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.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Thursday, January 3, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
If I kissed you where you're sore...
Would you feel better, better, better?
The sunlight was filtered through the windy clouds and through the waving branches of all the trees. Wind is strange in the Hill Country. It whips around all the rocks and the evergreens. The trees here look panicked when they sway with the gusts; it's not their usual experience here, unlike in North Texas where it's commonplace.
But the sun. It was cold in the sunlight, thanks to the wind, and the cold front that came through here along with thunderstorms at dawn. They blew over quickly, headed south, back toward the sea. I think they died down before they got there, but I was too busy listening to the all too rare sound of rain to really care about weather patterns, wind advisories, storm warnings...
It was blue skies and wind today.
The kind of blue skies that make me think of fall. Marching band, but later in the season. I can practically hear the toms echoing in my chest, the trumpets in their distant clumps shrilly trying to outdo each other, my heart swelling with excitement at a new season, a new show. Never again. That's something to mourn.
I also think of a carnival I went to with a neighbor girl.
(We used to be friends when we were young. Casey. I wonder what happened to her. What happened to us? It was never clear; all I remember is the hurt, feeling alone. We were just very, very different. I was cerebral, reading books all the time, watching the news. She read Seventeen, listened to country radio stations, wearing makeup. Now I remember...)
The images are seared into my memory somehow. I went with her family in their station wagon (this was before SUVs hit it big) to some Cajun carnival. We played carnival games, mostly. I shot a cork rifle into a bottle and won 3 pogs with Troy Aikman's face on them. I bought a pair of handcuffs for a dollar. They had real locks and two keys. (I kept them until my sister handcuffed herself to our bunk bed. My dad commandeered them after that. I have a strange suspicion they became a "marital aid" after that.)
The sky was so blue and there were no clouds, unlike today. It was just a big blue upside down bowl above us all the way home. It was hot in the sun, and cold in the shade if you sat still. Casey and I sat in the back of the station wagon. It was hot in the back because of all the sun.
We arrived home, lethargic from the heat. I walked down the street to my house, where Troy Aikman was on TeeVee playing football.
Now in the dark and cold I remember another friend and another friendship that fell apart. This girl and I bonded in one of our advanced classes in high school. She lived close to my house. We walked back and forth from her apartments to my house in the evening after school.
Girl and I were inseparable for months. So much unlike Casey and I... Girl and I, we were both cerebral, but still different. We butted heads. I felt cowed by her superior reasoning and gave way when she pushed back. Coward. I think I began to resent her for it.
But before it starts to sting too much here's a good memory:
Girl and I would walk. There was a park near where we lived, with well defined paths. But no, such paths were not for such as we were. We explored, we took the faint dirt paths, scorning the gravel lined ways, to new discoveries, and fancied ourselves mavericks.
We would talk, and talk on our quest for discovery. One day we followed the marked trail, until one or the other of us got bored and we branched off perpendicular, toward a ravine wall. We climbed, dodging cactus and nettles, sharp flint and slippery limestone along the way, until we reached a ledge just big enough for the two of us to sit facing each other, cross legged.
The sunlight fell through the tree branches all around us, lacy and still without any breeze. That ledge in the Balcones Escarpment was almost like it was made for the two of us, for that moment in the afternoon. She had me spread a tarot for her in the dust and we talked about life, mostly her life. I was perceptive enough to know at that point in time that she was troubled, just like me, and did try to give the best advice that someone could give. Either she didn't listen or my advice was terrible (probably a mixture of both) but she was unhappy still.
We came out of our shared reverie and realized it was dusk. The ground had begun to seep its cold back into our legs. The last few cicadas harshly called to one another, shouting their goodnights. Girl and I saw that it was already dark under the trees and that we didn't have a way to climb back down the limestone. There was only up and so we climbed. It wasn't far, and we came out close to the street. The sun had set. I walked her home in the dusk, and then walked home in the dark.
I've tried to find that ledge, many times. With her and without her, it wasn't to be found again. That time in the shadows is gone forever, but I still remember it fondly.
When Girl and I talked, we talked. We had such conversations... Philosophy, religion, tarot, literature, politics, sexuality, all those things eighteen year olds are fascinated with, don't you know. We were so very important, so very full of ourselves. She was going to rule the world. (I should have sensed trouble when she refused to "give me" Europe. I always argued that it was bullshit, I was her best friend after all. Bah, that argument somehow never got old, even at the very end.)
And too... she was older than I was. Although we lived a block or two away our lives couldn't have been any different socioeconomically, and in some ways culturally as well. She was raised Catholic and I was rediscovering my Quaker heritage. She lived in a small apartment with her mother, her brother, her older sister and her older sister's four kids. I lived in a small house with both my parents (although their marriage was just then falling apart, Girl grew up with the knowledge that her family was dysfunctional at least) and my younger sister. I was a virgin (all talk and very much still afraid of sex) and she was... not. (I envied her that...)
I honestly think she didn't understand my upbringing. I wouldn't go so far as to say she resented it, but she didn't really respect where I was coming from. In many ways she didn't take me seriously (not that I deserved to be taken seriously) and that's probably the most hurtful thing to an eighteen year old.
I remember it well. We were in a restaurant and the topic (of course) turned to sex. I tried to call her on her promiscuity. (I never called her a slut in so many words, but it was implied in the statement. Heavily.) She didn't take it too well. I'd like to say I meant it with only the best of intentions, but to be perfectly honest I wanted to cut her back, in my clumsy way. Did she mean to hurt me? Very few of the cuts she inflicted were intentional on her part, but me being me I counted all of them as hurt, and punishable, therefore.
Unlike with Casey, I can actually pinpoint where the friendship began to turn dark. It unraveled from there, that point, that conversation. Unlike with Casey I can say that it was mostly my fault.
However, I do realize that it was in a way unavoidable. While we clashed, we pushed our friendship inexorably away from us.
When I hear Regina Spektor's song "Better" I think of her.
The sunlight was filtered through the windy clouds and through the waving branches of all the trees. Wind is strange in the Hill Country. It whips around all the rocks and the evergreens. The trees here look panicked when they sway with the gusts; it's not their usual experience here, unlike in North Texas where it's commonplace.
But the sun. It was cold in the sunlight, thanks to the wind, and the cold front that came through here along with thunderstorms at dawn. They blew over quickly, headed south, back toward the sea. I think they died down before they got there, but I was too busy listening to the all too rare sound of rain to really care about weather patterns, wind advisories, storm warnings...
It was blue skies and wind today.
The kind of blue skies that make me think of fall. Marching band, but later in the season. I can practically hear the toms echoing in my chest, the trumpets in their distant clumps shrilly trying to outdo each other, my heart swelling with excitement at a new season, a new show. Never again. That's something to mourn.
I also think of a carnival I went to with a neighbor girl.
(We used to be friends when we were young. Casey. I wonder what happened to her. What happened to us? It was never clear; all I remember is the hurt, feeling alone. We were just very, very different. I was cerebral, reading books all the time, watching the news. She read Seventeen, listened to country radio stations, wearing makeup. Now I remember...)
The images are seared into my memory somehow. I went with her family in their station wagon (this was before SUVs hit it big) to some Cajun carnival. We played carnival games, mostly. I shot a cork rifle into a bottle and won 3 pogs with Troy Aikman's face on them. I bought a pair of handcuffs for a dollar. They had real locks and two keys. (I kept them until my sister handcuffed herself to our bunk bed. My dad commandeered them after that. I have a strange suspicion they became a "marital aid" after that.)
The sky was so blue and there were no clouds, unlike today. It was just a big blue upside down bowl above us all the way home. It was hot in the sun, and cold in the shade if you sat still. Casey and I sat in the back of the station wagon. It was hot in the back because of all the sun.
We arrived home, lethargic from the heat. I walked down the street to my house, where Troy Aikman was on TeeVee playing football.
Now in the dark and cold I remember another friend and another friendship that fell apart. This girl and I bonded in one of our advanced classes in high school. She lived close to my house. We walked back and forth from her apartments to my house in the evening after school.
Girl and I were inseparable for months. So much unlike Casey and I... Girl and I, we were both cerebral, but still different. We butted heads. I felt cowed by her superior reasoning and gave way when she pushed back. Coward. I think I began to resent her for it.
But before it starts to sting too much here's a good memory:
Girl and I would walk. There was a park near where we lived, with well defined paths. But no, such paths were not for such as we were. We explored, we took the faint dirt paths, scorning the gravel lined ways, to new discoveries, and fancied ourselves mavericks.
We would talk, and talk on our quest for discovery. One day we followed the marked trail, until one or the other of us got bored and we branched off perpendicular, toward a ravine wall. We climbed, dodging cactus and nettles, sharp flint and slippery limestone along the way, until we reached a ledge just big enough for the two of us to sit facing each other, cross legged.
The sunlight fell through the tree branches all around us, lacy and still without any breeze. That ledge in the Balcones Escarpment was almost like it was made for the two of us, for that moment in the afternoon. She had me spread a tarot for her in the dust and we talked about life, mostly her life. I was perceptive enough to know at that point in time that she was troubled, just like me, and did try to give the best advice that someone could give. Either she didn't listen or my advice was terrible (probably a mixture of both) but she was unhappy still.
We came out of our shared reverie and realized it was dusk. The ground had begun to seep its cold back into our legs. The last few cicadas harshly called to one another, shouting their goodnights. Girl and I saw that it was already dark under the trees and that we didn't have a way to climb back down the limestone. There was only up and so we climbed. It wasn't far, and we came out close to the street. The sun had set. I walked her home in the dusk, and then walked home in the dark.
I've tried to find that ledge, many times. With her and without her, it wasn't to be found again. That time in the shadows is gone forever, but I still remember it fondly.
When Girl and I talked, we talked. We had such conversations... Philosophy, religion, tarot, literature, politics, sexuality, all those things eighteen year olds are fascinated with, don't you know. We were so very important, so very full of ourselves. She was going to rule the world. (I should have sensed trouble when she refused to "give me" Europe. I always argued that it was bullshit, I was her best friend after all. Bah, that argument somehow never got old, even at the very end.)
And too... she was older than I was. Although we lived a block or two away our lives couldn't have been any different socioeconomically, and in some ways culturally as well. She was raised Catholic and I was rediscovering my Quaker heritage. She lived in a small apartment with her mother, her brother, her older sister and her older sister's four kids. I lived in a small house with both my parents (although their marriage was just then falling apart, Girl grew up with the knowledge that her family was dysfunctional at least) and my younger sister. I was a virgin (all talk and very much still afraid of sex) and she was... not. (I envied her that...)
I honestly think she didn't understand my upbringing. I wouldn't go so far as to say she resented it, but she didn't really respect where I was coming from. In many ways she didn't take me seriously (not that I deserved to be taken seriously) and that's probably the most hurtful thing to an eighteen year old.
I remember it well. We were in a restaurant and the topic (of course) turned to sex. I tried to call her on her promiscuity. (I never called her a slut in so many words, but it was implied in the statement. Heavily.) She didn't take it too well. I'd like to say I meant it with only the best of intentions, but to be perfectly honest I wanted to cut her back, in my clumsy way. Did she mean to hurt me? Very few of the cuts she inflicted were intentional on her part, but me being me I counted all of them as hurt, and punishable, therefore.
Unlike with Casey, I can actually pinpoint where the friendship began to turn dark. It unraveled from there, that point, that conversation. Unlike with Casey I can say that it was mostly my fault.
However, I do realize that it was in a way unavoidable. While we clashed, we pushed our friendship inexorably away from us.
When I hear Regina Spektor's song "Better" I think of her.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Self Loathing
Goddamn, I am so full of self-loathing right now. I know I shouldn't allow myself to feel this way. To allow someone else to make me feel inferior. Eleanor Roosevelt would be so disappointed in me right now.
I saw this picture on Fark, expecting something funny and saw this. Shit. I look like that in jeans.
I thought of a post to leave:
"Well there aren't any jeans that look good on chubby chicks that are age appropriate. Mom jeans just aren't sexy."
Then I realized what the response would be: Chubby chicks just aren't sexy. It's not the jeans. It's not the shirt. It's your fucking gut that makes you look like a goddamn unattractive pig. Again with feeling:
Chubby chicks aren't sexy.I am not sexy.
I guess the one good thing about having mono is that I'm going to lose weight.
I've been trying most of this semester to lose weight, but unsuccessfully. Mostly I tried to diet. Tried being the operative verb here. It's hard to diet in the dorms with Bruce food. Maple food isn't really all that much better. They just replace fat with carbs and limit your entrée (usually the protein!) to just one serving. Not so good.
I just got started going back to the gym and was going to ask for a membership at the 24 Hour Fitness center a few miles away from home for an early Christmas present, but the mono got in the way of that.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Was someone drunk or high when they wrote these directions? Jesus...
I feel lost.
You know when you have bad directions or a really poorly drawn map? When you're traveling in the wrong direction, but you don't know how to fix it, or where to turn around? Just when did these instructions go bad? When you're just so fucking lost that you crossed that point where "if you cross the railroad track you've gone too far" and you didn't even realize it?
Honestly, that's a bad metaphor. I don't even know where I'm pointed in the first place. It is a complete mystery to me where I am supposed to end up, and I have a few ideas, but all the ones I've tried thus far have failed me. I really don't have high hopes for the others, actually.
Just what am I to do with myself?
I don't want to wander around like my first day in New York and realize I did nothing, really. I'm in a new city with no real destination and no one that I actually know that would tell me where to go. A few things I did along the way are completely awesome, but I feel like I am missing out on something. The problem is I don't know what the hell it is.
All I'm left with is this empty feeling. This nervous feeling. This helpless feeling. This expectant feeling. This lonely feeling. This numb feeling. This confused feeling. This terrified feeling. This exposed feeling.
I don't even know where I am.
I feel like I'm expected elsewhere, but I'm not there and wherever it is and whoever they are they're wondering where I am. They're sitting there, because hopefully there really is a "they" and a "where," and saying "I hope Hannah didn't cross the railroad tracks, and I hope she actually knows that this is here, waiting for her," or, maybe, "Jesus! Start a search party, because she's fucking missing."
I hope they come find me, because, right now, I can't find me.
You know when you have bad directions or a really poorly drawn map? When you're traveling in the wrong direction, but you don't know how to fix it, or where to turn around? Just when did these instructions go bad? When you're just so fucking lost that you crossed that point where "if you cross the railroad track you've gone too far" and you didn't even realize it?Honestly, that's a bad metaphor. I don't even know where I'm pointed in the first place. It is a complete mystery to me where I am supposed to end up, and I have a few ideas, but all the ones I've tried thus far have failed me. I really don't have high hopes for the others, actually.
Just what am I to do with myself?
I don't want to wander around like my first day in New York and realize I did nothing, really. I'm in a new city with no real destination and no one that I actually know that would tell me where to go. A few things I did along the way are completely awesome, but I feel like I am missing out on something. The problem is I don't know what the hell it is.All I'm left with is this empty feeling. This nervous feeling. This helpless feeling. This expectant feeling. This lonely feeling. This numb feeling. This confused feeling. This terrified feeling. This exposed feeling.
I don't even know where I am.
I feel like I'm expected elsewhere, but I'm not there and wherever it is and whoever they are they're wondering where I am. They're sitting there, because hopefully there really is a "they" and a "where," and saying "I hope Hannah didn't cross the railroad tracks, and I hope she actually knows that this is here, waiting for her," or, maybe, "Jesus! Start a search party, because she's fucking missing."
I hope they come find me, because, right now, I can't find me.
Geography Is Important...
because if you get it wrong you sound like a complete idiot.
I was walking down the hall to do my laundry (laundry rooms are on the complete other side of the building from my room, meaning that I have to drag my dirty undies through the lobby unless I want to walk upstairs with them, which is unreasonable) and I overheard a conversation.
"I have a friend from England. He's from southern England which means he's Scottish."
(The boy who said this is a sophomore in college. A sophomore in motherfucking college.)
At left is a map of the United Kingdom.Notice the red area at the top, which is known to us as Scotland, where Scottish people are from.
The top of the map is known as "north" and the bottom of the map is known as "south."
Notice that there is no place in the south of England that is called "Scotland" but there is a place in the south and east portion known as "Wales," not to be confused with the word "whales" which is the plural form of a sea living mammal covered in fat known as "blubber." People from the country of Wales are known as "Welsh."
I have a friend that was born in Cardiff, Wales. She is neither Scottish, nor English. In fact, if you call her English she'll be pretty pissed. She is Welsh, and quite proud of it.
After I heard this exchange I felt overcome by the need to educate this US American so I put my laundry down, said,
"Scotland is north of England," picked up my laundry and walked onward. I wanted to scream.
I chose not to educate him on the finer points of Geography and international politics (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are part of the United Kingdom, Scotland will be its own country within 10 years, living on an island for thousands of years and going through two devastating world wars is bad for the gene pool, and etc.) because it would have likely gone over his head.
I really wanted to see if he could find Iraq, the US, Israel, Iran and Pakistan on a map, but I really didn't have time to mess with his head that much, also if he had failed to do so (which was likely) I would have slammed my head into a wall.
The truly sad part of this exchange is that this kid isn't an art major or anything, he's an English major.
In a related topic:
9 Words That Don't Mean What You Think
I'm a Grammar Nazi as well as a Geography Nazi.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
I am thankful for the things I am thankful for and that's why I should be thankful.
I'm thankful my mother didn't notice me crying in the car on the way home.
I'm thankful that dearest boyfriend isn't silly enough to join the military and make me hurt. Or more like I'm lucky, and that I'm thankful that I'm lucky.
I'm thankful that I have a healthy fear about doing things like drugs and going to strange countries with HIV tainted blood supplies.
I am thankful that I graduated high school.
I'm a little bit thankful that no one really reads this blog yet. I don't have to explain my own words to people. To justify myself to outsiders who are actively trying to misunderstand. That, at this point, in this place, I can just be. I can just write. I can't write like that when I know people are reading. I turn too passive-aggressive or else I censor myself too much. I'm too sensitive.
I'm thankful for life. For this oxygen. For this carbon and for the sulfur that makes my DNA, however storied are the problems that lie therein, because otherwise I wouldn't be me, now would I?
I'm thankful that dearest boyfriend isn't silly enough to join the military and make me hurt. Or more like I'm lucky, and that I'm thankful that I'm lucky.
I'm thankful that I have a healthy fear about doing things like drugs and going to strange countries with HIV tainted blood supplies.
I am thankful that I graduated high school.
I'm a little bit thankful that no one really reads this blog yet. I don't have to explain my own words to people. To justify myself to outsiders who are actively trying to misunderstand. That, at this point, in this place, I can just be. I can just write. I can't write like that when I know people are reading. I turn too passive-aggressive or else I censor myself too much. I'm too sensitive.
I'm thankful for life. For this oxygen. For this carbon and for the sulfur that makes my DNA, however storied are the problems that lie therein, because otherwise I wouldn't be me, now would I?
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