"Hey look," said the blogger, "I can post mixtapes!"

Edit:  Or not.  Bye, Mixwit, you will be missed.

Oh gee, Thanksgiving.

My extended family is a confusing morass of great-aunts, removed cousins, adoption, marriage, remarriage, re-remarriage, and random unrelated folk tacked onto the edges. The English language needs more specific terms for cousin relationships and chosen-family relationships. There were at least twenty people, maybe twenty one, swarming the house today--we had people eating in the dining room, the den, the living room (which should be called the parlor) and the foyer. I hadn't ever met one of them before today--my grandmother's cousin's daughter's boyfriend's son. It sounds like the route traveled by urban legends.

I don't even really feast fully on Thanksgiving--turkey isn't really good until at least the next day. But my extended family are generally Moravians (instead of Baptists--we're in the Baptist church because of my dad) so there was no long drawn out blessing and giving of thanks, just the short and simple Moravian blessing, said in unison:

Come Lord Jesus, our guest to be,
And bless these gifts bestowed by thee.

Bless our loved ones everywhere
And keep them in thy loving care.

The second verse is even optional. Sometimes when there are enough people who know it, grace is sung:

Be present at our table, Lord,
Be here and everywhere adored.
From thine all-bounteous hand our food
May we receive with gratitude.

It's sung to one of the melodies of the Doxology; not the Old 100th, the other one. In searching on YouTube I've found it sung to the Talis Canon as well.

Obviously, I'm rambling. But I like the communal aspect of the Moravian blessing; which is a lot like the Moravian church in general, the motto of which is:

In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love.


I'll have more to say later; this blog is getting dusty with disuse.

In which the blogger exclaims, "Holy crapsticks! I haven't updated since JULY?"

Well, it's been a tough semester. I had to withdraw from my art class to deal with everything--I was doing really well in that class and I liked it, but it was too much of a time suck to work on art projects with a due date and write FIVE BAJILLION papers too.

Not that the FIVE BAJILLION papers were unexpected, mind you, I'm a senior Literature major taking 12 hours of nothing but Lit classes. And all my professors like to assign research papers within two days of each other.

BUT, I'm taking a Shakespeare class in which our big project is a group performance of a scene from a play, and my group is doing the witches from Macbeth. We're totally pwning the other groups too.

What else deserves mention...

Oh yeah, that whole election thing. Can I just say

WOOOOOO HELL YEAH!

Followed by Prop 8 passed? What a bummer.

And conclude with the anti-Obama people I am Facebook-friends with are racist, sexist, rude, illogical, and unreasonable. I may mention more on that later.

In fact, I probably have a lot more to mention later, but I need to go get some supper and write a paper on the differences in the treatment of women in Genesis and the Gospel of Mark.

School

School has started up again for the year.

I went ahead and ordered my class ring--I will graduate in 09, dammit!

I'm looking at a difficult semester (no easy electives for me, in addition to four upper-level major classes, I have an introductory art class that's notoriously difficult and time-sucking) in which I need to do really well (have to have a grade boost to get into grad school), so wish me luck and don't be offended if I'm not around the blogs much.

The Ballad of Jimmy

My freshman year, I took a Creative Writing class. At one point, we all, as a class, selected six words (some of which ended up being phrases) without knowing what we were going to use them for. It turned out our homework for that evening was to write a sestina with the words: (phrases):

Jesus H. Christ
shafted
Chuck Norris
wobble
mustard
Catholic Boy's School

Mine ended up being about a boy named Jimmy who got in trouble at St. John's Catholic Boy's School, because a priest who looked like Chuck Norris caught him saying "Jesus H. Christ." Oddly enough, another girl in the class wrote about the exact same thing. It wouldn't seem so odd, because there are probably a limited number of coherent stories that can be made up with a group of words like that, if she hadn't picked the name Jimmy for her protagonist.

And if we hadn't come to class on multiple occasions wearing the same outfit, and had not picked the same poem to read to the class when we started the Poetry unit and had to bring in a favorite poem (the poem was "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes)

*snortgiggle*

Oh god.

Look at this.

Look at it NOW.

Oh fer...

By the way, for whom it may concern... by Belle, including this link: Kali Ma.

Y'know, I'm pretty damn monotheistic, but even I have to admit that there are Forces out there that you shouldn't be screwing around with, and Kali is definitely one of them.

Goddess =/= Happy Fluffy Loving Mother Who's Automatically On Our Side.


Oh, and btw, in the link to info about Kali that Belle provides? "She is especially known in her Destroyer aspect, squatting over her dead consort, Shiva, devouring his entrails while her yoni sexually devours his lingam, penis." How much do I love that image? He doesn't penetrate her, oh no, she devours his penis with her vagina. How great is that.

Geez.

I found this through Ren...

And here's my response:





(artwork compliments of The Muffin)

I generally stay out of the Feminist Blog War because it makes my brain hurt. The cartoon in question is a case in point...as are this and this, by the same blogger.

In a post defending the latter comic, the author, Mary Tracy, says:

"I wish I could be a more positive person and use my abilities to help advance the feminist cause by bringing the spotlight to the people who are causing the real damage. I am aware of this, and, for what is worth, you have my word that I will try my best to change this aspect of myself."

Well gee, good job on that changing thing, I guess...

You know, I've seen some pretty nasty shit come from the "sex-pos" side and the "radfem" side...but it seems like more of it comes from the "radfem" side, from where I stand. And it seems to me like a lot of the time, the "radfem" side sticks its fingers in its ears and goes "lalalalaIcan'thearyoustupidwhore" when someone points out that they've said something insensitive, or hurtful, or sexist, or racist, or just downright wrong. And I won't say that the "sex-pos" folks don't do that too...just way less often.

And you know, even though I'm not really involved in all of it...I'm sick of it. Really. Cut it out. Whether or not you have hairy legs or wear makeup, or you hate porn or don't really mind it, or you have a boyfriend or not, doesn't mean you are or are not a feminist...in fact, IT'S NOT THE POINT OF FEMINISM AT ALL.

Women making choices, being in charge of their own lives, not having to be forced to stay at home or cover their faces lest they be stoned, not having to be scared to walk at night lest they be raped, not being trapped in abusive relationships because they can't support themselves, being able to get a good education or have a good job or sleep with someone or not sleep with someone if they want to, is the point.

And you know, if some of those choices include deciding to not watch porn or deciding to be a sex worker, so be it. But those choices are not the be-all-end-all of feminism.

Like my jerry-rigged cartoon says, there are more important things.

Geez.

Updates.

I'm very slowly updating my blogroll and other linkstuffs, so anyone reading should take a look over at the sidebar and see if you find anything interesting (or yourself, for that matter).

In which the blogger once again resorts to YouTube.

Okay, so it's not resorting the way the Mighty Mouse thing was--as in, I feel these things are at least somewhat pertinent. Mostly because I've been thinking a lot about religion and faith, coupled with thoughts from my current US history class about changing perspectives on such (how many Jesuses are there?), and spending time with a friend I hadn't seen in a while in a coffee shop we used to have a Bible study in.

So, well, here:

Iron and Wine with "Sodom, South Georgia":



Sufjan Stevens (I am a hip little shit, aren't I?) with "To Be Alone With You":



And Jars of Clay with "Something Beautiful":



"Something Beautiful" is my me-and-Jesus theme song. Or "Jealous Kind," by the same band, depending.

And a quick-and-dirty poem-thing by yours truly:


The love of you--

Gentle savior, how you wound me.
Did you know your blood
would poison the ground?
Beautiful lover, did you see the wars?

Tell me again how you wept.
Tell me again how the drops of blood made dusty splashes in the garden.
Tell me again how you died.

Teach me again to sing you, I've forgotten the words.

*buuuuuh*

I've found lately that looking at fundamentalist Christian websites, books, videos, practices, etc, makes me feel dirty.

Buuuuuh, get it off me.

I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, I did the purity pledge thing, I went on mission trips. I "witnessed" to my friends (for those not familiar with weird xian jargon, to witness to somebody is to tell them about Jesus in the hopes that they'll decide to convert. Not necessarily as creepy as it sounds). But it never made me feel skeeved out, unclean, or intellectually violated like looking at the Purity Ball or Quiverfull or Mars Hill or what have you stuff does now.

The key difference is probably that my five-point Calvinist and seven-day creationist, yet uber-beloved youth pastor really, truly wanted us to think. Bring your Bibles with you to church, he said. Pray and think about what I'm telling you and what the other preachers and Sunday school teachers are telling you. If you don't agree with us, that's okay.

And sometimes (maybe a lot of the time), I disagreed with him, and that was okay. And when he decided he was wrong about something he had taught us, he told us, and apologized, and told us what he'd learned.

Looking back now, I can say I swallowed a little too much of his more conservative doctrine, but I did so of my own free will (pretty funny for the student of a Calvinist, eh?). And being taught to think about my shit made it, if not easy, at least not near-impossible to change my mind and learn and grow. And not having it shoved down my throat made it possible for me to see the love of the god I believe in, and return that love in my human and imperfect way. I can pretty accurately say that he was probably the biggest influence on what I believe, even if I don't believe in a lot of things he believes in. Here's to you, Mr. Youth Guy.

So feeling like I'm having some nasty, hateful doctrine forced upon me is actually a fairly new sensation, and it's totally grossing me out. Ew ew ew.

Delayed Creep-Out

As seems to be usual, I am behind. I just found out about Purity Balls.

Oh god, the creepy. The middle-aged dads, the dressed-up teenage girls, the vows (someone please tell the author of the vows that "cover" is a word for animal sex), the ring exchange...creepy creepy creepy.

Unfortunately, the video that seems to have sparked the discussion in 2006 has disappeared into the ether waves, but I rounded up some other pertinent links:

Would you pledge your virginity to your father? (Glamour magazine)

Purity Ball (short documentary following a father and daughter)

Hey Little Girl... (thoughtful vlog about the Balls)

Serious ew (belledame on the subject of creepy controlling sexuality, Purity Balls included)

Purity and Danger (Queen Emily on the dangers of daughters reserving their sexuality for their fathers)

*shudder*

I took an abstinence pledge in February 2002, which would have made me about 15, through the True Love Waits program.

I even got the ring, see:















I still have it--it doesn't fit anymore due to me inexplicably losing a ring size. I still wear a ring in it's place though, because it would feel seriously weird to not have one (and I need balance for the rings on the other hand).

But this whole virginity thing is wearing kind of thin. Though I was interested in boys when I made that pledge, it was basically the same sort of interest I'd felt since I was about five. This whole virginity thing seemed clear cut and easy, to a young girl who found the idea of kissing with tongue distasteful (ew, slobber).

And now, I'm old enough to do anything but rent a car, basically, and in a good relationship with a boy I love and trust and desire. And if I decide to marry this kid, it will be, oh, five years? of waiting before we're both done enough with school to be able to move to the same city on a more or less permanent basis and get our shit straight so we can get married. And five years of horny youth is a long time.

And, beyond that, I'm pretty much positive that it will be difficult for me to not clutch my "purity" with such a tight fist once I'm married. One gets used to the idea that Sex Is Bad.

(Note, in the Glamour article, one girl says she worries that she might disappoint her husband by not being pleasured by his fucking. Poor kid, won't even allow herself to worry about her own pleasure except for how it might displease her owner.)

I know a number of people who would be appalled at me not upholding abstinence-until-marriage as wonderful and Godly and something everyone should do. But neither they nor my father owns me, and they don't get to say what I believe anymore.

Before this post falls apart utterly (I have a headache forming and I'm tired), I would like to say that my parents didn't push me into the True Love Waits thing at all. In fact, I recall my mom seeming a bit reluctant to buy me that ring. I found that odd but didn't think about it at the time; I now figure it's because they knew it was kind of a dumb idea.

Perhaps "homemaker" is a better word than "housewife" or "stay at home mom"...

-11 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

Hah. Letting my bra strap show totally did me in. How fucking nitpicky is this test? "Wears red nail polish"? "Seams on stockings often crooked"?

67 As a 1930s husband, I am Superior Take the test!

A much shorter and easier test, indeed. Were all 1930s husbands complete wifebeating louts, that I am so superior?

...actually, considering what I've heard from my family, that's entirely likely.

In trying to post more often, the author resorts to YouTube.

111 Words (possibly a start to something more)

A sweet pretty young thing, dark of hair, blue of eye, walks through the woods in her oldest jeans and hoodie. She pauses, lifts her camera, adjusts the lens with liquid wrists, and snaps a photograph, a beam of light slanting through the tall dark pines. Busied with her hobby, she does not shudder at the puddles of shadow at her feet, the rough and unfriendly trees, the roots terracing the path into unfamiliar steps. She only pauses and records them, walks a few steps on, pauses again. She loses herself in her gentle work, eyes wide, lips parted, breathing quietly.

She does not realize that she has lost the path.

*snicker*

so...

I am having SERIOUS issues in my personal life right now.

Concentration = nil.

And I'm totally in the wrong, too.

Which makes it worse, because there's no one to look at and say "You did this to me! You BITCH!" except me.

oh btw

I should have noticed this before now, but...




buy harry potter toys


Yay! I love the way she writes.

It's a little bit Spacetalk, a little bit poetry slam, and a whole lotta raw cool.

And horses and fluffy kitties and one very big dog.

and oh, another btw: the font of the sparkly stuff is called "Space Toaster." I don't know why it's a toaster.

Fear, Taboo, and Kink

Upon reading this post and the following comment discussion over at my web doppelganger's--that is, Amber's--I got into a discussion with a friend, we'll call him Alcée, about the meaning of the word "kink". The discussion blended into a discussion of what is "normal" and whether there are any constants from society to society, when we eventually decided that we'd never come to an agreement on a point and moved on.

Now, keep in mind, neither of us are experts on kink--far from it. But the closest anyone seems to get to a real definition is, as he said "something that's different from the norm, [sexually]." The question then became, but what is normal? Move from society to society, or even subgroup to subgroup within a society, and the rules change. Christian devotees of Domestic Discipline wouldn't say spanking your wife for disobeying the rules and then having sex with her is kinky--it's the Lord's will for a husband to rule his wife. My Christian mother would say heck yes, that's kinky*. Some would say using a blindfold and a feather is kinky, others would say oh gee, how vanilla.

So. Societal norms. Alcée says there are no constants from society to society; like the good once-upon-a-time student of society I am, I say there are three things that are taboo in all societies:

1. Murder within the group. (Thou shalt not kill--except the Phillistines)
2. Theft within the group. (Thou shalt not steal--except from the enemies of the Lord)
3. Incest. (Honor thy father and mother, but not like that!)

He of course took issue with this. There are times when it is societally acceptable to kill a member of one's group, he says.

I say sure, but the thing is, those who are acceptable to kill have in some way placed themselves outside of society already. Within fundamentalist Muslim communities, it's okay to kill a woman who had premarital sex because by breaking the rules she put herself outside of the community. She broke the rules, she pays the price. Within our society it's okay to sentence a man to death by lethal injection who murdered his buddy who fucked his wife because by breaking the murder taboo, he stepped over the line. He broke the rules, he pays the price.**

Incest, on the other hand, is pretty definitely forbidden but the definition varies. Is it taboo to sleep with your stepbrother? Can you marry your cousin? How about your uncle? Your mom? In our society most of these are taboo (depending on what state you live in) but in others, some would be, others not. The taboo on some act labelled incest, then, is constant. Would, then, some sort of real or play union with a verboten relative be "kinky" across the board?

Enough with the broad, societal view of kink. As Toby Keith said, I wanna talk about me!

My personal definition of kink would involve fear. The things that could be considered "kinky" that I like (in practice or in theory) fly in the face of things I fear.

I'm claustrophobic, so tie me up.
I fear pain, so whip me till I bruise.
I'm scared of heights, so suspend me from the ceiling.
I'm desperately afraid of being raped, so take me by force.

Which reminded me of a link Alcée sent me earlier today, and which I used in a vaguely scientific way to explain to him how fear is related to arousal:

Flow of potassium ions in brain cells is key to sexual arousal

The interesting thing here not being the potassium, per se, but the norepinephrine. If I remember correctly, norepinephrine is released in the brain as a response to epinephrine, commonly known as adrenalin.

The fight or flight response.

The pounding heart, the panting breath, the dilated pupils, the sweat.

The confusion of one type of physical arousal with another.

I'm also not a biologist, so don't jump on my ass for getting this connection wrong. It certainly makes sense to me.


*The word "kinky" is related in my memory to a moment when the fact that my mom is not, in fact, the Blessed Virgin was hit home. We were watching Trading Spaces, and the design of one of the rooms, a bedroom, focused around a bed that the couple had been given as a sort of bizarre wedding present; it had been handed down through several pairs of newlyweds in their family. It was a large canopy bed made of clear acrylic (like a stripper's platforms) which was bad enough, but towards the end of the show we simultaneously noticed that the acrylic canopy was lined with mirrors. We looked at each other and said, in unison, "wow, that's...kinky." Keep in mind that I had pretty much never talked about sex with my mom before so the fact that she knew the word and could recognize it when she saw it was a shock to my tender teenaged sensibilities.

**This is not to say that either capital punishment or honor killing is right by my own moral compass, only that it is generally accepted in that particular society.

I am a horrible blogger.

I keep thinking of these interesting things to write about...and then I think, someone's probably already said it, and said it better than me, and it's not like I matter much anyway.

So I talk myself out of writing anything of much importance.

Hopefully later in the summer I'll be able to jump this silly ditch and start actually writing in this thing.

Oh God.

I'm cleaning my room.

The horror, the horror!

(Heart of Darkness got put in the "get rid of" pile...)

Having moved back home for another summer, it dawns on me that I never really unpacked last summer. And I haven't cleaned my closet in a few years--actually, that's pretty good, for me. Previous to that I hadn't cleaned my closet since we moved to this house. When I was ten.

I am realizing more and more that hoarding is one of my most troublesome neuroses. I can't get rid of the September 2000 issue of Allure! I might need it someday! For...collage! Yeah, that's it, for collage materials! Never mind that I have twenty other issues and they're all the same!

(Fashion magazines are my vice of choice. That and swearing.)

And don't even get me started on the stuffed animals *hangs head in shame* I identify far too strongly with cute and fluffy inanimate objects. I feel guilty enough about keeping the majority of them in the closet, much less entertaining the idea of giving them away. And Wulfy doesn't help, either, as he has a similar soft spot for cute-and-fluffies, compounded with feeling really, really bad for anyone or anything that seems to feel unwanted. The thought of a needy sock monkey makes him get all teary-eyed.

And oh god, the books. I moved a bookshelf to school this year and got to leave it there until fall semester, so I'm now short one. I have a weird hand-me-down shelf (an Oakley display case, a cast-off from my dad's office) but it doesn't fit a lot of books. The shelves are clear acrylic cubes that look big because they're deep, but they're actually absurdly short compared to normal bookshelves.

I feel silly having all this......stuff.

Aw, crap

I almost completely missed National Poetry Month.

Crappity crap crap crap.

I usually love hunting up a daily poem for the blog or the Myspace or whatever I'm using that year, so crap.

Anyway, here's "The Stolen Child" by Yeats, currently one of my favorite authors.

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scare could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.


And another new favorite, Gerard Manley Hopkins, with "God's Grandeur"

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

And Blogger's weirding out on me, so that's all for now.

OMGWTFBBQ

I did something rather strange and certainly not exactly characteristic of my usual self yesterday.

It started when Wulfy and I rolled out of bed in the morning. He went back to his room to take a shower, I hung around mine checking email and stuff, waiting for him to come pick me up because we were supposed to eat breakfast at IHOP (we love us some IHOP. Cheese blintzes, mmmm). But he had a wedding to go to in about an hour, and an errand to run before then, so when I went out and met him he ended up circling campus and dropping me right back off because exactly why am I running this dumb errand with you instead of going back to bed when we don't have time to go to breakfast which is what we were supposed to do and I reminded you about ten times over last night and this morning and we've been wanting to go out for breakfast for about a week so how the hell did you forget?

So I stayed pretty pissed at him until about four in the afternoon, when he returned, and we waited until about five to finally go eat our IHOP because we might as well make it supper since you got back so damn late.

So I simmered and he kicked himself for about an hour, at which point I decided to try and be nice (which I actually rarely am, I am sullen and have a tendency to half-unconsciously, half-intentionally make him pay when he pisses me off, which he only usually does slightly anyway. I'm hard to live with.) and hopped up on the bed with him to tickle him and cheer him up and get him to stop looking pitiful and take me to IHOP.

I say, "Oh look at the poor pitiful Wulfy oooscha booscha wooscha wooooo *tickletickletickle* Oh come on cheer up."

He says, "But I hurt you."

I say "You're a silly bean. Do you want to take anyone else to IHOP with us?"

He says "I don't know, what do you want to do."

I say "You decide."

He says "But you're more important than me."

I say "Oh Wulfy, you know that's not--"

Wulfy, at this point, snaps because I've been a brat all day, and says very harshly some unpleasant and unpleasantly true things about the way I treat him and threatens to leave me.

I say "If that's how you feel, just leave."

He gets his big oh-shit-I-shouldn't-have-said-that-now-she's-gonna-hate-me eyes and says "I didn't mean it!" while attempting to hug on to me so I won't get up and make him leave.

I make him let go.

I sit and seethe for a while.

Then, without saying where I'm going, I put on a hoodzip and put my room keys in my pocket and leave.

It was pouring rain. I walked around campus for what I'm guessing was an hour or more, cellphone-less, considering a lot of things. I've been inexplicably unhappy lately, with myself, with school, with the job I have at home, with Wulfy, with what the hell do I really want to do with my life, with what the hell am I doing with my life now, with my suite-mates who are Loud Talkers, with my brother who is an asshole and my mom who is a little bit nuts and my dad who is not exactly the most sympathetic person in the world and the portion of my friends who never talk to me and the one girl who slandered me and with myself for not calling her on it and with my campus ministry for being politicky and obnoxious and my campus minister for having a large and thorny stick up his conservative-in-about-every-way-you-can-think-of-except-not-hating-
Harry-Potter ass and myself again for not being good enough for my almost annoyingly sweet and considerate boyfriend and sometimes wanting to break up with him for no good reason and for flirting too much with a cute coworker and just GAH WHAT THE FUCK TIME FOR A MELTDOWN.

So by this point I am fucking soaked and tired and my jeans are getting heavy because they're so wet and I'm wearing an old pair of Keds that are now squishy and my socks are wet so I've got two intense blisters on my Achilles tendons and ohmigod how long have I been gone what will Wulfy think I bet he'll hate me for making him worry I'm so mean to him god I am a horrible girlfriend and I just got mad at him over IHOP for god's sake wtf am I doing.

So I go back, and find my cell phone, which he has called three times and left a desperate choked-up message begging me to call him and tell me where I am because he's really worried and DAMN, I do not deserve to be with someone so wonderful but I'll be fucked if I let him go. So I call him and he's outside looking for me (oddly enough, he's where I was, but having checked other likely places first he's about an hour too late to find me there) so we figure out where we both are and meet halfish way (he runs, I limp in my squishy shoes so I meet him more like a quarter-way) and we have a cheesy-romance-movie crying hug in the rain, then go back to my room and cry some more and talk everything out and woooooo catharsis.

And THEN, we go to fucking IHOP.

Wow, the drama. The romance. The histrionics.

So I feel much much better now, though I'm thinking about forcefully dragging myself to therapy since as long as I'm a student here I get like ten free counseling sessions a semester. Well, sort of free, since it comes with tuition and all. I've got a big fat family history of depression and have had an episode or two before of just feeling like shit for weeks, so I feel like I need to be doing something to at least monitor that and try and check it before I end up being, well, my mom, who is only just getting some help now that she's going crazier now that she's older.

So yeah. The whole meltdown thing is in general not me but this time it worked out, even though I feel just the tiniest bit stupid about making this big scene. I was never really nuts as a teenager so perhaps I'm still getting the adolescent crazies out of my system. But for now, the air has been cleared and I'm feeling pretty groovy.

Hey Wulfy! I love youuuuuuuuu!


[Edit] After reading over the first bit, I seem to have made the Wulf look worse than he was with the snappage. This is something he does occasionally, usually as a weird injoke thing, but also occasionally because I really do drive him nuts sometimes. The criticisms were real, the threat to leave was not. It was also stingingly accurate, namely that I do often treat him as if I am more important than he is, but I was upset about it because I already had too much going on in my head. We have also lately not really talked about all this shit enough, and even the Wulf has his breaking point.

My point? He really isn't an asshole, even if the outburst seemed harsh.

Happy Birthday Kim

i be wearin no pantz, wif mah skinny legs.


































Wulfy takes issue with the skinny legs part, but it's true.

[Edit] I also never clean my glasses. And I get that spit-grin from my daddy. Yep, that's a smile.

Bahaha

Out of Wulfy's mouth just now:

"You're sweeter than a vagina filled with whipped cream."

Isn't he awesome?

I honestly don't know how to title this.

One of my professors (oddly enough, Doctor is in the Science Department but this is a liberal arts course at a liberal arts school so they get all sorts of professors to teach it) had an interesting story in class yesterday.

You see, Dr's a chemist and a biophysicist (and maybe an MD, I either don't know or can't remember) and like a lot of sciencey people, Dr. has worked with various aspects of the medical industry, researching, developing, etc. And at one point Dr. worked for A Big Pharmaceutical Company developing a new treatment for breast cancer (I'm not sure if it's okay to tell the name of the eeeevil evil company so for now, it's BPC. But it wouldn't be too hard to figure out which one. It's a BIG one, after all).

Dr. worked on this treatment system for I believe about five years, funded of course the whole time by BPC. It took at least a year for Dr. to simply study the body system he was working with so it could be figured out how to deal with it--it's complicated stuff. But complicated or not, at the end of five years, Dr. had a product that everyone felt confident in--wow, they said, this has potential. This could save lives! This could really work!

And Dr. took it to the team's bosses in the Big Pharmaceutical Company for the final presentation, which was attended by a gray-haired man Dr. had never seen before, and therefore was obviously important. And Dr. gave the presentation.

And the gray-haired man said "Dr, this is some great work. We're really impressed with this product, you are amazing. But you see, women with breast cancer have this habit of dying before selling a nice new product like this to them becomes cost-effective. So we're going to shelve this wonderful product, we might pull it back out later but we just don't think it would be good for the company to produce right now. But I'm looking forward to reading your final dissertation, thanks."

And Dr. walked out of that room and that was the last time Dr. worked for the Big Pharmaceutical Company. And BPC is getting the product patented but not putting it into production; and Dr. is positive that if the product had been for, say, prostate cancer instead of breast cancer, the company would have rushed it into production, because it's run by gray-haired men, after all.




"Hello desk. It's nice to see you again."
"Oh, hello forehead! It's been so long since we've met."

Misc.

Thanks for your concerns, belledame and DBB. Sometimes it's good to know someone's out there in these great big internets.

My grandparents gave us the money to pay for my tuition etc. I got most of the classes I wanted; those that I had to switch out are proving to be a blessing in disguise, as the books were at least a hundred dollars cheaper, even though I was lazy and bought most of them at the campus bookstore.

Plus the fact that one of the interchangeable classes I wanted wasn't open, but the other possibility? Is taught by one of the better professors I think I've had (knock on wood). He has the best voice I think humanly possible for reading William Blake.

Wulfy and I were trying to get a group together today for a daytrip specifically to procure mustard-based barbecue (which is a novelty to me), but the plans fell through so we're just hanging around little Hippieton today.

So, there's a brief update on my general life...the only other thing going on is my passive dislike of a girl who used to be one of my better friends here; I don't actively hate her right now, I just don't want to be around her...ever. Beowulf has written up the breaking point in that relationship, I just don't want to bother.

I hope (how many times have I said this?) to post a post with some real substance soon. I at least do have some stories to tell.

Deja Vu

About a year ago, my family experienced a giant meltdown of both my mother and our finances (my mom being the one who takes care of the finances) which nearly prevented me from returning to school for the fall semester.

Guess what happened again this year?

The big problem is, last year there was some sort of glitch at the school that allowed me to keep my classes; this year, no such luck.

All my classes are gone. I have to compete with other late-registering students in the next few days to get classes I don't really want. I'll probably speak with the professors of my original classes to see if they'll add me in (again).

How the fuck did this happen again? I understand my mother, she's not the most stable person in the world at this point in her life, but after last year I thought my dad was keeping better tabs on the situation.

At least they kept my room for me.

A Brief Observation.

Taking off a bra is one of the most lovely feelings in the world.

Happy New Year!

*sniff sniff, cough hack cough sneeze...sigh*

Ringing in the new year with a nasty little head cold. I coughed really hard a few days ago and threw my back slightly out of whack and have spent the past few days sitting against a heating pad--I am way too young for this stuff.

Anyway, it's 2008 now. 2007 sort of slipped by me unnoticed; I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. On one hand, the year hasn't been marked with as much theatrics as, say, 2005; or 2006 for that matter. Wrapping myself up in a nice cuddly relationship probably had a lot to do with that, and that's where the problem comes in. I didn't do much in 2007. My Spring Semester grades weren't so great; I worked in the same summer job for the second year in a row, and came home dead tired every evening from being happyhappy nicenicenice to ungrateful patients all day; I hid in Wulfy's room most of Fall Semester, avoiding simultaneously schoolwork, my roommate, and the Drama of life with my friends. So a conundrum: during a markedly unproductive year, I managed to be rather happy. Or maybe, not-unhappy.

I have big plans for the Spring Semester that, knowing me, probably won't materialize as the year progresses. This is why I don't make resolutions. Case in point: I resolved to study intensively both for Comps and for my more difficult classes over our long Winter Break. I ended up sleeping off the stresses of the semester (despite the time running fairly smoothly, I was however a wreck about a third of time) and reading part of Dune. I worked a few days, and visited relatives...and that was it. I guess you could say I'm enjoying being a lazy college student.

Anyway, the Plans:
1. Get a job in Hippieville. I know, I'm terrible for freeloading this long, especially after my family's financial problems this time last year. So this is supposed to be non-negotiable, though tough because though I'm only taking 14 hours this semester, they're tough classes that will require lots of work outside class.

2. Get in shape! I'm skinny but not particularly in-shape; I want to start going to TaeKwonDo with Wulfy. This will also ensure that he actually goes, too, as he's been whining about being slack.

3. Work more on photography. I'm a Very Amateur photographer, and I want to get Slightly Less Amateur, but that's not going to happen unless I actually, you know, take a damn picture every now and then.

4. Write more outside of class. I have Story Ideas. I may even have a Novel Idea. But Ideas don't matter unless I make myself do something with them.

I would put "Read more books outside of class work" but one of my difficult classes is going to require me to read about 15ish novels during the course of the semester.

So, there's 2007 and the first bit of 2008. I have planned, possibly, a more substantive post, but that will have to wait.

Happy New Year, y'all.