Milk

I wish mom and dad had put two and two together and realized that it's not normal to have your kid barf every day, and that maybe there was more to it than a "glass stomach."

Oops

Convention and Anal Retention

Well I got back today from the annual Texas Young Democrats convention. I've decided that the drive between Dallas and Hillsboro and Waco and Salado are both unbearable. Even more unbearable is the drive between Ft. Worth and Denton. Honestly, I'll take Dallas traffic over getting stir-crazy in my car driving through the middle of nowhere.

Convention was fun. Most of it was coming from young Democrats to other young Democrats, so that was a good time. I saw Boyd Richie speak, which was cool, and got to see a Q&A with some Young Democrat Super delegates.

Richie is a classic Texas politician. I hear him speak and my mind wanders to "Texian Decor" : offices with leather couches, star cut-outs on every lampshade, door handle and table, Texas Monthly and Texas Parks and Wildlife magazines on the table, backroom deals from the office and a glass of liquor to celebrate the deal. That's not really a bad thing, it's just the way it works here. (We wear "being Texan" on our sleeve most of the time, have you ever been to the Capitol? Yeah, and almost every lawmaker's personal office is that way too, I can assure you.) I got to see the big Texas Cheese, and it was cool.

There was a bit of a generational disconnect though. In one session we were encouraged to use facebook and other online social tools to recruit and gather information on potential Young Democrats. In another, the presenter told us to delete our myspace accounts, facebook profiles and stop blogging. Then he joked that it was already too late. Yeah, too late for an entire generation. Eventually people are going to learn to see the internet as a community, and not merely data on other people. Of course we need to not be dumbasses and put extremely personal information online. I don't think other people should know about intimate relationship details, or my address and what type of underwear I wear, either. At least, that's not my thing. I like reading other people's blogs on the subject, of course. But the thing that older people don't realize is, we don't judge other people for having this information online. It's basically accepted by our youth culture. In fact, it defines us as who we are. Differing values for differing generational cultures.

It boils down to the fact that previous generations have a bigger privacy bubble, and a smaller definition of community. They're usually limited to hometown, neighborhood, alma matter, and work for their social needs. I, on the other hand, dated a guy in high school that was from California. I met him through a friend I knew IRL (in real life, another example of change because of the internet), who met another guy through the internet, and then I met California guy through this guy. That wouldn't have happened a few years ago, and not just because of technological advances, but also because of cultural evolution. People were used to knowing the other person's 2nd cousin once removed, and the rest of their genealogical line, going back several generations.

While we are "strangers" in the sense that we can't really trace a bloodline personally, and that can be a discomfort because there is the quality of the unknown, as well as a bit of a risk, but our youth society as a whole is more likely to judge the individual in that way. I don't really care if you're the first person in your family going to college and your "ancestral manse" consists of a lot in a San Marcos, Texas trailer park. I care whether or not you're a nice person or an asshole, intelligent or stupid, whether you have a sense of humor or are a stick in the mud, curious or ignorant, well adjusted or fucked up, responsible or immature... I make those judgments based on what I know of the person, and they do the same for me.

I am fully aware that a person isn't who they are on the internet, and some people, I actually prefer their internet personas. We have time on the internet to process each thought as we type and post. I've probably deleted at least 1/3 of this post as I typed it, trying to most successfully get my point across without sounding like a slavering gibbering asshole. In conversation, especially over the phone, I am not nearly as articulate, but on the intertubes, I am a goddess of intellect with spell check and wikipedia at my side. I'm okay with the concept that people are different people in different contexts. It's just a part of how I grew up, and the experiences that shaped me.

So yes, I will continue to blog. I will continue to monitor my own interpretation of privacy, and to interact in my generation's version of community.

Literature

I just bought Maus II by Art Art Spiegelman. People are interested until I tell them that it's a graphic novel. "Oh." is usually their response.

"Oh." As in: "Oh, that's a comic book." "Oh, I thought you were smart and read things that were interesting and/or clever." "Oh, I thought you had better things to do with your time." "Oh, I'm going to stop talking to you now because you're a fangirl. Bye!"

Apparently literature has to be bound in leather, smell musty, have little to no pictures or illustrations, and nobody should want to read it.

Maus is a graphic novel. It is literature. Art Spiegelman wrote it about his father's experience in WWII during the Holocaust. The Nazis are cats, the Poles are pigs, the Americans are Dogs and the Jews are mice. Symbolism is cool. It wouldn't have come across as convincingly without the use of the comic medium for sure.

But Maus is not literature, because it has too many pictures.

Wortty Dirds

Everyone is freaking out at the midterm. People are freaking out about midterms, people are getting into drama, and I'm weary of it. I'm so tired of my own usual stresses that just being around other people's stress is stressing me out. 

It's contagious that way.

I'd go into more of the drama crap, but I'm not enough of a bitch to go into it on a public forum, or passive-aggressive enough to do anything else of that kind. Tensions are running high, and feelings are getting hurt right and left. It's a combination of females being females and natural miscommunication. It would play out as an awesome screenplay catfight, lemme tell you.

My hands are chapped. It sucks. The shingles rash itches and aches in turn. I've had to pop a valium or two to keep it from disrupting my sleep, and that's worked so far so that's a blessing.

I've decided that I was freaking out about aperson because she's everything I'm not and everything I wish I could be, or get away with. I'm never going to be petite, overly-attractive, vulnerable, and able to "get around" without people constantly becoming attached or being labeled and disliked as a skank. Never gonna happen, so I may as well get used to it. I still don't like her because of the way she treats me (and everyone else, really), but that's okay. Darling boyfriend says I need to let things roll off my back more, but that's a problem I've always had so it's not going to go away anytime soon. 

I'm trying not to curse as much either. I'm attempting to cut down on the "fuck" and "god damn" in my life. It's about 60% effective at this point. I've been dropping f-bombs right and left when I'm pissed, but it's all but eliminated from casual conversation, which is a good start.

Photobooth on Mac is fun. That is all.

Texas Weather is a Moody Bitch

In like a lion out like a lamb, then in like a lion and out like a lamb...

Eff you, Texas Weather, eff you!

Monday night I had an inch of snow on my car. Today I'm wearing short sleeves and I just saw Leah in shorty shorts. WEIRD!

Also not helping: I have shingles, which is basically chicken pox that has re-activated in my system and is now attacking a nerve cluster along the right side of my body. Grrrrrreat! So I have to use this cream, and a soak and take anti-viral medication like I have herpes or something, which I do, but it's a version of herpes that almost everybody gets. So yea, I guess I'm under some stress or something, huh?

Since I've had so many health problems lately I've decided that I'm probably going to forgo summer school, and probably go home. I have NO IDEA what I'm going to get up to in New Braunfels, but I guess I'll find something interesting to do, somewhere. Basically my plan this summer is to not get fat, or work at Target. How I loathe you, Target. I don't know what's worse, being fat or working at Target. I'm going to have to go for an even tie there. I'll make my mom get me a gym membership and then I'll get all kinds of hot over the summer and try to work somewhere that doesn't suck.

If I get the computer lab job at the end of the semester... then I'll have to try to find something in Denton, because I'll want to. Robin made enough over the summer to stay in an apartment, so I bet I can too. Maybe I'll take a math class at NTCC or something and get that out of the way. A few math classes per week isn't so bad, and I'll have plenty of time to do homework if that's the only class I'm taking. So yea, that's an option.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Seriously What the Fuck?

Today in Seriously What the Fuck:

Lesser Sean just told me a story about how his brother is "rock hard" when he passes out drunk. So brother of Lesser had a 3 hr erection and jammed it down his then-girlfriend now-wife's throat, causing her to throw up. Seriously, what the fuck?

My tonsils are the size of golf balls today. I don't have a fever, and they don't particularly hurt. Seriously, what the fuck?

Hillary wants feminists to vote for her, because she's a woman. So much for being egalitarian. Anyway, feminists are upset at her for resting on her husband's laurels, so they're not voting for her anyway. Most of her voters are less educated, older, white women. Yeah.

And chick lit. It pisses me off. I'm starting to see how demeaning it is, and we just lap that shit up. What the hell is wrong with us? Gretchen Wieners I hate you. I hate you with a fiery burning passion for what you've done to literature. What the hell happened to authors like Maya Angelou and Margaret Attwood? Why can't we take a page out of their books, so to speak?

Scott Pump and Jeffing. My love/hate relationship with denizens of Bruce Hall Lobby continues.

Late night musings...

I think I've developed a crush on Neil Gaiman. Not the physical "I want to tumble around with him awkwardly" sort of crush. More of an intellectual attraction crush. I want to talk to the man. He does sound a bit vain, sometimes, but particularly good writers are particularly known for that kind of thing. I guess maybe because he's "living the dream." Making art and being able to support himself and be considered successful. I have only one reader of my blog (mostly because I try to keep it that way) and my blog is just about as literary as I get these days, much to my mother's chagrin.

I'm frustrated that there are no real female characters of depth in comics. Mostly because 30 year old man-children can't handle it. I understand why basement-dwelling fatsos aren't interested in smart females (they'd only find another reason to reject them) but I still reserve the right to be pissed. If females are there at all they usually have giant breasts (see Power Girl) or wear fishnets (see Zatanna and Black Canary). Dinah has quite a good backstory, actually, but she's mostly depicted as the tantric-sex-having girlfriend and now wife of Green Arrow. Blondes and redheads are of course over-represented. There is a hispanic superheroine, the one that took over as The Question, but aside from being a hot latina lesbian (of course) and a former lover of Bat Woman (who is also an inexplicably hot-but-closeted lipstick lesbian), she's not that interesting. Boys suck. Next thing you know Granny Goodness will come out as a dyke. Of course the dyke would be a supervillianess, right? But I'm jumping ahead of the "boys will be boys" world, aren't I?

In happier news: Obama won the Iowa primary. Thank the lord. I will cry the day a black man is inaugurated. I will cry tears of joy and triumph. My mother says that America is not ready yet for a black man to be President. I think that we're ready for Barack Obama to be President and that it doesn't matter that he's black. It shouldn't matter that he's black. We will elect him as President. We have to.