just because it doesn't matter doesn't mean you shouldn't do it

I rather dislike apathy and complacency.

Okay, I really really REALLY hate it, and here's why.

A wise man once said that whatever we do in life will be insignificant, but that it is important that we do it anyways. Far too many people remain stagnant in their thoughts and emotions and actions out of extreme complacency and selfish apathy. We should never talk ourselves out of moving forward because we believe our actions to be insignificant.

I used to refuse to follow politics and current affairs and the like. This rather ludicrous decision of mine stemmed from a few places- disinterest mainly. Also, there were no major elections being held at the time. I'm sure arrogance factored in somewhere.The most disturbing motivation, however, was that I believed because I was one I could not make a difference.

I was quite wrong. "One" is the difference between so many things.

This whole revelation has been building for a while, and I'm not about to sit still on the heels of it. I've decided to start regularly reading a couple of newspapers to know what's going on. When I get back to the states I am going to register to vote. I may be only one college student, but goshdarnit I am going to try my hardest to make a difference or to at least show a bit of interest in the goings on of others. This whole not caring business is rather selfish and hardhearted. I want my soul back; somewhere in the past few years it was eaten up with cynicism and apathy. If I stop caring this early in life, then there is little hope for the rest of my time.

goodness

Today, I finished my school supplies shopping. It made me feel very accomplished, which is fantastic. Feeling accomplished, that is. I haven't in a while; I've just had so much going on that I don't have time to savor the fuzzy-accomplished-feelings before moving on to the next thing. Anyways, I have a deep dark secret I need to share. You know how sometimes you REALLY need to just blurt something out to get it off your chest? Like that one Poe story with the beating heart. Well I need to confess something.

I have an office supplies fetish. Okay, maybe fetish is a strong word... no, wait, it's not. It's definitely a fetish. I flippin' love office supplies. Especially post-its. I have a stash of post-its. Every year I go school supplies shopping, and I get a couple of things of post-its... and I never use them all. And so I have been accumulating post-its since I was in middle school. I also really love moleskins- they're amazing and durable and they're just feel-good notebooks. And oh my goodness the purple pens. I LOVE purple pens. I have planners, too. I have a planning fetish as well. I have a day planner and a wall calendar and my phone and facebook and...

There, I feel much better now.

It's my full moon

And I have a bit of pent up frustration. Allow me to vent a little...

[drum roll]

things that annoy the you-know-what out of me

1. Girl issues.
2. People who use text-lingo in situations where you know they have full access to a keyboard (emailing, for instance)."How r u?" is not an acceptable way to start an email. Ever.
3. Old coffee.
4. Weak coffee.
5. Coffee with a lot of cream and sugar in it.
6. Ignorant people that take pride in their ignorance.
7. Really really bad grammar. I can tolerate minor discrepancies (most of the time) but there are some things that just don't fly.
8. People who find out that I'm diabetic and automatically give me a once over looking for the flab. Yes, I know I'm not obese. Thank you for being so kind to notice.
9. Blatant hypocrisy.
10. Cheap scare tactics.
11. People who don't use turning signals. They are there for a reason other than making that awful clicking/beeping noise.
12. People who scoff, laugh, or smirk at my workaholism.
13. Spellcheck not recognizing words like "workaholism" and "spellcheck" as being spelled correctly.
14. Patronizingness.
15. My foot going to sleep.
16. Most vegetables.
17. Faint, indistinct, horrible smells that linger for months.
18. Having to use reading glasses and go to the chiropractor at my age (though I will possibly agree that these two things may or may not be directly related to my workaholism).
19. The combination of insomnia and non-productivity.
20. Internet randomly deciding to go away. [twitch]

Thank you all for suffering through that. I feel much better now.

Oh how I wish this fact were more widely acknowledged.

So many paint problems to be a treacherous one-way path, with a steep incline to each side so that even one person can barely pass. They paint an issue to be this or that person's fault, an only this or that person's fault. This is hardly ever the case. Problems, disputes, whatever one may call them, especially those between people, and certainly those augmented by emotions, are roundabouts. Disputes rarely come from a single slight, but rather a conversation of offenses that feed off of each other. Highly personal disagreements chase after themselves, with the same repetition of a dog chasing after its own tail. In order to resolve any sort of issue, all parties must first acknowledge this, and then accept that it is in fact not just one party's fault. It is the fault of every one involved. Then and only then can the problem at hand begin to dissipate, through cooperation and compromise.

inertia should not need sustenance

I really love driving and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why. It costs money and requires a particular level of focus that can, at times, be exhausting. And then it hit me, after almost three years of driving. I love the forward movement, the act of rapidly approaching a destination. It doesn't even matter if the whole process is an illusion (i.e. driving around for the sake of driving around). I just love doing something. I am not the type to willingly put off responsibility in favor of "relaxing." I do not spend vacations vacationing. I am, for better or for worse, thoroughly type A and red. Lately, though, it's been incredibly difficult to keep my productive inertia. My to-do list is even longer now than when I made it early last week; I've felt guilt both upon going to bed without everything done and upon waking up too late in the day. It's just bad.

On the up side, I think I have a solution for my lazy version of the sneaky hate spiral .

Reeeeally? You're joking, right?

So the other night I was driving home, taking my favorite out of the way route, when I passed two fine establishments right off the highway. The first, Spry Funeral Home, I had to think about. I thought, Surely they knew what they were doing. Surely they know how strange this is. I don't know why anyone would dub a funeral home spry. It's probably a family name, but personally if I had that particular last name and I was trying to name my funeral home, I would change my name. Or ditch the family name-d funeral home idea altogether. The second business was a bail-bonding place that advertised a free t shirt with every bail. I can't figure out why I think this is hilarious.

On a completely different note, the word of the day today is vertiginous, which is an adjective meaning "causing dizziness." Awesome word.

why can't I wear pink while I slay the dragon?

My summer job has become a mashed-up schedule of babysitting gigs. One of these gigs is watching the incredibly precocious 3-year old of my old boss. This girl is awesome, quite possibly one of my favorite children EVER; she is also quite possibly more pop-cultured than I can ever hope to be. Anyways, today the two of us were watching The Princess Bride. If you haven't seen this movie, stop reading now and go watch it. Seriously. It's not only epic and amazing, but to have not seen this fantastic film is a crime of stupid-big proportions- a crime with proportions quite possibly larger than those created by the "Who's Harry Potter?" crime. ANYWAYS, she said at one point "I want to be rescued." in response to my explanation of why Wesley was following Vizzini, Inigo Montoya, Fizzik, and Buttercup. My immediate mental response was "Pssh, yeah kid, me too," and her little sentence kind of exploded my thought processes for the rest of the day. Every time I'd be thinking about something, her cute little face would dive bomb through the thought and I'd be back to pondering her not so cute little statement.

The way I see it, there exists a sort of spectrum of women and their roles:

I don't claim to be on either end (obviously). I can and (gasp) like to cook, I do laundry, I'm good with kids. I also call people out on "Women's Work" jokes, find sex jokes hi-larious, like comics, never tire of watching Fightclub  and Braveheart. I am comfortable just left of the middle. And I would still like a Morelli or Ranger to come along and sweep me off my feet. So what? This whole Knight in Shining Armor business is not necessarily a bad thing; it's just that bad things tend to arise from sitting around wearing pink and waiting for some boy to gallop by and slay the scary dragon. The biggest issue being the obvious inebriated state of anyone claiming to slay a frichen' dragon. Seriously though, I think it's a crying shame that any woman who obviously wants a strong man in her life is automatically labeled as being weak or- even worse- old fashioned. Ick. Of course there are some who live up to this stereotype; unfortunately, Buttercup doesn't really do anything at all in The Princess Bride except flounce around and whine and threaten to kill herself. But what's even more a crying shame is the other side of the spectrum; if a woman claims she's a feminist, the knee jerk reaction of most everyone is to start looking for a mustache. What type of sick hypocrisy is this? I love being able to vote and go to school and all that jazz, but there are definitely times when I wonder if they didn't have the right idea a couple hundred years ago; at least then they had a clearly defined system.And then there are the in-betweens, which as anyone who has studied population growth (with a bell-curve, of course) knows, is about 90% of the population. I don't really have much to say about us, mostly because there are just too many mixed signals and scenarios to choose from. BUT, from what I know about her parents, this little princess is doomed to be an in-between. I really hope she doesn't get hurt or disenchanted somewhere along the way of growing up.

Oh man. Wait! No. Oh boy.

He walked into Starbucks- no, he glided into Starbucks. Gorgeous hair, gorgeous skin, gorgeous everything. His eyes lit with a haughtiness and apathetic arrogance that screamed sex appeal. His lips twitched up into a quirky smirk at each of the three women in the cafe. I became acutely entranced by the gyrating of his hips as he swaggered up to order. Four words jolted me from my reverie: "Hazelnut hot chocolate, please." And instantly, like the flicking of a switch, everything about him dimmed back as if suddenly he were far away on a rainy day, only his figure discernible. What type of man orders hot chocolate, especially on a day such as this, especially with the option of black coffee? No man. No man would do such a thing- a boy, certainly, but not a man. Suddenly his hair had a boyish curl, his grin a childish quality. His leanness became lankiness. He lost ten years with those four words.

Harsh, maybe. But nothing kills a checking-someone-out-buzz than realizing the man is no man at all, and that I have more gall than he will ever have.

pink dot

I used to say to a particular person "you're giving me the pink dot look." What I meant by this was that he would be looking at me as if I were a pink dot on a white page; it was not that he ignored everything else going on, but that, for him at that time, there was nothing else.

I want to be a red dot. Not feminine, necessarily- or at least not defined by my femininity- but strong, bold. Intrepid, to an intractable extent.

phew, that was tiring

 I was going to post my old researched-argument paper that is the bomb diggity but I could not find it anywhere. Instead, as I was sifting through my old emails, I found this. "This" was originally an email to my high school AP Language teacher. The names have been changed because quite frankly, it's not worth the effort needed to leave them as they were. 

My ranting really is kind of exhausting to read.

So, since I am sending you my paper a little late, I thought I might as well give you a general idea of what happened last night to cause this just lovely situation.

WELL, to begin with, I wrote the entire thing by hand while "taking notes" (note the sarcasm) in Mr. Violet's class on Wednesday. I underlined, I circled, I annotated! I wrote the paper, and then rewrote it. I put a LOT of effort into this- more than many other people apparently. Anyways, I decided to wait and type it up last night, because I was already kind of busy Wednesday night what with my 3-hours-long timed writing and soapstone and PreCal and sketchpad assignments and cleaning our house for church (we have church at our house). So I'm sitting at my computer, booting up and everything, when like half a dozen pop-ups come on the screen. While I'm logging on. The sad part about this is that it is normal. But I digress (that term is one of my all time favorites). So I get logged on, and 5 more things pop up- like those little gray boxes saying stuff like "WARNING! Self-destruct in 5 NANO-SECONDS!!!". Once again, normal (and once again, very sad). I get past those (50 bonus points for moving on to level 4!), and I try to open Microsoft Word. Nothing. I try again- and again nothing. I try 19 more times. Twenty-one total. So, I stomp downstairs, rant at daddy for a few minutes about technology being stupid. He didn't really listen...that time at least. So I type up my entire paper on the family computer, get it all edited and juuuuuust right, and I got to save it. What happens? Nothing- absolutely nothing. The computer freezes like half a second before I click on the little "Save" icon. Luckily, when I stomp into daddy's room and steam for a moment, he agrees to come take care of everything. The paper gets retrieved- YAY!!!! GO DADDY!!!!- and I save it along with my art assignment to my flash drive to print out at school in the morning.

So this morning I get to school around sevenish, thinking I can get Doc to print it off for me. As I am walking up to the front door I remember, well of course Doc isn't going to be here- they have a scholar's bowl thing! So I go to the cafeteria to get a bottle of water, and then wait for fifteen minutes outside of Mr. Cod's room to get him to print it off for me. But of course he deviates (FLOCABULARY!!!) from his normal schedule the one day I need him. So I ambush Mrs. Slur and ask her for help. Her printers- yes, all THREE of them- aren't working. At this point I go to see if Ms. Mackerel is there. Nope. She's ALWAYS at school by this time (7:25) yelling at people to get back in the lunchroom. I finally get Coach Belch to let me print it off. This, of course, is horrible because I agreed LAST year to paint a mural for him that still hasn't been sketched out yet. So I get all four pages printed out (INT and my picture morgue) and I look at the last page and what is there? One paragraph. One. There should be two. Where is the second? Well my computer ate it apparently.

so cliché

a trite, stereotyped phrase; a sentence or phrase, usually expressing a common thought or idea, that has lost originality by long overuse 

I have a problem. Specifically, a problem with people who belittle the use of clichés even when the phrases sit perfectly in context. There is a reason clichés are worn to pieces- because once upon a time, they were new phrases that someone loved and therefor tried to use in all sorts of situations. A cliché is only a cliché because, to someone, it was once that first song that cut to the core of your soul, the song you played over and over until you could hear it in your dreams. Anyways, here are a few of my favorites.

Please don't let what was get in the way of what's next.

Use things, not people. Love people, not things.

Small people talk about people. Average people talk about things. Great people talk about ideas.

Well behaved women rarely make history.

You have enemies? Good, it means you've stood up for something in your life.

Oh Goodness

It's been a while- HI GUYS!

Anyways, normally I would say something snarky to the effect of "I'm not dead!" but that seems a tad silly considering the day's events. As I am sure most of you know, I am a bit of a caffeine addict. I have recently (this term used very loosely) discovered that caffeine has some undesirable effects on my blood sugar. For whatever reason, I decided Sunday evening that it was high time for me to quit. It was not until this morning, however, when I woke up to a migraine the size of Kentucky sitting in my temples and to what felt like a Nausea-Monster trying to escape my stomach that I realized this was a bad idea. Today, I almost died of massive caffeine withdrawal.

In other news, Bestie and I have decided we spend enough time together that we must have a collaborative name like those cutesy celebrity couples. We are Rair, hear us rawr.

Books all of you should read:

The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare

Watchmen and V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman

Candide by Voltaire

Phrase of the Week:

"ostentatiously flabbergasted" 

My irk of the day? The phrase "wasting tax-payers money."

Automobiles

Ever notice how silly some car names are? Mazda. Taurus. Seriously, who came up with these?

Drops of Water

I really love the rain. Even though rain really is only a bunch of drops of water falling from the sky, something resulting from a very logical and scientific process- well I still can not help but feel as if it has Muse like qualities. I always have the urge to make something when it is raining. Unfortunately the universe seems to have this amusement with sending these random creative urges at the same time that I come up with writer's block. SO this is me making something completely pointless. Hope you enjoyed it.