suddenly not, so this just means the next time a room opens up, it'll be offered to me.
I like this place a lot. They have roof access and a backyard and someone cooks dinner every night and there are cats and dogs and good, good people. And they (we?) collectively own the house, so no one's making a profit off our rent. wheeee.
AND THEY HAVE GUITAR HERO 3!!! how did I get to be so lucky?