On a different subject, I think it's about time I embraced my reclusive side and just quit telling people things. I'm really not psyched when I talk about things and people just say, "I have no idea what you're talking about." Sure, I might not be explaining things well, I might be generalizing, but somewhere in there, I do have a point or two. I'm also not psyched when I tell these certain guys things and they just shake their heads at me and say, "Oh, isn't that cute? You're so cute. Let's cuddle." How about not? How about I talk, and you listen carefully to what I'm actually saying?
Sigh. I'm surely complaining well out of hand, though. Do whatever you want. Don't ask me about this in person or say, "Hey, what's wrong?" It's unnecessary. Don't try to change things for me. Just go about your business as if you didn't read this...I'm bloody well allowed to kvetch if I want to without you people trying to change things.
Edit: I don't think you guys got the point of my questions about the space program. The deal here is that sure, it's easy to think we've just done everything there is to do on the moon, and that probes can do the rest—but a few good expeditions to the moon might clear up a lot of mysteries about the composition of the soil in certain places, whether water actually exists there, and a host of other inquiries. No one's even tried to visit the moon in a good 30-plus years, and pretty soon no one will even be around who knows much at all about the old missions. Government documentation is notoriously sketchy, so we might want to be concerned that this knowledge is being lost—if it ever existed at all.
Seriously, though, think about it: This iMac I'm sitting at right now has more power than the computers used in several Apollo missions combined. So why can't we do more moon missions? Just as I'd love to see the entire budget of the university clarified and explained, with funds in and out enumerated, it'd be great to know what the space program is doing if it's not putting money into shuttle missions or moon landings, i.e. things to do with getting people into space. Sure, there are all these experimental probes and little Mars landers they're developing, and sure, it's dangerous to put people in space, but still... Clearly I don't know everything there is to know about NASA and its relationship to the government, and plenty of NASA things are still probably classified, but regardless, I really wonder what's going on with the moon.
'These are all perfect, why can't more of you be like Mallorie so I have something to say about them.'
What do you say to that?
Me: 'Next time I'll do all of them, that way you will have PLENTY to say.'"
Yeah, I'd be in the same boat as Mallorie, were I in that class anymore.
Quotes from Saturday night's ketchup-off-the-lamp-into-the-water game:
Jason [by way of explanation]: "It's...the...uh...ketchup-off-the-lamp-into-the-water game!"
Jason [disdainfully]: "Maybe you should try mustard packets..."
Other table [cheers]: "Go for the honey mustard!"
John [face lights up]: "Oh! Honey mustard!"
Me [gets hit by a ketchup packet]: "I'm bleeding in packets..."
John: "I saw that, I have eyes."
Jason [protesting]: "There's no goaltender in the ketchup-off-the-lamp-into-water game!"
Jason [after the dining manager breaks up the game]: "Let's invent a new game that doesn't involve the lamp, like the throw-the-ketchup-really-hard-off-the-wall-into-other-people game." [throws ketchup packet into wall so hard that it explodes all over John]
John [cringing]: "I hate your games!"
John [swinging the lamp as a final goodbye]: "Let's go, quick! We have to leave it swinging. It'll be all symbolic and things..."
So that was fun.
I really need to put to use the lessons I learned in marching band. Something you eventually have to learn is that regardless of how much you want people to care about what they're doing and do the right thing, there will always be some people who just aren't interested and make everything painful. Some things simply won't change, and to continue worrying about them is akin to banging your head against the wall until it's bloody. It makes no difference. Xavier will never march right. Casey will never hold his horn up or march in step. The drummers will continue to hurl vulgar insults at the drum majors who don't listen to them. So it goes, neh?
But yes...there are some things here at the university that I just can't keep caring so deeply about, as unfortunate as it is to let it all go by. I can't keep blacking out Core Project stickers after acid rain leeches away the Magic Marker I used the first time around, for instance. There are hundreds of them on campus, and as much as it sucks that the band is using our campus to promote its shitty rap-rock, there's not much I really want to do about it short of perhaps getting some black spray paint and covering them all over. Last year's marker campaign took enough effort.
Also, I still wish we had a marching band, but I really don't have the energy or time it takes to mobilize a force of students who'll actually learn a show and practice several times a week. Sure, I could, and my reluctance to do so probably shows a lack of initiative on my part, but yeah...I'm hardly pulling decent grades as it is, and I doubt becoming the ringleader of a new activity is the answer.
Similarly, I can't keep harping on the campus alcohol culture. We've got three issues a week coming out now, each one bearing one or two articles in support of the rampant alcoholism on campus. I already made my point last spring, in the end-of-the-year issue no one read. I don't have time to continually write replies to this crap, nor do I want to become pegged as a one-issue writer. I wish some other people would actually step up in defense of our right to live in an alcohol-free environment, but I'm not going to rally a campus-wide temperance movement. That's not even the point. My only real sticking point is with the underage drinking, and even then, I'm just not all that sure anyone's listening. It's disappointing to end up compromising through inaction, but y'know...there's only so much I can do. Further, while it may seem somewhat hypocritical and perhaps a betrayal of my cause célèbre, I don't even live in a place where alcohol is a real problem anymore. I successfully avoid being around drunks, and I rather like it that way—but that means I have a real lack of compelling examples to use for these hypothetical opinion articles.
I did write a letter to the editor today, though, about something completely unrelated. This Shawn Redden guy, a history grad student, has been flooding the opinion section with these long, didactic rants about the war in Iraq, terrorism, President Bush, and other issues. With today's article, I simply couldn't read anymore without throwing in a few words.
The paper wasn't a complete loss today, despite several problems with poorly copy-edited headlines. The staff editorial, for instance, was actually well-written and relevant, bashing those "Sesquicentennial kiosks" the university ordered and placed in "high-traffic" areas. The things don't even work right, much less display any relevant information. I wonder who wrote the editorial this time...
Halloween and the Fourth of July are my two favorite holidays. I tried to explain why that was (I did a good bit of explaining this weekend, it seems), and came up with a few similarities. I think their main appeal to me is that 1. the proceedings take place outside at night when it's fairly comfortable outside (unlike, say, Christmas caroling or driving around to see Christmas lights), 2. I can walk around somewhat at leisure, 3. I may get to see friends in the process, unlike during other holidays, and 4. they were originally located around the time of major pagan holidays (the summer solstice, Samhain). That and I've developed a liking for spectacle, e.g. fireworks, costumery, and scaring people, hence why both goth culture and Moulin Rouge–style spectacle appeal to me so much, with their costumery, subterfuge, and glamor.
There are just a few things I fundamentally like. I like sparkly things. I definitely like the Campus Absurdists. I like Girl Scout camp, where even the most straight girls aren't scared to act vaguely homoerotic and dress in absurd outfits for 1. comedic value, 2. ironic value, and 3. to get campers' attention.
I've decided that in the future, when I've a bit more autonomy, I'll also enjoy New Year's Eve and Mardi Gras—I just don't currently have the means at my disposal to make those happen the way I'd want them to. There's value in authenticity, spontaneity, spectacle, costumery, mysticism, showing off, and seeing friends that comes with all those holidays, not to mention getting free stuff on each of those days, too. The Latin duckling in me finds these things key.
Though last night wasn't Halloween proper, it was pretty much like an extended portion of the holiday. A bunch of us dressed up and went out to eat, where we watched a couple friends play the "ketchup-off-lamp-into-water" game to much acclaim until more ruined and bedraggled Bauhaus refugees started to trickle in and a dining maven came over to break up the game. A group of kids brought a Risk board in and set up shop; notable costumes included underwear models and a Ouija pointer. Several of us ended up talking until about 3 a.m., at which point I trekked over to the computer lab and talked to Kimothy until 6 a.m. Seeing the misty, foggy morning sunrise through the hammocks and trees as I hiked back after that was actually rather nice.
Apparently we now have a newspaper "fun box," replete with various toys like yo-yos, Silly Putty, and a Slinky. That, I think, is a step in the right direction.
This one, he got a princely racket—that's what I said, now—got some big seal upon his jacket, ain't in his head now. You marry him, your father will condone you—how 'bout that, now?—you marry me, your father will disown you—he'll eat his hat, now...
Marry him, or marry me?—I'm the one that loves you, baby, can't you see? I ain't got no future or family tree, but I know what a prince and lover ought to be, I know what a prince and lover ought to be..."
This idea, oddly enough, came from my explaining why I enjoy the Point compilation CD so much and why I collect T-shirts. The compilation CD, to begin with, has the sound that a lot of bands around the early- to mid-'90s cultivated...and hearing it again reminded me that that's the time period I refer to. I'm becoming the way other friends' older brothers and sisters used to be (still are, really, but I don't notice it these days, not being around any of them much), with their frame of reference musically being the mid- to late-'80s. Not so long ago, those were my role models, the people who were about four or five years older and who actually remembered the '80s. That fascinated me, 'cause they really looked at things from a different perspective: they knew different shared pop culture things, they dressed differently, they listened to different music, etc. People that age are the ones who were around and really listening when alternative broke big. Hence I suppose that's part of what I found so fascinating about popular music when I first started listening to the radio back in May 1996—there was this tradition, these songs that had been around a few years already that I hadn't even heard, all this background information that I was missing, and it seemed to me that these people comprised a whole cohort of people who had been listening to the radio and watching MTV all their lives. It was just something I hadn't been initiated into yet.
You see, I never got into any of the fad bands in the early '90s like New Kids on the Block, as the exposures I had to music at that point were an M.C. Hammer tape ("Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em") that I played incessantly until my dad gave me an En Vogue one ("Funky Divas") and some Spyro Gyra to replace it, the M.C. Hammer music video for "2 Legit 2 Quit" that I insisted my parents rent from Schnucks Video, music reviews in the Disney-owned Adventures magazine glorifying Michael Jackson and other Disney/Sony artists, and various songs on a "kids' radio" station that I listened to obsessively, even convincing my parents to take me to an event the station held where I got a T-shirt signed by all the DJs. (That was about when I first figured out that the sound you get from people singing harmony in pop songs can't be recreated by one person singing with a purposefully fuzzed out voice; I came up to my mom singing like that and she told me to go away, exclaiming, "What're you doing? You sound like a sick cow!")
But yes, it's obvious that within any given four- to five-year period, the students are going to be somewhat into the same music, know these same things, etc. Everyone's tastes pretty much concretize themselves by the time they're 30, in any case, or so it's been shown—this happens to everyone, regardless of how much you might want to pretend that you're some forever-soul fairy who never settles for a period of music to feel comfortable with.
The revelation, however, came when I tried to explain my T-shirt collection. There's this authenticity people's older siblings get from having T-shirts to things they've done that you've never even heard of—it was one of the things that made them seem wise beyond their years to me as a little kid. Sure, those of you who actually have older siblings might not have fallen for that "worldly" ruse like I did, as you probably knew your elders a bit better than that, but I only knew of older kids, like the bully (a real live bully, yes, with the stereotypical orange hair and freckles) at Commons Lane with orange hair and about a billion friendship bracelets on his arms who was in sixth grade when I was but a mere first-grader. There was a mystique there. When I got to high school I'd read the back issues of Ad Astra I found amongst various apocrypha on these hidden shelves at the back of the library, with absurd essays, poems, and paragraphs by Dave Bell and the other founders of the mag, who had this complex system of nicknames and obscure references to each other, and I'd think, "What's this that I'm missing? I want this!" They'd mysteriously title things in a Kerouackian style, calling things "The myth of the night at Steak 'N' Shake" or "The rules of this and that." I had the inkling that they, too, were just making it all up as they went along, but still—there seemed to be this gnosis that I was simply not privy to, and I wanted it.
Even with the wanting, though, I also got the slow-trickling suspicion at times that really, they just didn't know what they were doing. The whole idea of "If they're so smart, why do they ___?" came up several times—it came as a big shock to me, for instance, to figure out that really, the seniors and "elders" I looked up to weren't any smarter than I was. They simply knew different things, referred to a different time period, etc. Rumors abounded in the band room about things our section leaders and various senior valedictorian candidates had done...then there was that yard marker with claims written inside about how so-and-so had gotten it on in the band room after hours...and then I found out through various conversations just how much all those seniors really did drink. I wrote an essay about it in Ad Astra freshman or sophomore year, claiming that my soul had been maligned by their misrepresentations, and, per usual, the world went on and no one but me cared.
This is one reason why I hold this simultaneous love and hate for literary magazines. Even by senior year, I still aspired to attain some kind of gnosis that I might represent in its pages. I liked the illusion that something existed there that I might aspire to learn. Sean Cothren did a lot, though, to forward my ideas about the utter moral bankruptcy of the whole Ad Astra endeavor, though by the time Sean and MLE began their decadent reign over the lit mag, the whole thing was coming apart at the seams, anyway, with the whole tradition of drama-department flunkies unraveling. Selfish gits used it as a public forum to proclaim their self-indulgent poetry, while the more intelligent among the drama department acolytes decided to patronize Proxima, the new literary magazine. No one seemed to care about the fact that all this glorious tradition was going away; the secret gnosis wouldn't live, though I began to adore Proxima, too, eventually hanging out with the ultra-geeky in its basement berth. At this point, I myself was a high-school senior, and it occurred to me that at that juncture, I'd probably surpassed a lot of the people I'd idolized or looked up to or wanted to be liked by when they were seniors and I was a freshman. I remember sitting on the steps in the courtyard talking to a couple friends and relating to them my revelation, how it'd occurred to me that really, there was no magic gnosis stemming from my years of experience to give me leverage. All I knew were the ways of things and various in-jokes, and I guessed that that's all they'd known when it was their turn on the vast stage of senior year.
But yeah, this is how the idea of being the oldest in my family begins to take on relevance. There's this thing that I've managed to become, an older sister, and I know my brother looks to me for an example. In that context, the T-shirts are more to me than just buying a shirt; there's also a sort of heritage involved. As I never had an older brother or sister to hand down shirts to me, I'd envy other friends who had the comfort of hand-me-down shirts, music, and friends. Hence somewhere along the way I consciously or unconsciously determined that I'd create a gnosis, I'd get unique shirts from things I've done and create my own in-jokes and pass them along.
I'd start—and uphold— a tradition, in short.
As I was walking back from copy editing tonight, twirling a stick I found on the ground (I really need to buy myself a mace...yes, a nice solid metal mace, that would do the trick) I saw a shadowy character lurking behind a juniper tree near the Music Building (yes, this really happened). It wasn't a trick of my eyes—I made sure of that by blinking a bit—and when I paused after passing the tree to get a good look at the person, she stepped out from the shadows slightly and said hello. Lo and behold, 'twas the wood nymph!
It turns out that she was getting sprigs of juniper or whatever conifer that tree consists of to augment her Halloween costume—she is going to be a wood nymph, though, so I got that part right.
In other news, check out the list I made for my fellow newspaper staffers and copy editors:
-It’s Miami University of Ohio, not University of Miami-Ohio or University of Ohio-Miami or whatever other pansy crap you want to put.
-Pankaj Chhabra, poor guy.
-The verb you’re looking for is "served," not "serviced"—cars, bulls, and prostitutes are serviced and/or service others. Yes, it sounds politically incorrect to say "served," as though they’re our servants—but it's lewd the other way.
-Student Health and Counseling Services = SHCS, not SCHS. It’s health services, not a high school.
-There’s one (1) space between sentences in journalistic writing, not two (2).
-We have staff reporters and contributing reporters, not writers. (Perhaps that’s one of our problems.)
-People aren’t enthusiastic for blah di blah, they’re usually enthusiastic about blah di blah or enthusiastic to see blah di blah.
-So-and-so is the associate director of, not for, whatever it is.
This list is now in 22-point font, printed out, and stabbed to a wall in the newspaper office with a dart. Take that!
In any case, I'm currently listening to Jars of Clay's The White Elephant Sessions on my headphones (better bass), and the luscious arrangements and harmony, combined with my current caffeinated/hyped up state, are making my palms sweat. Either that or it's simply hot in here...heh, it could well be that.
For one thing, my Christianity test didn't go so badly as it could've. I covered the three pages of the test with the classic paper-graying dense scrawl. Hopefully that'll garner me some kudos...or perhaps render the answers so unreadable that he assumes I've got it all right. Then again, as the professor caught me skipping class on Monday to inhabit Rationania, perhaps I'd better hope he can read it. Either way, I'm psyched, as I just used both "render" and "garner" in a sentence.
Apparently I made Ronnie's day. I was, per usual, sitting in the computer lab, reading blogs, when I checked to see if Ronnie had written much recently. It turns out that he's posted pretty much every day since early August, y su perspective on hating people in his dorm and everywhere on campus es fantastico. Essentially he sounds just like Kimothy and I have for the past year-and-a-half. These things happen to all of us, it seems. Reading his blog made me realize what'd gotten me curious about him in the first place and what allows me to actually talk to him&mash;namely that he gets it.
So yes, I was enjoying the blog and lamenting the fact that I couldn't post comments when I came across his cellphone number in a post. Its area code, despite the fact that he's in Columbia, Mo., is 314. I immediately realized that the only viable option at that point was to get up and go call him, regardless of whether I wanted to read more, whether he happened to be in class, etc. Right off the bat, my mission was to 1. let him know that I, too, hate people as much as he does and 2. make his day. (Yes, I know, most people aren't so forthright about their goals in such cases, but that's the deal—I wanted to make his day better.)
I charged upstairs in Eads, only to find some chick using the phone I'd used the other day (namely to call Mrs. Massie, whom I got ahold of in the middle of a class to tell her about the Richard Rodriguez speech she couldn't possibly have attended...that was a good idea). Hence I trekked my gimpy leg over to Mallinckrodt, where I grabbed the open phone and gave Ronnie a call. It turned out he was skipping class, so I talked to him for a bit, y fue muy awesome.
"Why do people have Halloween parties?" asked my roommate just now. That, at least, has a somewhat simple answer—society just doesn't accept older people trick-or-treating. "That's true," she replied. 'Tis a tragesty.
The afternoon in Rationania was good, too. I ended up staying there for two hours, creating some Rationanian art/literature by drawing on pallet scraps with colored pencil, answering various passersby's questions, and initiating a few into Rationanian citizenship by administering the Rationanian eye test. I left about 10 minutes before 5 p.m. and accompanied a friend to dinner, which was somewhat marred by the [comments on birthday party unavailable at this time].
Again, I hate people, much like Ronnie does.
Here's a question—why don't people take notes in classes anymore? Virtually no one besides me in my two English classes actually takes notes, and it really bothers me. Samudra even mentioned the phenomenon today in Exposition, noting that the guy who observed our class the other day admonished her for the lack of note-taking.
Here are some excerpts from yesterday's Argumentation notes, which I purposefully wrote at an angle so girl next to me could catch sight of what I was writing and feel indignant:
Yes, yes, squint your eyes as though you're deep in thought. Fake!
85% of the S. African population, eh? Well, 85% of the population of this class doesn't talk!
Was there some agreement not to talk that I missed out on? I want in...or maybe y'all need to talk!
Is it all too easy for you? I know, none of you take notes, none of you do anything but sit there and "soak it up" by osmosis...
I can dismiss all of you, look: [diagram of the class going around the table] frat boy / frat boy / hipster intellectual / cross country runner / me / jock / psych major / revolutionary hippie-feminist / frat boy
Y'know, almost every time I add a link to a blog entry, it strikes me how much the "target" tag seems as though it should be used in place of "href." Hence target would refer to where the address is taking you, the link's target, as opposed to some obscure frames reference. I do understand why it has to be the way it is, but I'm nonetheless continually struck by the urge to type "target" where "href" should be.
One entry found for abortion.
Entry Word: abortion
Function: noun
Text: Synonyms FREAK 2, lusus, miscreation, monster, monstrosity
Gee...hidden agenda, anyone?
I double-checked it by looking in my hardbound edition of Roget's Thesaurus:
Nothing about abominations. Now, apparently an archaic meaning found in the Oxford something something says something about "misshapen or miscarried offspring"...nonetheless, though, to only include those meanings in the thesaurus seems questionable to me.
Note that I'm not bringing into this whether I'm pro-choice or pro-life or whatever they call those these days—I don't claim either affiliation, and don't plan on claiming one anytime soon.