Thursday, February 24, 2011
HIIIIIII
Sorry I haven't been on here in a while, I've neglected this blog in favor of KelseyComplains. Check it out. Please follow me. Suggest things for me to write about. Thanks!!
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Well today sucked. Hardcore.
:Guess who lost the Superbowl, and the Pens/Caps game?!
If you answered Pittsburgh, you win!!
(Shameless self-promotion: check out http://kelseycomplains.blogspot.com/ for more Superbowl snarky-ness and videos)
I'm very bitter. I want to knock Lil Wayne's teeth out. I hope the bastards blasting Green & Yellow in Maple East get hit by a meteor. You idiots probably can't even find Wisconsin on a map.
The Packers played a good game. We didn't. I'm sorry, I'm a Pittsburgh fan through and through, but we just didn't want it bad enough. At least we lost to a team I respect.
We didn't play at all until the end of the first quarter. We picked it up a little, then we made some stupid turnovers, stupid penalties and we lost. They were just the better team. So, Packers, I don't hate you. I just hate Lil Wayne and IUP and will channel my anger as such.
The halftime show was terrible. I don't even mind the Black Eyed Peas, but they were horrible live. Then to watch them contaminate "Sweet Child O Mine" with Fergie shaking her ass in the general direction of Slash?!? Oh why didn't James Harrison come out of the locker room and tackle her... I can't say anything bad about Usher because at that point I was so bewildered that I was no longer able to comprehend the Tron and travesty happening in front of me.
s;dfjuna;dfjv. I don't want to go to class tomorrow.
The Caps were also the better team today. There were a lot of stupid mistakes made by the Pens. We were out-skated and out-maneuvered. Several stupid turnovers. I thought for a second that we killed Mike Green because he was laying on the ice in a puddle of his own blood, bleeding from the ear. Some other guy on the Caps got a stick to the face. It probably should have been a penalty, but it wasn't called, so too bad.
On the bright side, Wallace almost killed a guy, Ovechkin got hit really hard and Cookie wanted to rip some faces off. I love Matt Cooke. Sure he's kind of a d-bag, but he's our d-bag. I would hate his guts if he wasn't on the Pens. But he is. And he's my solid second fave.
I'm sick of blaming losses on missing Crosby, Malkin and Asham. (Malkin tore his ACL and MCL last game, so he's going to be out for a while.) It's a big dent in the roster, no doubt, but we've been okay without them for the past few games. Hockey's a contact sport. People get hurt. It's best not to rely too heavily on anyone.
Also, my general feelings toward NBC can be summed up in one of my tweets from today:
"I hate NBC, their commentators and their cancerous preoccupation with Ovi. We'll get 'em next time, boys. #LetsGoPens"
The Pens never play well when NBC is involved. Their commentators are douchebags. And they should be banned from Penguins hockey.
So, I'm irritated and disappointed. I may not be going to class tomorrow. I just want to go to sleep and forget today. I sort of feel like I'm going to cry and puke and pass out then my brain will explode....and with all that I would still probably get an unexcused absence in Environmental Lit.
I'll post about commercials tomorrow. Lots to talk about. Also, I'm pretty sure Letang is engaged. Not that we ever had a chance, but I hope I'm not the only one that just died a little on the inside.
If you answered Pittsburgh, you win!!
(Shameless self-promotion: check out http://kelseycomplains.blogspot.com/ for more Superbowl snarky-ness and videos)
I'm very bitter. I want to knock Lil Wayne's teeth out. I hope the bastards blasting Green & Yellow in Maple East get hit by a meteor. You idiots probably can't even find Wisconsin on a map.
The Packers played a good game. We didn't. I'm sorry, I'm a Pittsburgh fan through and through, but we just didn't want it bad enough. At least we lost to a team I respect.
We didn't play at all until the end of the first quarter. We picked it up a little, then we made some stupid turnovers, stupid penalties and we lost. They were just the better team. So, Packers, I don't hate you. I just hate Lil Wayne and IUP and will channel my anger as such.
The halftime show was terrible. I don't even mind the Black Eyed Peas, but they were horrible live. Then to watch them contaminate "Sweet Child O Mine" with Fergie shaking her ass in the general direction of Slash?!? Oh why didn't James Harrison come out of the locker room and tackle her... I can't say anything bad about Usher because at that point I was so bewildered that I was no longer able to comprehend the Tron and travesty happening in front of me.
s;dfjuna;dfjv. I don't want to go to class tomorrow.
The Caps were also the better team today. There were a lot of stupid mistakes made by the Pens. We were out-skated and out-maneuvered. Several stupid turnovers. I thought for a second that we killed Mike Green because he was laying on the ice in a puddle of his own blood, bleeding from the ear. Some other guy on the Caps got a stick to the face. It probably should have been a penalty, but it wasn't called, so too bad.
On the bright side, Wallace almost killed a guy, Ovechkin got hit really hard and Cookie wanted to rip some faces off. I love Matt Cooke. Sure he's kind of a d-bag, but he's our d-bag. I would hate his guts if he wasn't on the Pens. But he is. And he's my solid second fave.
I'm sick of blaming losses on missing Crosby, Malkin and Asham. (Malkin tore his ACL and MCL last game, so he's going to be out for a while.) It's a big dent in the roster, no doubt, but we've been okay without them for the past few games. Hockey's a contact sport. People get hurt. It's best not to rely too heavily on anyone.
Also, my general feelings toward NBC can be summed up in one of my tweets from today:
"I hate NBC, their commentators and their cancerous preoccupation with Ovi. We'll get 'em next time, boys. #LetsGoPens"
The Pens never play well when NBC is involved. Their commentators are douchebags. And they should be banned from Penguins hockey.
So, I'm irritated and disappointed. I may not be going to class tomorrow. I just want to go to sleep and forget today. I sort of feel like I'm going to cry and puke and pass out then my brain will explode....and with all that I would still probably get an unexcused absence in Environmental Lit.
I'll post about commercials tomorrow. Lots to talk about. Also, I'm pretty sure Letang is engaged. Not that we ever had a chance, but I hope I'm not the only one that just died a little on the inside.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
T.S. Eliot
We're reading Eliot for my Brit/Am lit class. This poem's called The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock. I love it. Don't stop reading after the first two lines, because I almost did. The first thing on here is from Dante's Inferno. I don't know what it means. If you're not into poetry, just read it and enjoy the language. It's great. Enjoy.
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . . 110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. 125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . . 110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. 125
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
HEYYY
I just put up a new blog, same name as my older blog. It's for my social media class, but it'll be the same kind of bitching I did on that blog, and the same kind of bitching I do on this one. Only difference is that it'll usually be political or semi-political in nature.
So follow me, por favor. The link is http://kelseycomplains.blogspot.com
THANKS!
Also, reason 9,000 why I love Letang so much:
We both trip walking up the steps...especially when everyone's watching us.
So follow me, por favor. The link is http://kelseycomplains.blogspot.com
THANKS!
Also, reason 9,000 why I love Letang so much:
We both trip walking up the steps...especially when everyone's watching us.
All-Star Game
So, Letang's magnificent and Ovie's still a douche, so no surprises there.
What I'm talking about is the NHL All-Star Game. Tanger was on Team Staal and Flower was on Team Lindstrom. Tanger also shares the red and white with Ovechkin, who decided to throw a stick at a guy, which sparked the ONLY penalty shot in the history of All-Star games.
But Tanger got 2 GOALS!! He did really well. Flower had a rough first period. They scored four goals on him pretty quickly. Then Team Staal scored 4 goals too. But, Team Lindstrom won 11 to 10. The game was kind of lame because there was no real hitting, but I'm sure it was still a lot of fun for the players to share ice with the best in the league.
The skills challenge was fun. Letang won the skating backwards race-thing. Fleury made an ass out of a few guys during the shootout and the breakaway challenge. The best part was Ovechkin falling over a wire after taking his shot in the hardest shot competition. The idiot had already broken his hockey stick and had to use Letang's to complete his number of shots, then he tripped over the wire and acted like a moron.
Because Crosby and Geno weren't there, the camera people felt the need to focus on Ovechkin the whole damn time.
Clay Aiken sang the national anthem and 3 Doors Down played after the first period ended. This, NHL, is why more people in the U.S. care about football.
I can not wait for the superbowl. The town's gone crazy already. I was home this weekend for a wedding and to go to the Strip District to find a black and gold scarf. You couldn't go one block in Pittsburgh without seeing a jersey or something Steelers-related. I can't wait till I'm 21 and can go to South Side for Superbowls. Until then, I'll be yelling at the TV in my room and affectionately calling Roethlisberger every swear word you can think of because that man makes passes to his eye floaters at times.
It's like 6:30 a.m right now and I'm up. I fell asleep last night around 6pm, intending only to take a power nap, but then slept till 3:30 a.m. and had to wake up and read 125 pages of A Sand County Almanac and write a paper on it. Oh, college...
Just for fun, here's an interview with Letang after the skills challenge. The first 9 seconds are of him looking awkward while the other guy is getting interviewed.
What I'm talking about is the NHL All-Star Game. Tanger was on Team Staal and Flower was on Team Lindstrom. Tanger also shares the red and white with Ovechkin, who decided to throw a stick at a guy, which sparked the ONLY penalty shot in the history of All-Star games.
But Tanger got 2 GOALS!! He did really well. Flower had a rough first period. They scored four goals on him pretty quickly. Then Team Staal scored 4 goals too. But, Team Lindstrom won 11 to 10. The game was kind of lame because there was no real hitting, but I'm sure it was still a lot of fun for the players to share ice with the best in the league.
The skills challenge was fun. Letang won the skating backwards race-thing. Fleury made an ass out of a few guys during the shootout and the breakaway challenge. The best part was Ovechkin falling over a wire after taking his shot in the hardest shot competition. The idiot had already broken his hockey stick and had to use Letang's to complete his number of shots, then he tripped over the wire and acted like a moron.
Because Crosby and Geno weren't there, the camera people felt the need to focus on Ovechkin the whole damn time.
Clay Aiken sang the national anthem and 3 Doors Down played after the first period ended. This, NHL, is why more people in the U.S. care about football.
I can not wait for the superbowl. The town's gone crazy already. I was home this weekend for a wedding and to go to the Strip District to find a black and gold scarf. You couldn't go one block in Pittsburgh without seeing a jersey or something Steelers-related. I can't wait till I'm 21 and can go to South Side for Superbowls. Until then, I'll be yelling at the TV in my room and affectionately calling Roethlisberger every swear word you can think of because that man makes passes to his eye floaters at times.
It's like 6:30 a.m right now and I'm up. I fell asleep last night around 6pm, intending only to take a power nap, but then slept till 3:30 a.m. and had to wake up and read 125 pages of A Sand County Almanac and write a paper on it. Oh, college...
Just for fun, here's an interview with Letang after the skills challenge. The first 9 seconds are of him looking awkward while the other guy is getting interviewed.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Myspace and Kitchens
I'm looking through some of the old stuff I have saved on my external hard drive today. If I remember correctly, when I had a myspace, I'd get some pretty funny messages from creepers. Here was a particularly good one, in quotes, that I apparently felt the need to tear apart. I don't think I ever sent this back to the guy, but it would have been funny if I did. So, here it is:
"hay sexy wuts good wit i dam u r soo sexy can we talk"
1. It's "hey," not "hay." Hay is the yellow stringy shit that horses eat.
2. Wuts? = What's?
3. You need a comma after sexy, I assume it's direct address.
4. "Wit" = "With" Wit is something you have none of.
5. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that "i" is supposed to be "u"
6. Which brings me to "u" = "you"
7. You need a question mark after the supposed "u"
8. "Dam" = "damn" Beavers build dams.
9. once again "u" = "you"
10. "r" = "are" We have vowels for a reason, use them.
11. I appreciate the extra "o" in "soo" but you're a fucking moron.
12. You need a comma after sexy
13. You need a question mark after talk
On the bright side, you can spell "sexy," "can" and "talk." Also, you have an apparent understanding of how a keyboard and myspace messaging are supposed to work. While it worries me that you have a gun, you are making my case for the extermination of stupid people more and more plausible.
Thank you, douchebag. Try laying off the crackpipe.
Love,
Kelsey
There are probably more things wrong with it, but those were the ones I found at the time. Too funny. The gun reference came into play because he was showing off some handgun in his profile pic. I think I deleted my myspace shortly after receiving this. I mean honestly, no etiquette at all.
Also, I was looking though some of the older creative stuff I've written. This one was an assignment. I had to describe a kitchen in a way that it told a story:
Oranges are mixed right in with the apples in a wicker bowl that mom bought a million years ago, from a sale at some dead person's house. The bowl is leaning, lopsided on a stove stained by the last batch of potato pancakes it will ever make. An explosion of something has formed tiny dots of brown crust on the bottom of the oven fan. Those oranges are turning that familiar ugly shade of gray with a bruise of green in the middle. Oranges were her favorite. Their decay tells the apples that they need to become mushy. Towels with sauce stains are shoved over the broken handle of the oven. Broken, because mom always leaned on it when she talked on the phone.
The Mr. Coffee is the only thing without a layer of scum covering it. It's the only appliance bought within the last ten years, and it hasn't stopped making coffee for four days straight, because I'm here, the oldest of four, so she's my responsibility. Mr. Coffee stands alone on the sticky counter, next to the kissing Dutch salt and pepper shakers, faded with age, right near the pegs on the wall balancing mugs by their handles. One had a picture of a snarling bulldog. Another has something written in big block letters, in German. Their bright colors collide with the walls, doused in mousy tans.
In the sink, dishes are piled high. The only thing keeping the whole tower from falling is the mushy leftovers cementing them together. The dishwasher lets its empty mouth hang open, begging for something to clean. She always kept a clean house. She would murder me for this.
In the refrigerator is a forest. Someone, not me, thought to preserve the flowers that strangers bought. Harsh yellows, pinks, and reds jut out from behind pans and bowl and dishes covered with blue Saran wrap. It is all stranger-made food, and it turns to sand in my mouth. Something toppled, spilled and dried, lining the bottom, near the fruit drawers. Old, putrid milk is stinking up the whole fridge, making the meat loaf absorb its rancid taste. Under the fridge, black ants are marching toward a meal. Close it, that's better.
Faces and tiny to-do lists plaster the yellowed face of the fridge, supported by magnets that tell the history of the family. Tiny to-do's in my mother's handwriting, telling me all of the things she wanted to do, but didn't get the chance to. In the pictures, kids are smiling with their newly missing teeth, with their arms around each other, with that "mom said I have to" look. Hannah is wearing a soccer uniform, with grass stains at the knees, with a crooked smile taking over her face. She's my daughter, her grandma's favorite. Someone is smirking, wearing high red shorts with a white stripe, circa 1972. Turned on its side, a Polaroid frames mom and dad sitting on the brown scratchy couch, the one with the buttons in awkward places. Mom is peeling an orange.
I don't know. It needs cleaned up a bit, but I still kinda like it. It's almost like flash fiction. I'm going to try sleep now.
"hay sexy wuts good wit i dam u r soo sexy can we talk"
1. It's "hey," not "hay." Hay is the yellow stringy shit that horses eat.
2. Wuts? = What's?
3. You need a comma after sexy, I assume it's direct address.
4. "Wit" = "With" Wit is something you have none of.
5. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that "i" is supposed to be "u"
6. Which brings me to "u" = "you"
7. You need a question mark after the supposed "u"
8. "Dam" = "damn" Beavers build dams.
9. once again "u" = "you"
10. "r" = "are" We have vowels for a reason, use them.
11. I appreciate the extra "o" in "soo" but you're a fucking moron.
12. You need a comma after sexy
13. You need a question mark after talk
On the bright side, you can spell "sexy," "can" and "talk." Also, you have an apparent understanding of how a keyboard and myspace messaging are supposed to work. While it worries me that you have a gun, you are making my case for the extermination of stupid people more and more plausible.
Thank you, douchebag. Try laying off the crackpipe.
Love,
Kelsey
There are probably more things wrong with it, but those were the ones I found at the time. Too funny. The gun reference came into play because he was showing off some handgun in his profile pic. I think I deleted my myspace shortly after receiving this. I mean honestly, no etiquette at all.
Also, I was looking though some of the older creative stuff I've written. This one was an assignment. I had to describe a kitchen in a way that it told a story:
Oranges are mixed right in with the apples in a wicker bowl that mom bought a million years ago, from a sale at some dead person's house. The bowl is leaning, lopsided on a stove stained by the last batch of potato pancakes it will ever make. An explosion of something has formed tiny dots of brown crust on the bottom of the oven fan. Those oranges are turning that familiar ugly shade of gray with a bruise of green in the middle. Oranges were her favorite. Their decay tells the apples that they need to become mushy. Towels with sauce stains are shoved over the broken handle of the oven. Broken, because mom always leaned on it when she talked on the phone.
The Mr. Coffee is the only thing without a layer of scum covering it. It's the only appliance bought within the last ten years, and it hasn't stopped making coffee for four days straight, because I'm here, the oldest of four, so she's my responsibility. Mr. Coffee stands alone on the sticky counter, next to the kissing Dutch salt and pepper shakers, faded with age, right near the pegs on the wall balancing mugs by their handles. One had a picture of a snarling bulldog. Another has something written in big block letters, in German. Their bright colors collide with the walls, doused in mousy tans.
In the sink, dishes are piled high. The only thing keeping the whole tower from falling is the mushy leftovers cementing them together. The dishwasher lets its empty mouth hang open, begging for something to clean. She always kept a clean house. She would murder me for this.
In the refrigerator is a forest. Someone, not me, thought to preserve the flowers that strangers bought. Harsh yellows, pinks, and reds jut out from behind pans and bowl and dishes covered with blue Saran wrap. It is all stranger-made food, and it turns to sand in my mouth. Something toppled, spilled and dried, lining the bottom, near the fruit drawers. Old, putrid milk is stinking up the whole fridge, making the meat loaf absorb its rancid taste. Under the fridge, black ants are marching toward a meal. Close it, that's better.
Faces and tiny to-do lists plaster the yellowed face of the fridge, supported by magnets that tell the history of the family. Tiny to-do's in my mother's handwriting, telling me all of the things she wanted to do, but didn't get the chance to. In the pictures, kids are smiling with their newly missing teeth, with their arms around each other, with that "mom said I have to" look. Hannah is wearing a soccer uniform, with grass stains at the knees, with a crooked smile taking over her face. She's my daughter, her grandma's favorite. Someone is smirking, wearing high red shorts with a white stripe, circa 1972. Turned on its side, a Polaroid frames mom and dad sitting on the brown scratchy couch, the one with the buttons in awkward places. Mom is peeling an orange.
I don't know. It needs cleaned up a bit, but I still kinda like it. It's almost like flash fiction. I'm going to try sleep now.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Classes & Sid Vicious
Okay so Sid Vicious. Not THE Sid Vicious, but my hamster named Sid Vicious. He likes to do this thing where he lays under his hamster wheel in a little ball and breathes really slowly and appears to be dead or dying. Then several hours or a day later, as though to say "just kidding" he returns to his usual psychopathic self.
This has happen five times. The thing keeps dying and coming back to life. The latest was today. Yesterday my mom told me Sid was probably not going to last the night. I said something to the effect of "meh" because this hamster has been living to spite me. He's already 3, and hamsters are only supposed to live to be 2. He's a bastard. He likes to draw blood. He's loud as hell at night and he hangs from his cage like a spider and gnaws on the metal with his horrible yellow snagletooth.
But anyway, my mom goes into my room this morning and the bastard is running around and most of his food is already gone from the time she refilled it last night (and she gives him A LOT of food). So, in effect, I am harboring a demon hamster in my room that is able to die and come back to life. He's going to do to me what Freddy Krueger did to Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street. One night, I'll be watching HBO then my bed will swallow me and blood will spout out of it and the damn hamster will be laughing.
Need a visual? Fast-forward to 0:36
I don't know why the Pirates of the Caribbean music is playing in the background in this youtube video.
Now for classes....
I always scoff when I'm forced to do self-reflective stuff for my classes...you know, the obligatory "describe yourself in a few words." Or the ever-infuriating, "where do you see yourself in five years." I hate those questions. I don't even know what I'm doing tomorrow, let alone five years from now, and I don't think sitting on the couch watching reruns of Sanford and Son counts as a good answer.
Also, for social media, I'm probably going to have to do some scrubbing of this blog. But I'd need a full time staff working round the clock to get every profanity and snide comment out of my posts. So we'll just have to see how that goes. Feministing's allowed to say fuck. Why can't I?
I'll probably just end up making a new blog or scrubbing my other blog on politics, because this blog has no real structure. I just post whatever I feel like talking about.
But I'm pretty confident that I'm going to love that class and gain useful stuff out of it. I've had the professor before and she's awesome.
Oh, and math. "Complete this sequence...3, 1902, 92, 200, 549, ?" I think an acceptable answer to these things should be "why the hell does anyone care."
I don't want to put down math. It's necessary for some people. And a person's accomplishments in math should never be diminished. Bad things would happen if our architects didn't know anything about geometry. But I'm an English and Journalism major. Percentages and basic arithmetic are all I really need. Ever. I can confidently say that, in my life, I will never have to rattle off the Fibonacci sequence.
I get the whole, "this is not about numbers, its about learning logic and problem solving skills," but the kind of logic I need care about is something that can be learned outside of math. I've already had to do this all through high school and before that. I've gotten all the problem-solving skills that I can out of it.
But I still think everyone in a traditional liberal arts college in the U.S. should be required to take English classes. No matter what you do, you need to be able to write and think critically about a text. A lot of people's grades would be trashed if they hadn't taken research writing and whatever the intro class is called. And English is one of the few departments that get really good student feedback from required courses.
In my major, I'll never need science either but at least they give you a range of things to pick from. I did Dynamic Earth and Exploring the Universe, AKA rocks and space. Little to no math, and it was stuff that I thought was interesting.
For people in a field that involves no math, I think they should be able to pick between taking a social science and a math. I would gladly have taken another politics class instead of math. And there's probably people that feel the opposite. The arts classes can be put in there too. Some people just don't care about the arts, and it will never be required of them. So go let them take another class in a field they care about.
Side note...I would have loved to take a decent art history class, but my professor was terrible. She insisted on telling us every single scrap of her accomplishments.She used a powerpoint, and it usually took her 5 minutes in the beginning of the class to figure out the computer. And she was tenured, so all of the bad reviews in the world wouldn't make her change her class. It was awful.
I think the mandated philosophy/ religious studies thing needs to stay. A lot of majors require you to read theoretical texts and these classes serve as a pretty good intro to that kind of reading. I think health is kind of stupid. We all had to take it in high school. We're all pretty much set in whatever habits we have, and will stick with them until we personally feel the need to change them. I don't think a class is going to do that. For example, the idea that smoking and drinking are bad for you has been drilled into our heads since preschool and people do it anyway.
Those are all of the required classes I can think of. I know there are more, but I guess none of those ones pissed me off enough to write about.
But tenure,that's something that irritates me. It's a great concept, and it provides job security, but if a professor is tenured and getting really bad evaluations and totally sucks on ratemyprofessor.com then something needs to be done. For example, one of my Spanish professors was at least five minutes late to almost every single class. She was never prepared or organized. She just wasn't a good professor, but her evaluations didn't matter because she was tenured. I'm not saying she should have been fired or something, but someone with authority needs to tell her she needs to change.
Oh, and also for some reason http://movie-ozone.com has put a link to my blog under "fellow bloggers," so go check them out. I put this in another post, but people continue to find my blog through them so here's a thank you.
This has happen five times. The thing keeps dying and coming back to life. The latest was today. Yesterday my mom told me Sid was probably not going to last the night. I said something to the effect of "meh" because this hamster has been living to spite me. He's already 3, and hamsters are only supposed to live to be 2. He's a bastard. He likes to draw blood. He's loud as hell at night and he hangs from his cage like a spider and gnaws on the metal with his horrible yellow snagletooth.
But anyway, my mom goes into my room this morning and the bastard is running around and most of his food is already gone from the time she refilled it last night (and she gives him A LOT of food). So, in effect, I am harboring a demon hamster in my room that is able to die and come back to life. He's going to do to me what Freddy Krueger did to Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street. One night, I'll be watching HBO then my bed will swallow me and blood will spout out of it and the damn hamster will be laughing.
Need a visual? Fast-forward to 0:36
I don't know why the Pirates of the Caribbean music is playing in the background in this youtube video.
Now for classes....
I always scoff when I'm forced to do self-reflective stuff for my classes...you know, the obligatory "describe yourself in a few words." Or the ever-infuriating, "where do you see yourself in five years." I hate those questions. I don't even know what I'm doing tomorrow, let alone five years from now, and I don't think sitting on the couch watching reruns of Sanford and Son counts as a good answer.
Also, for social media, I'm probably going to have to do some scrubbing of this blog. But I'd need a full time staff working round the clock to get every profanity and snide comment out of my posts. So we'll just have to see how that goes. Feministing's allowed to say fuck. Why can't I?
I'll probably just end up making a new blog or scrubbing my other blog on politics, because this blog has no real structure. I just post whatever I feel like talking about.
But I'm pretty confident that I'm going to love that class and gain useful stuff out of it. I've had the professor before and she's awesome.
Oh, and math. "Complete this sequence...3, 1902, 92, 200, 549, ?" I think an acceptable answer to these things should be "why the hell does anyone care."
I don't want to put down math. It's necessary for some people. And a person's accomplishments in math should never be diminished. Bad things would happen if our architects didn't know anything about geometry. But I'm an English and Journalism major. Percentages and basic arithmetic are all I really need. Ever. I can confidently say that, in my life, I will never have to rattle off the Fibonacci sequence.
I get the whole, "this is not about numbers, its about learning logic and problem solving skills," but the kind of logic I need care about is something that can be learned outside of math. I've already had to do this all through high school and before that. I've gotten all the problem-solving skills that I can out of it.
But I still think everyone in a traditional liberal arts college in the U.S. should be required to take English classes. No matter what you do, you need to be able to write and think critically about a text. A lot of people's grades would be trashed if they hadn't taken research writing and whatever the intro class is called. And English is one of the few departments that get really good student feedback from required courses.
In my major, I'll never need science either but at least they give you a range of things to pick from. I did Dynamic Earth and Exploring the Universe, AKA rocks and space. Little to no math, and it was stuff that I thought was interesting.
For people in a field that involves no math, I think they should be able to pick between taking a social science and a math. I would gladly have taken another politics class instead of math. And there's probably people that feel the opposite. The arts classes can be put in there too. Some people just don't care about the arts, and it will never be required of them. So go let them take another class in a field they care about.
Side note...I would have loved to take a decent art history class, but my professor was terrible. She insisted on telling us every single scrap of her accomplishments.She used a powerpoint, and it usually took her 5 minutes in the beginning of the class to figure out the computer. And she was tenured, so all of the bad reviews in the world wouldn't make her change her class. It was awful.
I think the mandated philosophy/ religious studies thing needs to stay. A lot of majors require you to read theoretical texts and these classes serve as a pretty good intro to that kind of reading. I think health is kind of stupid. We all had to take it in high school. We're all pretty much set in whatever habits we have, and will stick with them until we personally feel the need to change them. I don't think a class is going to do that. For example, the idea that smoking and drinking are bad for you has been drilled into our heads since preschool and people do it anyway.
Those are all of the required classes I can think of. I know there are more, but I guess none of those ones pissed me off enough to write about.
But tenure,that's something that irritates me. It's a great concept, and it provides job security, but if a professor is tenured and getting really bad evaluations and totally sucks on ratemyprofessor.com then something needs to be done. For example, one of my Spanish professors was at least five minutes late to almost every single class. She was never prepared or organized. She just wasn't a good professor, but her evaluations didn't matter because she was tenured. I'm not saying she should have been fired or something, but someone with authority needs to tell her she needs to change.
Oh, and also for some reason http://movie-ozone.com has put a link to my blog under "fellow bloggers," so go check them out. I put this in another post, but people continue to find my blog through them so here's a thank you.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
STEELERS WON!!!!
PITTSBURGH'S GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!
We won. We beat the Jets. I almost had a heart attack because it was getting too close. But we won. And I'm trying to catch my breath from jumping around and screaming.
NOW TO BEAT GREEN BAY!!!
WOOOOO!!!
Also, Rashard Mendenhall decided to dry hump Ben Roethlisberger in a celebratory fashion. Enjoy:
We won. We beat the Jets. I almost had a heart attack because it was getting too close. But we won. And I'm trying to catch my breath from jumping around and screaming.
NOW TO BEAT GREEN BAY!!!
WOOOOO!!!
Also, Rashard Mendenhall decided to dry hump Ben Roethlisberger in a celebratory fashion. Enjoy:
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Pens win, video that makes me cry and Steelers Nation
PENS WON!
That game almost caused me to reach through the screen and shake some guys. Really?! We're up by three for almost the entire game, they get two goals, there's 58 seconds left and we can't clear the damn puck?! We won, but barely. Dupis scored. I love that dude. In the Pens/Caps HBO thing he seems like such a good dad. He has a litter of adorable French-speaking children. I'm glad he's getting the recognition he deserves.
(Jordan Staal is like 75% better looking that his brother Eric. And age has nothing to do with it. Just so you know. )
Tanger did really well too. His skating and puck handling skills have improved a thousand percent since last year. He's turning into one of the stars and it's much deserved. He was signing at the Convention Center yesterday for their big car expo thing. I thought about driving home for it, but came to the conclusion that I would probably make an idiot of myself if I ever met him in real life. And I tend to have really high expectations for people and I get really pissed and hurt when they're not met.
I'm not saying that Tanger would be a jerk. He probably wouldn't. But I don't want there to be that chance. And I would be too scared to say anything to him because my heart would be pounding. I know he's just some guy, but well, he's not. He's a hockey player for my favorite team. He's badass. He's the best defenseman in the NHL. And to top it off, he's gorgeous and French. And he has a ton of fangirls. I like to think that I'm not as crazy as them, but I might be. I keep telling myself that if he wasn't such a great player and wasn't such a decent guy I wouldn't love him. I don't know how anyone can watch those videos of him talking about Luc Bourdon and not want to give him a hug.
For anyone that doesn't know, Luc Bourdon played for the Vancouver Canucks, and him and Letang had played together when they were younger. They were best friends. But Luc tragically died in a motorcycle accident in 2008 when his bike hit a tractor-trailer. Tanger was interviewed about it a lot and he missed game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals to attend the funeral. Before the accident, he was planning on buying a motorcycle but then decided against it. Those interviews are so sad. I can't imagine having to answer questions like that.
Here's another video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk84MCSirjU
Not that I love him because I feel bad, but because he's a real person (unlike Sean Avery) and he seems like a good guy when he's not skating at you and trying to rip your face off. But I'd take him like that too :D
So, anyway I will not be going to any signings. I will be blogging and screaming at the TV because I can't afford to go to a game. But I have met Troy Polamalu, my favorite football player. He was very sweet and humble and I love him a lot.
And, hey Byslma, I'd like to see more Engelland, por favor.
Steelers play the Jets tomorrow. This means I will be on edge all day and probably will get little to no work done. If they play this game like last week's I'm probably going to die and/or be completely inconsolable. And they will probably be able to hear me screaming at Ben 60 miles away in Pittsburgh.
There's a lot of people out there that don't care about sports. I can't really give you a good reason why you should care about sports. It's fun. It helps create a culture. It gives you something to talk about. But what impact do the Steelers winning have on my future? None really. But that's why it's so great. Millions of people delay reality in favor of something better every time their team plays. It's a worldwide opiate. I've blown people off because there was a game on. I've refused to leave the house because there's a game on. I don't know why. I just love it. And that's why it works...because it's stupid and wonderful and we all love it. It's being part of Steelers Nation, something that's way bigger than you and your lone Terrible Towel.
That game almost caused me to reach through the screen and shake some guys. Really?! We're up by three for almost the entire game, they get two goals, there's 58 seconds left and we can't clear the damn puck?! We won, but barely. Dupis scored. I love that dude. In the Pens/Caps HBO thing he seems like such a good dad. He has a litter of adorable French-speaking children. I'm glad he's getting the recognition he deserves.
(Jordan Staal is like 75% better looking that his brother Eric. And age has nothing to do with it. Just so you know. )
Tanger did really well too. His skating and puck handling skills have improved a thousand percent since last year. He's turning into one of the stars and it's much deserved. He was signing at the Convention Center yesterday for their big car expo thing. I thought about driving home for it, but came to the conclusion that I would probably make an idiot of myself if I ever met him in real life. And I tend to have really high expectations for people and I get really pissed and hurt when they're not met.
I'm not saying that Tanger would be a jerk. He probably wouldn't. But I don't want there to be that chance. And I would be too scared to say anything to him because my heart would be pounding. I know he's just some guy, but well, he's not. He's a hockey player for my favorite team. He's badass. He's the best defenseman in the NHL. And to top it off, he's gorgeous and French. And he has a ton of fangirls. I like to think that I'm not as crazy as them, but I might be. I keep telling myself that if he wasn't such a great player and wasn't such a decent guy I wouldn't love him. I don't know how anyone can watch those videos of him talking about Luc Bourdon and not want to give him a hug.
For anyone that doesn't know, Luc Bourdon played for the Vancouver Canucks, and him and Letang had played together when they were younger. They were best friends. But Luc tragically died in a motorcycle accident in 2008 when his bike hit a tractor-trailer. Tanger was interviewed about it a lot and he missed game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals to attend the funeral. Before the accident, he was planning on buying a motorcycle but then decided against it. Those interviews are so sad. I can't imagine having to answer questions like that.
Here's another video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk84MCSirjU
Not that I love him because I feel bad, but because he's a real person (unlike Sean Avery) and he seems like a good guy when he's not skating at you and trying to rip your face off. But I'd take him like that too :D
So, anyway I will not be going to any signings. I will be blogging and screaming at the TV because I can't afford to go to a game. But I have met Troy Polamalu, my favorite football player. He was very sweet and humble and I love him a lot.
And, hey Byslma, I'd like to see more Engelland, por favor.
Steelers play the Jets tomorrow. This means I will be on edge all day and probably will get little to no work done. If they play this game like last week's I'm probably going to die and/or be completely inconsolable. And they will probably be able to hear me screaming at Ben 60 miles away in Pittsburgh.
There's a lot of people out there that don't care about sports. I can't really give you a good reason why you should care about sports. It's fun. It helps create a culture. It gives you something to talk about. But what impact do the Steelers winning have on my future? None really. But that's why it's so great. Millions of people delay reality in favor of something better every time their team plays. It's a worldwide opiate. I've blown people off because there was a game on. I've refused to leave the house because there's a game on. I don't know why. I just love it. And that's why it works...because it's stupid and wonderful and we all love it. It's being part of Steelers Nation, something that's way bigger than you and your lone Terrible Towel.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Highlights of my catholic school career
I started this post a long time ago but forgot about it until today.
I went to a Catholic school from first through eighth grade. When I tell people this, they usually can't believe it. Here are some of the things that stick out during my Catholic school career:
1. My art teacher. She was an oddity and a nun. She had one glass eye and she constantly changed the story. One story was that she was riding her bike and something about her brother carrying a fork and somehow the fork ended up in her eye. Another story had something to do with being stranded on an island with a leopard. Still another was that it wasn't glass at all, but was just lazy.
There was this big controversy surrounding her because she had allegedly hit this girl in my class with a ruler. I still don't know what actually happened.
We used to say that, behind the big cabinets in one part of the art room, was her kiln that she would fry kids in.
It sounds mean now, but I was no fan of this woman for good reason. In 5th grade, a couple days after coming back from the two weeks I took off of school after the death of my father, she mentioned my dad's death in class. I started crying because (obviously) I wasn't over it. I was so pissed. I'm not the kind of girl that cries in front of people, especially not in class.
This was the same woman who told my class, before a big field trip to the city, that Pittsburgh would probably be attacked by terrorists, and that eventually were were all going to die because of nuclear particles that floated over the ocean from Russia. Cool, right?
2. Words we used for other words. There was this whole underground operation run by Hannah and other members of the populars to buy thongs for girls that were too scared to buy them in the presence of their parents. When we were talking about the operation, we called them "pencils" and not "thongs." It was really funny. I never participated because I couldn't, either then or now, understand the point of thongs, though I think their popularity of that time something to do with that Sysco song.
Me and Meg had this elaborate system of names for people, especially boys, so we could talk about them without them knowing. We were the only people that were allowed to know the system, so we had a pretty good time pissing off our friends while talking about Blue and Skye.
3. Making lists. I'm still pretty guilty of this, obviously. We had a list of inside jokes, of boys we liked, an entire notebook we made of basketball plays and it goes on.
I still have the inside jokes list laying around my room somewhere. It's funny. It was basically a list of things we would say that we thought were just hilarious at the time. Things that come to mind are Monty Python-related insults, "CELTICS!" and "Coogan."
I think I even have a list of somewhere of who my friends and me were all going to marry, had the world ended and we moved to another planet.
4. Making movies. In the middle school years, we had two different opportunities to make movies for classes. I think both were for the same teacher, who was amazing. She got me into creative writing in the first place. She really got me to care about English. She was great because she let us explore things, and she was younger and not as rigid as other teachers. She was a big fan of creative writing and engaging the text we were reading.
Anyway, the first movie that my friends and I put together was about super models and people dying from rabies (I think). I think a raccoon was involved because I remember having to go outside in the snow and throw a stuffed-animal cat (that kind of looked like a raccoon) at the window. The second movie was about a patient at a mental hospital going crazy, killing her doctors, escaping then lighting the place on fire. I vaguely remember coconuts and being paranoid of the cops because we were filming in front of an abandoned school. It also had some weird sequences where we filmed a dead rat on the sidewalk, I was running after Kyra with a sombrero and an eyeliner-drawn mustache and unibrow, and someone fell down the steps. We thought it was cinematic genius. We laughed really hard and the rest of the class, I'm sure, thought we were insane.
5. Music class. The music teacher position in my school was like defense against the dark arts at Hogwarts. We drove these women to insanity. The more memorable moments come from a teacher we'll call Mary. This one kid would get behind the piano and start hitting keys when she wasn't looking. Another would scream "bah bah bah" after the opening line of "One moment in time." He would get away with singing in this really goofy voice because he called it his "E flat." His twin brother would also be wrecking havcoc in some other way.
By far the most memorable event in music class was the nerf gun incident Two boys decided they wanted to sneak a nerf gun into music class and shoot someone or something with it. This was no ordinary nerf gun, it was a bazooka. It was hidden in a bag that was big enough for a person to fit in. They took it out, fired it once or twice at nothing, then shot it at people as they were coming in the room from the hall. The first was my friend in the leg, then next was another friend in the neck/shoulder. There was the whole big deal because it was, they said, bringing a concealed weapon to school. One boy got a month's suspension. I don't think anything happened to the other.
One of the two detentions I got while in Catholic school was in music class. I hated the song "Memory" so I refused to sing it. I wasn't rude about it or anything, I just didn't move my lips, the teacher yelled at me, I said I didn't want to sing because I didn't like the song, she yelled some more, asked me if I wanted a detention, I didn't answer, so she gave me one.
The music teacher was also my English teacher in, I think, 8th grade. She made us read Lord of the Flies and Tuck Everlasting, which I still hate with a passion.
6. Goofy detentions. We had some pretty ridiculous things to get detention for. If you were caught 3 times without your shirt tucked in, it was a detention. When I was younger, if you didn't do your homework you could get a detention. Other than the music one, I got a detention, from the principal, in 8th grade for calling my mom from in the coat closet to tell her I had basketball practice after school.
Girls could also get detention for wearing makeup, but it depended on the girl and if you were someone the teacher liked.
One boy got a detention for allegedly throwing a kickball at my principal. The story goes that somehow we ended up having a kickball outside, which was blasphemous because we weren't allowed to have anything that could possibly be used to replicate fun. The principal came outside and demanded the ball, and instead of walking over to hand it to her, he tried to throw it to her thinking she'd catch it. I guess she didn't, and so he got 2 weeks detention in her office where they would sit there in silence. The boy would wait till she left the room, then he's steal all of the candy on her desk and distribute it to kids in my class. Another boy got suspended for like 2 weeks when he was found to be the one who wrote something about one teacher "banging" another teacher on the boy's bathroom wall. Funny stuff.
7.Other WTF moments
One boy, in like 4th grade, stood up and said he didn't believe in god in religion class. The teacher was the art teacher from the first thing I wrote. He argued with her and made her cry. I didn't think teachers, especially my teachers, were capable of crying. I think he got suspended.
I was never shy about getting in fights with boys. They didn't make fun of me (at least to my face) often because they knew I could kick their asses. But once, in 8th grade, this formidable boy came over while I was reading an article about Axl Rose, took out a red marker, and scribbled all over the picture in the article. I looked at him, calmly got up, then started chasing him around the room. I cornered him, kicked him really hard in the shin and made him cry. Everybody laughed at him and they all thought he got what he deserved. Even the teacher.
In 5th grade, I was called to a room with my whole group of friends (minus one. the one we were supposedly bullying) to sit in front of the principal to be questioned about bullying a girl. This was one of the most terrifying things that had ever happened to me.
People were mean to her. But the people that were the meanest to her were not in the room. We were screamed at. I felt like a criminal. Some of us cried. And it was all because some monitor on the playground said we were being bullies. The only thing I was guilty of was not listening to her when she annoyed me. I do this to everybody. I don't think that makes me a bad person. But that evil principal made me feel so guilty for something that I didn't do that by the end of that episode I probably would have confessed to doing something I didn't do. And that, friends, is how mind control works.
I still shudder if I ever see that principal at the annual church fair. She's still the principal, and she's still every bit as terrifying.
8. Seventh grade science
It was always a treat to have male teachers because there weren't many and they were young. My favorite was a science teacher. He was from Iowa, served in the military, was obsessed with college sports and was super tall and kind of intimidating. But he was funny as hell, and he let us have a lot of fun in his class.
One assignment was to build a model of the sun. Then, we would display them and have a vote on whose the best was. It came down to my group's vs. the boys. We had a yellow umbrella, with different colored plastic-y things glued to it to look like rays. We drew on sunspots and put a light bulb behind the umbrella so that the colors would look cool, and it would look like it was glowing. The boys made a giant sun (like 4 feet by 4 feet) out of (i think gluing) two pieces of fabric together and stuffing it with newspaper. They drew on sunspots.
Well, we won. They were pissed. And I'm pretty sure they ended up destroying our sun in one way or another. But this win, for us, was like the Red Sox finally beating the Yankees. The boys basketball team (and they were all on it) was so much better than the girls team (that my whole group was on). Teachers favored the boys. They were able to act out in class without really being yelled at unless it was something huge. But we finally won.
Also in that class, me and meg were allegedly playing with the teacher's spinning chair while he was out of the room. We weren't. It was the same awful boy that I kicked for drawing on my Axl Rose picture. But when the teacher came in, we were standing near his desk and looked guilty. He gave us the option of either getting a detention or standing for a whole class period. We stood. Everyone cracked jokes about us the whole time.
9. Computer class
Our final project as 8th graders was to research, make a powerpoint and give a presentation about the saint whose name were were choosing to take for confirmation. This was the longest and most drawn out project in the history of the world.
If you're unfamiliar, confirmation's the sacrament that makes you a full member of the church. It's like renewing the vows your parents made for you at baptism. But I just wanted to see that crazy bishop guy with the tall hat.
But anyway, my saint was Saint Lydia. I can't tell you a single thing about her. I just liked the name because it was from Beetle-juice. It was painfully hard to find enough information to do a paper and presentation on someone as obscure as she was.
But computer class was easily the most competitive and most fun class when we were all younger. We got to play Simtown for a grade. Simtown was this game where you'd have to build a town and maintain it with limited resources. But there were cheats that we all used, and my teacher couldn't figure out why or how we were all so good at the game. There were also goofy cheats to make the pigs in the game turn into balloons and the mobile homes turn into toasters. It was so much fun. I think I might actually try to find that on Ebay somewhere.
And there was Oregon Trail. I don't think anyone ever made it to the end of the game. But I loved it.
10. The song heard 'round the world
We had Christmas concerts every year where we'd be forced to stand on a hot stage and sing songs. Each grade had their own song. Well, one year, ours was "How Great Thou Art." Most of the time, we'd get something fun to sing, but not that year. As a class we decided we were going to mess up the song. Some of us put on these goofy voices and messed it up. It was hilarious.
Well, the next day we were screamed at by several teachers. The most memorable was a woman who screamed, in this demonic voice, "HAVE YOU NO SHAME?!" Some of the cooler teachers thought it was funny. But a lot of them rambled about us being blasphemous.
There were also funny things like one of my meaner teachers (the have you no shame one) falling off a table when she tried to stand on it to switch off the heater. Another was the totally terrifying class on reproduction and having to get permission slips signed to learn about evolution. There was our Chinese new years celebration in second grade and covertly reading Harry Potter in fourth grade. There was all the drama of the Serra dances and the annual sports banquet.
I have to say I'd never send my kid to a Catholic school. But it did give me academic advantages in high school, because I went to a public high school. I'm no longer Catholic because as soon as I got out of that environment I knew I never wanted back in. I stopped going to church because I didn't agree with the way things were done. I started thinking for myself a lot more and trying to find answers to questions that I was too scared to ask there.
But anyway, I'm here. It sucked. But I'm still friends with two of the girls that I became friends with there, so there was a little good that came out of it.
I went to a Catholic school from first through eighth grade. When I tell people this, they usually can't believe it. Here are some of the things that stick out during my Catholic school career:
1. My art teacher. She was an oddity and a nun. She had one glass eye and she constantly changed the story. One story was that she was riding her bike and something about her brother carrying a fork and somehow the fork ended up in her eye. Another story had something to do with being stranded on an island with a leopard. Still another was that it wasn't glass at all, but was just lazy.
There was this big controversy surrounding her because she had allegedly hit this girl in my class with a ruler. I still don't know what actually happened.
We used to say that, behind the big cabinets in one part of the art room, was her kiln that she would fry kids in.
It sounds mean now, but I was no fan of this woman for good reason. In 5th grade, a couple days after coming back from the two weeks I took off of school after the death of my father, she mentioned my dad's death in class. I started crying because (obviously) I wasn't over it. I was so pissed. I'm not the kind of girl that cries in front of people, especially not in class.
This was the same woman who told my class, before a big field trip to the city, that Pittsburgh would probably be attacked by terrorists, and that eventually were were all going to die because of nuclear particles that floated over the ocean from Russia. Cool, right?
2. Words we used for other words. There was this whole underground operation run by Hannah and other members of the populars to buy thongs for girls that were too scared to buy them in the presence of their parents. When we were talking about the operation, we called them "pencils" and not "thongs." It was really funny. I never participated because I couldn't, either then or now, understand the point of thongs, though I think their popularity of that time something to do with that Sysco song.
Me and Meg had this elaborate system of names for people, especially boys, so we could talk about them without them knowing. We were the only people that were allowed to know the system, so we had a pretty good time pissing off our friends while talking about Blue and Skye.
3. Making lists. I'm still pretty guilty of this, obviously. We had a list of inside jokes, of boys we liked, an entire notebook we made of basketball plays and it goes on.
I still have the inside jokes list laying around my room somewhere. It's funny. It was basically a list of things we would say that we thought were just hilarious at the time. Things that come to mind are Monty Python-related insults, "CELTICS!" and "Coogan."
I think I even have a list of somewhere of who my friends and me were all going to marry, had the world ended and we moved to another planet.
4. Making movies. In the middle school years, we had two different opportunities to make movies for classes. I think both were for the same teacher, who was amazing. She got me into creative writing in the first place. She really got me to care about English. She was great because she let us explore things, and she was younger and not as rigid as other teachers. She was a big fan of creative writing and engaging the text we were reading.
Anyway, the first movie that my friends and I put together was about super models and people dying from rabies (I think). I think a raccoon was involved because I remember having to go outside in the snow and throw a stuffed-animal cat (that kind of looked like a raccoon) at the window. The second movie was about a patient at a mental hospital going crazy, killing her doctors, escaping then lighting the place on fire. I vaguely remember coconuts and being paranoid of the cops because we were filming in front of an abandoned school. It also had some weird sequences where we filmed a dead rat on the sidewalk, I was running after Kyra with a sombrero and an eyeliner-drawn mustache and unibrow, and someone fell down the steps. We thought it was cinematic genius. We laughed really hard and the rest of the class, I'm sure, thought we were insane.
5. Music class. The music teacher position in my school was like defense against the dark arts at Hogwarts. We drove these women to insanity. The more memorable moments come from a teacher we'll call Mary. This one kid would get behind the piano and start hitting keys when she wasn't looking. Another would scream "bah bah bah" after the opening line of "One moment in time." He would get away with singing in this really goofy voice because he called it his "E flat." His twin brother would also be wrecking havcoc in some other way.
By far the most memorable event in music class was the nerf gun incident Two boys decided they wanted to sneak a nerf gun into music class and shoot someone or something with it. This was no ordinary nerf gun, it was a bazooka. It was hidden in a bag that was big enough for a person to fit in. They took it out, fired it once or twice at nothing, then shot it at people as they were coming in the room from the hall. The first was my friend in the leg, then next was another friend in the neck/shoulder. There was the whole big deal because it was, they said, bringing a concealed weapon to school. One boy got a month's suspension. I don't think anything happened to the other.
One of the two detentions I got while in Catholic school was in music class. I hated the song "Memory" so I refused to sing it. I wasn't rude about it or anything, I just didn't move my lips, the teacher yelled at me, I said I didn't want to sing because I didn't like the song, she yelled some more, asked me if I wanted a detention, I didn't answer, so she gave me one.
The music teacher was also my English teacher in, I think, 8th grade. She made us read Lord of the Flies and Tuck Everlasting, which I still hate with a passion.
6. Goofy detentions. We had some pretty ridiculous things to get detention for. If you were caught 3 times without your shirt tucked in, it was a detention. When I was younger, if you didn't do your homework you could get a detention. Other than the music one, I got a detention, from the principal, in 8th grade for calling my mom from in the coat closet to tell her I had basketball practice after school.
Girls could also get detention for wearing makeup, but it depended on the girl and if you were someone the teacher liked.
One boy got a detention for allegedly throwing a kickball at my principal. The story goes that somehow we ended up having a kickball outside, which was blasphemous because we weren't allowed to have anything that could possibly be used to replicate fun. The principal came outside and demanded the ball, and instead of walking over to hand it to her, he tried to throw it to her thinking she'd catch it. I guess she didn't, and so he got 2 weeks detention in her office where they would sit there in silence. The boy would wait till she left the room, then he's steal all of the candy on her desk and distribute it to kids in my class. Another boy got suspended for like 2 weeks when he was found to be the one who wrote something about one teacher "banging" another teacher on the boy's bathroom wall. Funny stuff.
7.Other WTF moments
One boy, in like 4th grade, stood up and said he didn't believe in god in religion class. The teacher was the art teacher from the first thing I wrote. He argued with her and made her cry. I didn't think teachers, especially my teachers, were capable of crying. I think he got suspended.
I was never shy about getting in fights with boys. They didn't make fun of me (at least to my face) often because they knew I could kick their asses. But once, in 8th grade, this formidable boy came over while I was reading an article about Axl Rose, took out a red marker, and scribbled all over the picture in the article. I looked at him, calmly got up, then started chasing him around the room. I cornered him, kicked him really hard in the shin and made him cry. Everybody laughed at him and they all thought he got what he deserved. Even the teacher.
In 5th grade, I was called to a room with my whole group of friends (minus one. the one we were supposedly bullying) to sit in front of the principal to be questioned about bullying a girl. This was one of the most terrifying things that had ever happened to me.
People were mean to her. But the people that were the meanest to her were not in the room. We were screamed at. I felt like a criminal. Some of us cried. And it was all because some monitor on the playground said we were being bullies. The only thing I was guilty of was not listening to her when she annoyed me. I do this to everybody. I don't think that makes me a bad person. But that evil principal made me feel so guilty for something that I didn't do that by the end of that episode I probably would have confessed to doing something I didn't do. And that, friends, is how mind control works.
I still shudder if I ever see that principal at the annual church fair. She's still the principal, and she's still every bit as terrifying.
8. Seventh grade science
It was always a treat to have male teachers because there weren't many and they were young. My favorite was a science teacher. He was from Iowa, served in the military, was obsessed with college sports and was super tall and kind of intimidating. But he was funny as hell, and he let us have a lot of fun in his class.
One assignment was to build a model of the sun. Then, we would display them and have a vote on whose the best was. It came down to my group's vs. the boys. We had a yellow umbrella, with different colored plastic-y things glued to it to look like rays. We drew on sunspots and put a light bulb behind the umbrella so that the colors would look cool, and it would look like it was glowing. The boys made a giant sun (like 4 feet by 4 feet) out of (i think gluing) two pieces of fabric together and stuffing it with newspaper. They drew on sunspots.
Well, we won. They were pissed. And I'm pretty sure they ended up destroying our sun in one way or another. But this win, for us, was like the Red Sox finally beating the Yankees. The boys basketball team (and they were all on it) was so much better than the girls team (that my whole group was on). Teachers favored the boys. They were able to act out in class without really being yelled at unless it was something huge. But we finally won.
Also in that class, me and meg were allegedly playing with the teacher's spinning chair while he was out of the room. We weren't. It was the same awful boy that I kicked for drawing on my Axl Rose picture. But when the teacher came in, we were standing near his desk and looked guilty. He gave us the option of either getting a detention or standing for a whole class period. We stood. Everyone cracked jokes about us the whole time.
9. Computer class
Our final project as 8th graders was to research, make a powerpoint and give a presentation about the saint whose name were were choosing to take for confirmation. This was the longest and most drawn out project in the history of the world.
If you're unfamiliar, confirmation's the sacrament that makes you a full member of the church. It's like renewing the vows your parents made for you at baptism. But I just wanted to see that crazy bishop guy with the tall hat.
But anyway, my saint was Saint Lydia. I can't tell you a single thing about her. I just liked the name because it was from Beetle-juice. It was painfully hard to find enough information to do a paper and presentation on someone as obscure as she was.
But computer class was easily the most competitive and most fun class when we were all younger. We got to play Simtown for a grade. Simtown was this game where you'd have to build a town and maintain it with limited resources. But there were cheats that we all used, and my teacher couldn't figure out why or how we were all so good at the game. There were also goofy cheats to make the pigs in the game turn into balloons and the mobile homes turn into toasters. It was so much fun. I think I might actually try to find that on Ebay somewhere.
And there was Oregon Trail. I don't think anyone ever made it to the end of the game. But I loved it.
10. The song heard 'round the world
We had Christmas concerts every year where we'd be forced to stand on a hot stage and sing songs. Each grade had their own song. Well, one year, ours was "How Great Thou Art." Most of the time, we'd get something fun to sing, but not that year. As a class we decided we were going to mess up the song. Some of us put on these goofy voices and messed it up. It was hilarious.
Well, the next day we were screamed at by several teachers. The most memorable was a woman who screamed, in this demonic voice, "HAVE YOU NO SHAME?!" Some of the cooler teachers thought it was funny. But a lot of them rambled about us being blasphemous.
There were also funny things like one of my meaner teachers (the have you no shame one) falling off a table when she tried to stand on it to switch off the heater. Another was the totally terrifying class on reproduction and having to get permission slips signed to learn about evolution. There was our Chinese new years celebration in second grade and covertly reading Harry Potter in fourth grade. There was all the drama of the Serra dances and the annual sports banquet.
I have to say I'd never send my kid to a Catholic school. But it did give me academic advantages in high school, because I went to a public high school. I'm no longer Catholic because as soon as I got out of that environment I knew I never wanted back in. I stopped going to church because I didn't agree with the way things were done. I started thinking for myself a lot more and trying to find answers to questions that I was too scared to ask there.
But anyway, I'm here. It sucked. But I'm still friends with two of the girls that I became friends with there, so there was a little good that came out of it.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Vegetarians and hunters
So, I've been a vegetarian for somewhere like 7 years. A lot of people ask me why, and I tend to give a lot of different answers because I don't have just one reason. When they ask, it almost seems like a gauge of my sanity, like they're daring me to go off into a rant about "the MAN" and the atrocities animals face in all of their gory detail.
I don't like doing that. Why? Because I don't think guilting and scaring people into doing something isn't a good way to spread your ideas. I think you have to mention something that is interesting, but not condemning or damning to the general public, so that it begins the conversation. You have to give people the tools to figure it out for themselves.
Truthfully, the first time I tried vegetarianism (7th grade), it was because Benji Madden was a vegetarian and I thought it was cool. I failed because (after a particularly stressful basketball game) I forgot I was a vegetarian. My mom offered me a chicken nugget from McDonalds and I took it. I then remembered, felt bad, but stopped being a veg because I missed gyros and chicken nuggets.
I think a couple months later, after seeing one of those disgusting PETA videos, I became a vegetarian again. But I've stuck with it because it's something I care about. I'm not going to go around pouring red paint on people. Sorry. I'm all about protesting, but you have to do it in a way that furthers your cause, not that makes you look like a crazy person.
I've kept with vegetarianism because I don't see the point in eating animals when we don't have to. Why cause pain when you don't have to? I don't think killing anything (except stinkbugs, centipedes and mosquitoes. They can go to hell) should be taken lightly.
People may have the power to reason, but I don't think that separates us from animals. I think that in trying very hard to become "civilized" we can show how truly like animals we are. Want a funny but true example? The fountain scene from Mean Girls. Furthermore, I think my hamster is more intelligent than some people I've met at IUP.
I don't know how we can kill animals (or people for that matter) without identifying with their pain. We also have to realize that nature was around before us and it will be around after us. We have to learn to work with it, not try to conquer it, and to leave it alone when necessary. Bad things happen when we don't.
I have less of a problem with humanely getting your meat, but most people just don't care how they get their meat. I'm not going to try to gross you out because I don't think that's an effective way of getting people on board. I guess I'm just saying think about it. It's really not that hard. And if you find reasons that go against mine, that's fine. At least you're thinking about it.
I've tried going vegan, but it's too hard to do at school or when I'm at home for break. I'd have to be able to shop and cook for myself. I have no money and no oven. So, until then, I'll be enjoying pizza and ice cream.
.....
Now for hunting....because hunting's a big thing in Indiana, and in Pennsylvania in general.
I'm not okay with hunting because it's a business. It makes killing a business. You're not doing it for food, because there are all kind of other ways to get your food. So why?
I've heard a lot from my step-dad about overpopulation, that allowing deer to overpopulate creates a hazard for drivers. This is kind of true. You can't drive anywhere in Western PA without seeing dead deer on the side of the road. Certain species are overpopulated. But let nature take care of it. Nature always seeks to maintain balance, and it does a pretty good job most of the time. Drive slower. Pay better attention. And if you don't want to wait it out till the population balances itself, start humanely sterilizing the females of that species. Hunting them is short-term and largely ineffective.
Some overpopulation is artificial because people are making money off of hunters staying in the region. Animals are being born to be killed. Some hunters only wound animals, then they hobble around in pain before dying. You can even pay to essentially have animals put in front of you to shoot. There's also the whole gun control issue. Is it really worth the risk of having a gun in your home, especially if you have kids?
I just don't understand how you can see a beautiful thriving animal and thing "Hmmm, that would be great on a dinner plate." Or "That would look great on my wall."
I'm looking at you Sarah Palin.
I get the "thrill of the chase" crap, but go somewhere and shoot paint balls. Don't kill animals for fun. I understand killing animals as a food source in places where the access to food is limited. But I don't think anywhere, in this day and age, should have to deal with food shortages. It's insane that people that work hard can't buy bread and people like Paris Hilton can buy thousand dollar only-half-covering-her-ass dresses. But that gets into the whole mindblowing realm of how we allow people to be in poverty. That's a post for another day.
I'm probably going to do more posts about nature and such because I'm in an environmental lit class right now and things are going to come up that legitimately piss me off.
As a side note...there is always at least one crazy person in all of the English major classes I've ever taken. Crazy in the sense that they have no idea what they're talking about, (not just I don't agree with them. Like, they are factually wrong) or they know what they're talking about and want to make sure everyone else in the room can see how smart they are. I don't care if you argue with a professor or don't like one of the readings, but know what you're talking about.
Hasta la vista.
I don't like doing that. Why? Because I don't think guilting and scaring people into doing something isn't a good way to spread your ideas. I think you have to mention something that is interesting, but not condemning or damning to the general public, so that it begins the conversation. You have to give people the tools to figure it out for themselves.
Truthfully, the first time I tried vegetarianism (7th grade), it was because Benji Madden was a vegetarian and I thought it was cool. I failed because (after a particularly stressful basketball game) I forgot I was a vegetarian. My mom offered me a chicken nugget from McDonalds and I took it. I then remembered, felt bad, but stopped being a veg because I missed gyros and chicken nuggets.
I think a couple months later, after seeing one of those disgusting PETA videos, I became a vegetarian again. But I've stuck with it because it's something I care about. I'm not going to go around pouring red paint on people. Sorry. I'm all about protesting, but you have to do it in a way that furthers your cause, not that makes you look like a crazy person.
I've kept with vegetarianism because I don't see the point in eating animals when we don't have to. Why cause pain when you don't have to? I don't think killing anything (except stinkbugs, centipedes and mosquitoes. They can go to hell) should be taken lightly.
People may have the power to reason, but I don't think that separates us from animals. I think that in trying very hard to become "civilized" we can show how truly like animals we are. Want a funny but true example? The fountain scene from Mean Girls. Furthermore, I think my hamster is more intelligent than some people I've met at IUP.
I don't know how we can kill animals (or people for that matter) without identifying with their pain. We also have to realize that nature was around before us and it will be around after us. We have to learn to work with it, not try to conquer it, and to leave it alone when necessary. Bad things happen when we don't.
I have less of a problem with humanely getting your meat, but most people just don't care how they get their meat. I'm not going to try to gross you out because I don't think that's an effective way of getting people on board. I guess I'm just saying think about it. It's really not that hard. And if you find reasons that go against mine, that's fine. At least you're thinking about it.
I've tried going vegan, but it's too hard to do at school or when I'm at home for break. I'd have to be able to shop and cook for myself. I have no money and no oven. So, until then, I'll be enjoying pizza and ice cream.
.....
Now for hunting....because hunting's a big thing in Indiana, and in Pennsylvania in general.
I'm not okay with hunting because it's a business. It makes killing a business. You're not doing it for food, because there are all kind of other ways to get your food. So why?
I've heard a lot from my step-dad about overpopulation, that allowing deer to overpopulate creates a hazard for drivers. This is kind of true. You can't drive anywhere in Western PA without seeing dead deer on the side of the road. Certain species are overpopulated. But let nature take care of it. Nature always seeks to maintain balance, and it does a pretty good job most of the time. Drive slower. Pay better attention. And if you don't want to wait it out till the population balances itself, start humanely sterilizing the females of that species. Hunting them is short-term and largely ineffective.
Some overpopulation is artificial because people are making money off of hunters staying in the region. Animals are being born to be killed. Some hunters only wound animals, then they hobble around in pain before dying. You can even pay to essentially have animals put in front of you to shoot. There's also the whole gun control issue. Is it really worth the risk of having a gun in your home, especially if you have kids?
I just don't understand how you can see a beautiful thriving animal and thing "Hmmm, that would be great on a dinner plate." Or "That would look great on my wall."
I'm looking at you Sarah Palin.
I get the "thrill of the chase" crap, but go somewhere and shoot paint balls. Don't kill animals for fun. I understand killing animals as a food source in places where the access to food is limited. But I don't think anywhere, in this day and age, should have to deal with food shortages. It's insane that people that work hard can't buy bread and people like Paris Hilton can buy thousand dollar only-half-covering-her-ass dresses. But that gets into the whole mindblowing realm of how we allow people to be in poverty. That's a post for another day.
I'm probably going to do more posts about nature and such because I'm in an environmental lit class right now and things are going to come up that legitimately piss me off.
As a side note...there is always at least one crazy person in all of the English major classes I've ever taken. Crazy in the sense that they have no idea what they're talking about, (not just I don't agree with them. Like, they are factually wrong) or they know what they're talking about and want to make sure everyone else in the room can see how smart they are. I don't care if you argue with a professor or don't like one of the readings, but know what you're talking about.
Hasta la vista.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
I was going to do a post featuring an open letter to Geno from a hockey puck because he hasn't been scoring lately. But everything I write starts to sound really dirty and I begin to laugh maniacally.
Ahem. Anyway...
So, because I'm taking a class on social media and I think Twitter will be involved, I've been going through my tweets and deleting the stupid ones.
I've decided to post some of the tweets that I came across on my account that I found kinda funny. I included the dates because some of them are necessary.
"Drunken carnivores with explosives." "Just turned 20. Time to start investing in a power chair and a boxed set of Murder She Wrote." Thank you Google. When I type sixties mucis you know I mean sixties music.
I wonder if people who have annoying laughs know that they have annoying laughs."
"How would Alex Mack's powers work if she were standing on top of a Sham-wow?" #SometimesIwonder
"Dear Superbowl commercials, Women can watch and understand football, drink beer and drive fast cars. Thought you should know."
Half-naked picture of Craig Owens in my mailbox. Today was a good day." Jerry Springer in HD. I feel like this should be illegal or something." Free the leash kids!" One of the only constants in life is drunk, obnoxious freshmen."
"I need to add "taking a three hour history class full of freshmen" on my list of poor life choices."
"Declaring war on stinkbugs and laughing at the hover-round commercial."
"Lets go Pens!! Kill those filthy thugs!! ...p.s. Hartnell if you hurt my Letang I will personally rip your face off and wear in on Halloween
"Slowly realizing that a lot of the food I buy is marketed to toddlers."
"For some reason when I picture British people listening to country music, I start to laugh."
"When did Lieutenant Dan start working for Golden Corral?"
"Jeff Reed was cut. No Sheetz is safe. #Steelers"
"If Black Friday was a person, I'd sucker punch them in the face."
"Sarah Palin has still not been eaten by a polar bear #2010disappointments"
"#ThingsSomePeopleDontHave Sense. And so they listen to Nickleback." Sitting at the library doing homework. Listening to kids talk about how cats have super powers."
Also for some reason http://movie-ozone.com has put a link to my blog under "fellow bloggers," so go check them out.
Ahem. Anyway...
So, because I'm taking a class on social media and I think Twitter will be involved, I've been going through my tweets and deleting the stupid ones.
I've decided to post some of the tweets that I came across on my account that I found kinda funny. I included the dates because some of them are necessary.
"Drunken carnivores with explosives." "Just turned 20. Time to start investing in a power chair and a boxed set of Murder She Wrote." Thank you Google. When I type sixties mucis you know I mean sixties music.
I wonder if people who have annoying laughs know that they have annoying laughs."
"How would Alex Mack's powers work if she were standing on top of a Sham-wow?" #SometimesIwonder
"Dear Superbowl commercials, Women can watch and understand football, drink beer and drive fast cars. Thought you should know."
Half-naked picture of Craig Owens in my mailbox. Today was a good day." Jerry Springer in HD. I feel like this should be illegal or something." Free the leash kids!" One of the only constants in life is drunk, obnoxious freshmen."
"I need to add "taking a three hour history class full of freshmen" on my list of poor life choices."
"Declaring war on stinkbugs and laughing at the hover-round commercial."
"Lets go Pens!! Kill those filthy thugs!! ...p.s. Hartnell if you hurt my Letang I will personally rip your face off and wear in on Halloween
"Slowly realizing that a lot of the food I buy is marketed to toddlers."
"For some reason when I picture British people listening to country music, I start to laugh."
"When did Lieutenant Dan start working for Golden Corral?"
"Jeff Reed was cut. No Sheetz is safe. #Steelers"
"If Black Friday was a person, I'd sucker punch them in the face."
"Sarah Palin has still not been eaten by a polar bear #2010disappointments"
"#ThingsSomePeopleDontHave Sense. And so they listen to Nickleback." Sitting at the library doing homework. Listening to kids talk about how cats have super powers."
Also for some reason http://movie-ozone.com has put a link to my blog under "fellow bloggers," so go check them out.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
NARAL and Sarah Palin
I think I'm forsaking my blog that's about politics since I post stuff on here most of the time, so stay tuned for rants about Sarah Palin and abortion legislation.
Okay, lets do something about this:
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/government-and-you/state-governments/state-profiles/pennsylvania.html
If you're not from PA, here's other state profiles.
NARAL, a pro-choice organization, had given a grade to each state based on their pro-choice legislation. Pennsylvania has an F. That's ridiculous. There is nothing more basic that a person's right to their own body.
A person is not a person until they can function outside the mother's body. Until then, they are a sea monkey. Unplanned pregnancies where the mother or the family are unable to provide for a child should not be forced to come to term. Adoption is great, but how many kids go without being adopted, or are adopted into bad homes or spend their lives in overcrowded foster care. Children that go through foster care are at high risk to have mental issues, eventually be homeless and engage in high-risk often illegal activity. It's insane to pass legislation to add to a population whose quality of life is shit. If you want to be high and mighty and profess that life begins at conception, then don't ever complain about people sucking up welfare. Don't ever talk about the "golden rule" and do something about the phrase "sanctity of life" because you clearly don't care about a child that's born into dire circumstances.
So, onto Sarah Palin. This is older news, but Palin decided to incorporate "blood libel" into her political rhetoric last week. In case you aren't familiar with the term, check it out here. She's equating the bad press she's been getting in lieu of the shooting in Arizona to the persecution of the Jews.
Yeah, wtf right?
Her particular brand of crazy is quite spectacular to behold. She's a sociopath of the highest degree.
I'm not going to say that Sarah Palin and her friends are responsible for the shooting. From most reports, the shooter was a-political. But she does incorporate some heavy gun-related rhetoric into her speeches. One of the poster-boys of the Tea Party is Ted Nuget (the dude that sings Cat Scratch Fever) whose collection of guns is rivaled only by the military. The Tea Party was in support of bringing guns to political rallies.
I don't know about you, but when I see anyone with a gun I tense up a bit. They're not for amateurs. They're not toys or jewelery or something made to enhance the badassness of the beholder. They're made for killing people and animals. And if they're not being used to that purpose, or in preparation for that purpose, why the hell do you own one? And why the hell do are you intent on taking it to rallies unless you intend to kill something?
Sarah Palin also made some stupid comment about how the founding fathers had duels when they couldn't agree politically (think Burr vs. Hamilton) and that was commonly held as a calm political climate. Umm, WTF. Our country had just come out of the Revolutionary War, the government wasn't sure of what its place was or how it was going to operate. It wasn't calm. And duels were an act of stupid masculinity and violence of the times at work. Don't glorify it.
AHHH. I'm going to go get dinner then read some Vonnegut. Pens come on at 7. Adios.
Pens won!!! They beat the Red Wings 4-1. You can't even tell Staalsy was out for any amount of time. He's back and he's spectacular. Kuni also got a goal to add to his collection. Cookie did too. And Connor got his first career goal on a penalty shot because some Red Winger thought it would be cool to hook him.
Tanger also had a pretty funny penalty. He flat-out dove in front of a guy and tripped him. But it's cool. :D
Okay, lets do something about this:
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/government-and-you/state-governments/state-profiles/pennsylvania.html
If you're not from PA, here's other state profiles.
NARAL, a pro-choice organization, had given a grade to each state based on their pro-choice legislation. Pennsylvania has an F. That's ridiculous. There is nothing more basic that a person's right to their own body.
A person is not a person until they can function outside the mother's body. Until then, they are a sea monkey. Unplanned pregnancies where the mother or the family are unable to provide for a child should not be forced to come to term. Adoption is great, but how many kids go without being adopted, or are adopted into bad homes or spend their lives in overcrowded foster care. Children that go through foster care are at high risk to have mental issues, eventually be homeless and engage in high-risk often illegal activity. It's insane to pass legislation to add to a population whose quality of life is shit. If you want to be high and mighty and profess that life begins at conception, then don't ever complain about people sucking up welfare. Don't ever talk about the "golden rule" and do something about the phrase "sanctity of life" because you clearly don't care about a child that's born into dire circumstances.
So, onto Sarah Palin. This is older news, but Palin decided to incorporate "blood libel" into her political rhetoric last week. In case you aren't familiar with the term, check it out here. She's equating the bad press she's been getting in lieu of the shooting in Arizona to the persecution of the Jews.
Yeah, wtf right?
Her particular brand of crazy is quite spectacular to behold. She's a sociopath of the highest degree.
I'm not going to say that Sarah Palin and her friends are responsible for the shooting. From most reports, the shooter was a-political. But she does incorporate some heavy gun-related rhetoric into her speeches. One of the poster-boys of the Tea Party is Ted Nuget (the dude that sings Cat Scratch Fever) whose collection of guns is rivaled only by the military. The Tea Party was in support of bringing guns to political rallies.
I don't know about you, but when I see anyone with a gun I tense up a bit. They're not for amateurs. They're not toys or jewelery or something made to enhance the badassness of the beholder. They're made for killing people and animals. And if they're not being used to that purpose, or in preparation for that purpose, why the hell do you own one? And why the hell do are you intent on taking it to rallies unless you intend to kill something?
Sarah Palin also made some stupid comment about how the founding fathers had duels when they couldn't agree politically (think Burr vs. Hamilton) and that was commonly held as a calm political climate. Umm, WTF. Our country had just come out of the Revolutionary War, the government wasn't sure of what its place was or how it was going to operate. It wasn't calm. And duels were an act of stupid masculinity and violence of the times at work. Don't glorify it.
AHHH. I'm going to go get dinner then read some Vonnegut. Pens come on at 7. Adios.
Pens won!!! They beat the Red Wings 4-1. You can't even tell Staalsy was out for any amount of time. He's back and he's spectacular. Kuni also got a goal to add to his collection. Cookie did too. And Connor got his first career goal on a penalty shot because some Red Winger thought it would be cool to hook him.
Tanger also had a pretty funny penalty. He flat-out dove in front of a guy and tripped him. But it's cool. :D
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Belle Chevelure
Are you ready for this?
Begin Letang sexhair montage:
This one's copyrighted, but it's gorgeous: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pensuniverse_nicole/4536080348/
I'm such a creep. Forreal. He has his own folder on my computer.
Begin Letang sexhair montage:
This one's copyrighted, but it's gorgeous: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pensuniverse_nicole/4536080348/
I'm such a creep. Forreal. He has his own folder on my computer.
New Years Res and Winter Classic
This is going to be a serious shift from my last post. It happened. I dealt. The viewings and the funeral are happening for the next three days, so I'll be immersed in all of it. I'd rather not think about it.
So anyway,
My new years resolution is to get through all of the books that keep accumulating in my room, plus the books I've downloaded to a kindle app from Amazon. I am not buying any more books until I get through this list. I keep buying books, saying I'll read them, forgetting, then buying more books.
There are a lot on here that I've read in anthologies for classes or started but never finished. Some, like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I just bought a couple days ago. There are some I read when I was younger that I want to revisit. And, for some reason, I have a hard time reading books other people give to me. No matter how interesting they are, if they come from someone else they tend to get put at the back of the line.
Stars mean they were given to me by other people.
Here's the list:
1. Poems and Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
3. Paradise Lost by Milton (Probably not going to get through this one)
4. The Interpretation of Dreams by Freud
5. Le Miserables by Hugo
6. Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
7. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
8. A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens
9. White Fang by Jack London
10. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
11. A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway
12. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
13. We The Living by Ayn Rand
14. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
15. All of the Chronicles of Narnia books
16. Selected Essays by George Orwell
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
19. Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut*
20. After Dark by Haruki Murakami
21. A Freewheelin' Time by Suze Rotolo*
22. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thomson
23. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
24. Some biography of Heath Ledger*
25. Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts by David Baggett and Shawn E. Klein*
26. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNiel and Gillian McCain
27. We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists edited by Melody Berger
28. Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis*
29. 1915: The Death of Innocence by Lyn Macdonald
30. Bhagavid Gita (Some hippie-looking grad-student in the oak grove guilted me into buying this from them. A "donation" of $10)
31. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
32. The Woman's Bible by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
33. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
34. Giant Edgar Allen Poe book*
35. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters
36. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
37. Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
On Kindle:
1. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4.Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
6. The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
7. The Sea Wolf by Jack London
8. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Nietzsche
9. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
10. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
11. Great Expectations by Dickens
I should be getting Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh and Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel in the mail in a few days. I also need to finish Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I've been like halfway through it for months and I keep forgetting about it. They'll all be added to the list.
I feel a massive headache coming in my future, especially with all of the philosophy stuff and Milton. I think I'll save Emerson till the summer so I can sit down with a clear head and try to get through that huge text. I'm going to start with Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut now because I know I'll like it. I really hope I get through all of this, but if I get at least 1/3 of the way into something and I don't like it, I'm not reading it.
In other news, the Winter Classic was terrible. My boys lost 3-1 to the damn Caps. Their shots went in. They made less dumb mistakes. Their goalie was better. And so they won. Damn them anyway.
I was yelling so bad by the end of the game that all of my dogs migrated upstairs. Even the deaf one. Earlier in the game, I almost jumped through the tv to strangle Semin for hitting Tanger in the face with that puck. Not that it was his fault. I was just pissed.
Apparently Tanger's a female fan favorite, and it's easy to see why. Twitter was blowing up with girls worried about his face.
...The loss made me sore, but NBC just pissed me off. Whoever was directing the cameras should be fired and NBC should be banned from covering sports.
They were doing this awful overhead and panning shots during the game that made me want to drive down to Heinz Field and strangle somebody. You don't pull that during the game. I'm cool with overhead and creative camera work when there's a timeout or something, to showcase the venue and the city, but don't ever EVER do it during the game. You can't shoot hockey like it's football. It's faster. There's a lot more going on. The playing field is smaller. The object everyone's worried about is much tinier and moves much faster. More than anything though, it was the high overhead shots that were pissing me off, especially during the second Caps goal and one of the Pens power plays. I couldn't even see what was going on because the angle was terrible. Never let them cover sports again.
And I'm sick of people calling Crosby a crybaby. He's interfered with constantly because players know that when he gets the puck he's going to make a play. I'd be pissed too. He also doesn't fight all the time, so when guys give him the hard hits they give him, he doesn't do much retaliating. This isn't because he's a pansy or anything, it's because he's just not that kind of player.
He has his bitch fits at times, I'll admit. He gets frustrated. But so does everyone else. We're only talking about Crosby because he's always in the spotlight. So STFU.
And so what if he's not as badass as Ovie? Who the hell cares. You guys can go have your Russian with the missing teeth and the scraggly hair who's a good player, but can't make shots, and I'll keep clean-cut Crosby who has 32 goals this season, the most goals in the NHL. And he's young, he'll grow up. Plus, when we need a badass we have Cooke and some other guys that are more than ready to answer anyone who's talking shit. :D
Oh, and I'm really happy to see Staal playing again. He did really well.
By the way, my Steelers beat the hell out of the Browns today. 41-9.
And here's a GIF of Ovie tripping over nothing, from http://30fps.mocksession.com/OVIEFALLDOWN.gif Enjoy.
Also, the tongue picture from the preseason Letang vs Clavert fight on 9/25. Just because that fight made me supremely happy, especially the way he skated away with his sex hair and his tongue sticking out. I'm such a creep.
You can check out the fight here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI1Sl6tun4Y
So anyway,
My new years resolution is to get through all of the books that keep accumulating in my room, plus the books I've downloaded to a kindle app from Amazon. I am not buying any more books until I get through this list. I keep buying books, saying I'll read them, forgetting, then buying more books.
There are a lot on here that I've read in anthologies for classes or started but never finished. Some, like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I just bought a couple days ago. There are some I read when I was younger that I want to revisit. And, for some reason, I have a hard time reading books other people give to me. No matter how interesting they are, if they come from someone else they tend to get put at the back of the line.
Stars mean they were given to me by other people.
Here's the list:
1. Poems and Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
3. Paradise Lost by Milton (Probably not going to get through this one)
4. The Interpretation of Dreams by Freud
5. Le Miserables by Hugo
6. Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
7. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
8. A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens
9. White Fang by Jack London
10. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
11. A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway
12. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
13. We The Living by Ayn Rand
14. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
15. All of the Chronicles of Narnia books
16. Selected Essays by George Orwell
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
19. Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut*
20. After Dark by Haruki Murakami
21. A Freewheelin' Time by Suze Rotolo*
22. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thomson
23. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
24. Some biography of Heath Ledger*
25. Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts by David Baggett and Shawn E. Klein*
26. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNiel and Gillian McCain
27. We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists edited by Melody Berger
28. Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis*
29. 1915: The Death of Innocence by Lyn Macdonald
30. Bhagavid Gita (Some hippie-looking grad-student in the oak grove guilted me into buying this from them. A "donation" of $10)
31. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
32. The Woman's Bible by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
33. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
34. Giant Edgar Allen Poe book*
35. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters
36. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
37. Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
On Kindle:
1. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4.Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
6. The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
7. The Sea Wolf by Jack London
8. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Nietzsche
9. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
10. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
11. Great Expectations by Dickens
I should be getting Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh and Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel in the mail in a few days. I also need to finish Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I've been like halfway through it for months and I keep forgetting about it. They'll all be added to the list.
I feel a massive headache coming in my future, especially with all of the philosophy stuff and Milton. I think I'll save Emerson till the summer so I can sit down with a clear head and try to get through that huge text. I'm going to start with Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut now because I know I'll like it. I really hope I get through all of this, but if I get at least 1/3 of the way into something and I don't like it, I'm not reading it.
In other news, the Winter Classic was terrible. My boys lost 3-1 to the damn Caps. Their shots went in. They made less dumb mistakes. Their goalie was better. And so they won. Damn them anyway.
I was yelling so bad by the end of the game that all of my dogs migrated upstairs. Even the deaf one. Earlier in the game, I almost jumped through the tv to strangle Semin for hitting Tanger in the face with that puck. Not that it was his fault. I was just pissed.
Apparently Tanger's a female fan favorite, and it's easy to see why. Twitter was blowing up with girls worried about his face.
...The loss made me sore, but NBC just pissed me off. Whoever was directing the cameras should be fired and NBC should be banned from covering sports.
They were doing this awful overhead and panning shots during the game that made me want to drive down to Heinz Field and strangle somebody. You don't pull that during the game. I'm cool with overhead and creative camera work when there's a timeout or something, to showcase the venue and the city, but don't ever EVER do it during the game. You can't shoot hockey like it's football. It's faster. There's a lot more going on. The playing field is smaller. The object everyone's worried about is much tinier and moves much faster. More than anything though, it was the high overhead shots that were pissing me off, especially during the second Caps goal and one of the Pens power plays. I couldn't even see what was going on because the angle was terrible. Never let them cover sports again.
And I'm sick of people calling Crosby a crybaby. He's interfered with constantly because players know that when he gets the puck he's going to make a play. I'd be pissed too. He also doesn't fight all the time, so when guys give him the hard hits they give him, he doesn't do much retaliating. This isn't because he's a pansy or anything, it's because he's just not that kind of player.
He has his bitch fits at times, I'll admit. He gets frustrated. But so does everyone else. We're only talking about Crosby because he's always in the spotlight. So STFU.
And so what if he's not as badass as Ovie? Who the hell cares. You guys can go have your Russian with the missing teeth and the scraggly hair who's a good player, but can't make shots, and I'll keep clean-cut Crosby who has 32 goals this season, the most goals in the NHL. And he's young, he'll grow up. Plus, when we need a badass we have Cooke and some other guys that are more than ready to answer anyone who's talking shit. :D
Oh, and I'm really happy to see Staal playing again. He did really well.
By the way, my Steelers beat the hell out of the Browns today. 41-9.
And here's a GIF of Ovie tripping over nothing, from http://30fps.mocksession.com/OVIEFALLDOWN.gif Enjoy.
Also, the tongue picture from the preseason Letang vs Clavert fight on 9/25. Just because that fight made me supremely happy, especially the way he skated away with his sex hair and his tongue sticking out. I'm such a creep.
You can check out the fight here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI1Sl6tun4Y
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Ode to a Grandpa
My pap just died a couple minutes ago.
I'm writing because it's the only way I know how to get through things, to think through things.
I'm not even crying. I'm glad it's over. My pap was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease about two years ago. He was one of the most fiercely independent men I've ever known. He was stubborn and proud, which my grandma usually blamed on his Polish and German blood. He's the kind of man that deserves to die in battle, in greatness, not because of some stupid disease. So that's how I'm going to remember him.
He was funny, politically incorrect and loved all Pittsburgh sports. Think Archie Bunker, but not as pissed all the time.
He was the only dominant male figure in my life that I could consistently count on. When my dad died, it was him and grandma that were able to keep my mother, brother and I afloat. My family's fallen on a lot of tough times, and it's always been my grandparents that help us out. My family owes everything to them. Without all of the hard labor my pap put in working in the steel mill, my family would still be living in the decaying neighborhood we moved from.
But I'm having a hard time crying. Not because I didn't love my grandpa, but because that wasn't him that died a couple minutes ago. That was just a shell. The pap that I knew has been gone for a while. At this point, he was barely opening his eyes or acknowledging that there was anyone in the room. I'm glad that he's not bedridden and in pain anymore. He would have never wanted this to be the last thing people see of him.
I'm more worried about my gram than anything else. They've been married for somewhere around 64 years. My gram's been taking care of people her whole life, from her diabetic father, to her sister, to her mother, to my pap's parents and cousin and sister. To neighbors and friends. There's never a shortage. It's what she does. She takes care of people until they die, and she never takes care of herself, and largely she won't let anyone take care of her.
She based her entire day around my pap. She's wake up early to clean and do laundry. She'd get his breakfast together while waiting for the nurse to get him out of bed. She's help the nurse do their job. She'd feed my pap, crush his pills, and give him pills. The rest of the day she's sit by his side and halfheartedly read the paper or watch TV. She always kept sports on because they were his favorite. A lot of days she'd bake because it was the only think she could do to take her mind off her situation. Then she'd make food and feed him. Then wait for the nurse to come help her put him to bed at night. Then she'd go to bed and do the same thing the next day. At 84 years old. Because she refused to put him in a nursing home.
I'm worried about her. I don't know what she's going to do without him. She barely left the house in the last few years, maybe only two or three times per month for appointments and going to the bank. The rest of her life has been my pap. And now he's gone.
I didn't go to their house during his final hours. My mom and Tony, aunts and Uncles, and two of my cousins went, but I didn't. My mom didn't really want me to. I don't want to remember him like that, because that wasn't him. He's been a living ghost for the last few months.
I'll miss you, ol' blue eyes.
Here's a picture of my gram and pap holding hands. Taken last year for my photojournalism project.
I'm writing because it's the only way I know how to get through things, to think through things.
I'm not even crying. I'm glad it's over. My pap was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease about two years ago. He was one of the most fiercely independent men I've ever known. He was stubborn and proud, which my grandma usually blamed on his Polish and German blood. He's the kind of man that deserves to die in battle, in greatness, not because of some stupid disease. So that's how I'm going to remember him.
He was funny, politically incorrect and loved all Pittsburgh sports. Think Archie Bunker, but not as pissed all the time.
He was the only dominant male figure in my life that I could consistently count on. When my dad died, it was him and grandma that were able to keep my mother, brother and I afloat. My family's fallen on a lot of tough times, and it's always been my grandparents that help us out. My family owes everything to them. Without all of the hard labor my pap put in working in the steel mill, my family would still be living in the decaying neighborhood we moved from.
But I'm having a hard time crying. Not because I didn't love my grandpa, but because that wasn't him that died a couple minutes ago. That was just a shell. The pap that I knew has been gone for a while. At this point, he was barely opening his eyes or acknowledging that there was anyone in the room. I'm glad that he's not bedridden and in pain anymore. He would have never wanted this to be the last thing people see of him.
I'm more worried about my gram than anything else. They've been married for somewhere around 64 years. My gram's been taking care of people her whole life, from her diabetic father, to her sister, to her mother, to my pap's parents and cousin and sister. To neighbors and friends. There's never a shortage. It's what she does. She takes care of people until they die, and she never takes care of herself, and largely she won't let anyone take care of her.
She based her entire day around my pap. She's wake up early to clean and do laundry. She'd get his breakfast together while waiting for the nurse to get him out of bed. She's help the nurse do their job. She'd feed my pap, crush his pills, and give him pills. The rest of the day she's sit by his side and halfheartedly read the paper or watch TV. She always kept sports on because they were his favorite. A lot of days she'd bake because it was the only think she could do to take her mind off her situation. Then she'd make food and feed him. Then wait for the nurse to come help her put him to bed at night. Then she'd go to bed and do the same thing the next day. At 84 years old. Because she refused to put him in a nursing home.
I'm worried about her. I don't know what she's going to do without him. She barely left the house in the last few years, maybe only two or three times per month for appointments and going to the bank. The rest of her life has been my pap. And now he's gone.
I didn't go to their house during his final hours. My mom and Tony, aunts and Uncles, and two of my cousins went, but I didn't. My mom didn't really want me to. I don't want to remember him like that, because that wasn't him. He's been a living ghost for the last few months.
I'll miss you, ol' blue eyes.
Here's a picture of my gram and pap holding hands. Taken last year for my photojournalism project.
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