Am I too far gone?

I think sometimes that I have a really strong sense of empathy and guilt. Today, the little tree in the pot outside tipped over in the wind a couple times, and I was really distressed for it. The poor thing, what could it do? So I picked it up with some soothing words and put the dirt back in the pot each time, and tried to give it some reassurance that this time, it shouldn't fall over again.
Today when I was sanding and washing down the picnic table as I prepared to stain it, I kept telling it that I was sorry and by the end of the week, it'd be as good as new. It will be much more comfortable with a fresh layer of stain without the bits of lichen and mold that had been growing on it before.
I even apologized to my own arm for scratching the sunburn on accident.
I apologized to the towel when I dropped it.
I don't think I'm crazy. I just feel guilty when I do things that would cause me pain, if I were in their place. Even if they are incapable of feeling things, I still feel obligated to apologize.
Maybe I took too much from Pocahontas as a kid. Or maybe I'm more of an animist than I thought I was.

Ch-ch-changes

I have changed a lot.
I no longer enjoy sunburn as much as I did before.
I enjoy chilly weather more, because I get to wear sweatpants.
I wear sweatpants.
I picked Batman over candy.
I have more respect for other religions.
I hate being around people practicing their religion. Praying, church, etc. Keep me out of it.
I no longer have a common interest with most of my friends.
I am sad by how much I've grown apart from friends.
I love Indian food.
I prefer to cook than microwave, even if I'm hungry and just woke up.
I have grown up a little bit more.
I drink soda once every month or two.
I LOVE CINNAMON ROLLS!
I like tea. When did that happen?
I have a tattoo.
I am swimming, metaphorically, in the sea of identity confusion.
I am not a man.
I am not a woman.
I love my body.
I no longer care to find accurate labels for my various identities.
I no longer care to have an opinion about things I can't effect.
I like having intellectually stimulating conversations.
I don't hug or cuddle as often as I'd like anymore.
I do not shave my legs.
I prefer to eat 100% whole wheat bread.
I don't listen to music every day.
I have regrets. I never had those in high school. Maybe it was the hormones.
I kind of want to stop birth control, if only to be able to sell my eggs. But then I would have to think about my reproductive system and get periods.
I resent my reproductive system, at least the lining of my uterus and ovaries. The fallopian tubes and uterus itself are ok, though.
I have become really ambitious. Where was that before I turned 17?
I have little patience for glamour and glitz.
I have become shy again. Maybe some teenage hormones would be good, just not as much as puberty.
I don't understand why I don't have a summer job for the second year in a row.

These are some things that have changed since high school.

PRIDE

This weekend is the Twin Cities Pride Festival, a wonderful weekend filled with queers and fun and joy. I have never attended such an enthusiastic and welcoming series of events before. Dogs and children (today I also saw a parrot) mingle with the "sinners" and "morally decrepit fiends" scantily clad in leather and latex. In addition to most welcoming, it is also the most skanky and sexy festival. The nudist and bdsm groups are all clustered together in the "R-rated section" of the park, though (no nudity actually happens: the nudists wear barrels and everyone else just looks barely dressed).
Despite the vast amounts of heretofore unseen skin (today there was a pregnant woman with henna covering her stomach, a man in his 50s wearing plaid shorts and gray boxer briefs [yes, I know the color and cut of his underwear. His shorts rode VERY low], a woman in her 60s wearing a strapless sundress that sagged very low, and a multitude of teenagers [male and female and otherwise] wearing things that hormone-ridden teenagers wear to fairs: almost nothing, the TC Pride festival is very family friendly. 73.8% of the people there are entirely unremarkable. I gave rainbow stickers and "I'm a future Ole!" button to dozens of kids today. The family activities are also on the complete opposite side of the park from the R-rated area. I was closer to the r-rated area, so I saw a lot more of people that I think I wanted.
As always, the drag queens were dressed the classiest out of everyone. High heels and glamorous dresses, wonderful makeup and the biggest hair in Minnesota.
Most importantly, for me anyway, everyone who I could possibly want to talk to about GLBT issues is there. From other colleges GLBT organizations and social justice organizations to almost every religion present that I think exists in Minnesota and orgs for community building for the most obscure groups (my favorite of which is Minneapolis Movie Bears, a large contingent of hairy large gay men who watch movies and have dinner together once a week).
I love Pride. It is a gathering of all sorts of people. It is a time when one cannot assume who someone is based on appearance. It is a place of lower pressure to be who one is supposed to be. I can dress however I want, and no one will think less of my for it. I can act however I want, and no one will be suprised. I can be who I am (and who I want to be) without people judging me.
It is a wonderful escape.

I hope to see you all at Loring Park on Sunday. The parade starts at 11am along Hennepin Ave.

In order to die, one first must live.

There's been a lot of death this week. A second cousin of mine died this week. Even though I had never met her, I still attended the funeral. It was a very different service than other funerals I have attended (which isn't very many). This was the first strongly religious funeral I have attended. A lot of my extended family is Catholic, and this funeral had a strong dose of Catholicism mixed in, including the ever awkward communion, in which I remain in my pew while the rest of the church gets up and eats Jesus and share germs. Although it'd look silly if they drank Jesus' blood from little Dixie Cups. The priest was wearing Crocs, though, so the whole ceremony was a little less serious than it should have been for me. It was a very nice funeral, if a little offensive to people with disabilities at times (Mary was a developmentally disabled person, in case you were wondering why that subject would be brought up). Apparently my family hadn't seen this side of the family in 40 years, and people did not recognize or, in some cases, remember my mom or aunt. I met relatives I had never met before, though, which is always interesting and nice.
Also, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died, both on the day of the funeral. While I have never watched the original Charlie's Angels, she was still a cultural icon who will forever be remembered. Michael Jackson, on the other hand, has always been a part of my life. My mom is a huge Michael Jackson fan, and so I grew up listening to him. On Saturday mornings, his music filled my dreams as I slept in while my mother cleaned the house. I remember as a small child running around the house naked dancing like him, or trying to, anyway. My brother was reaching "that age" when one grows embarrassed by nude family members and yelled at me to put some clothes on. Party pooper. He wrote a lot of songs that I really enjoy.
I hope your lives were amazing, Mary, Farrah and Michael.

Father of the Year

You know how sometimes, you hear about some scandal that's happening, and the thought runs through your head: WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!
I recently heard one of those stories. The great governor of North Carolina, Mark Sanford, recently returned this weekend. He had managed to evade his security and let no one know where he was, to go on a secret trip to Argentina to meet his mistress. He initially claimed he had been walking "the Appalachian Trail." He eventually admitted that he had been in Argentina because he "wanted to do something exotic." Mission accomplished.

Please note, this was Father's Day Weekend.

"Honey, do you want to do anything special for Father's Day?"
"I don't know. I was thinking about running away to Argentina to destroy our family for Father's Day."

While normally, I don't care what politicians or public figures do in their own personal life, this is just low. He has lied to not only his family, but the entire state of North Carolina, the state who elected him. He left his responsibilities to his family and constituency unattended for several days while he was off doing "something [someone] exotic." No word yet on whether he is stepping down, but if I were a North Carolinian, I would sure as hell do all I could to make sure he did. Irresponsibility and lies have no place in elected leadership positions.

Imagine how much money was spent searching for the missing governor for the several days he was sexing up his mistress.

What were you thinking, Governor Sanford?

Dork post

Ok, so I was trying to make this blog enjoyable for anyone who reads it, but I am so excited that I have to share this: I caught a shiny Spearow on LeafGreen today.

For those who don't know what the heck a Spearow is, let alone what a shiny Spearow is, a Spearow is a Pokemon. Normally Spearow are red. But once in a great while (as in, almost never), some wild pokemon in the games are "shiny" meaning they are a different color. My Spearow is yellow.

This is the second time I have found a shiny pokemon. The only other time was about 4 years ago, when I was playing Pokemon Silver and I saw a shiny Mareep, but I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a glitch, and in Pokemon, I've learned to not catch glitches.

But Woohoo! Shiny Spearow. Life is good.

Tea for Two. Or just me

I love tea. Anyone who has spent any time with me knows this. I drink usually 6-10 cups of tea per day (unless the weather is as hot and humid as it was today. I only drank 2 cups). Why do I like it so much?
1) It's healthy. Tea is full of antioxidants, which prevents cancer. There are no calories. There is no sodium or cholesterol or anything but hot water, really. Tea even is good for the enamel of teeth (although it does stain teeth).

2) It's warm. Even though there is caffeine in tea, there is something comforting and heartwarming about tea. It doesn't have the bitterness that coffee has, or the sugar of cocoa or lattes, so the first sip just warms your insides without cringing at the taste or grit. Even in warm weather, a warm drink is very comforting.

3) It's caffeinated!! As a night owl, I cannot (literally) make it through the long morning lectures without a little kick, but it doesn't cause the jitters of coffee and isn't as abrasive as soda in the morning. I usually put the bag in when I leave the house, and throw it in a garbage bin about halfway to class. (I found out that tea that has steeped too long (black: 3 min+, green 10 min+) can increase risk for kidney stones. No one wants kidney stones.) Start drinking when class starts, and the caffeine should last the whole 55-90 minutes.

4) It goes with everything. Green and Black tea goes with most meals and desserts and snacks. I love having a cheese pita with a mug of black tea. Best tasting, if not practical, midnight snack.

5) It tastes fantastic. Hot cocoa is good sometimes, coffee is useful when you need to stay awake or need to poop (the downside of coffee in class!), but tea is just flavored hot water with some kick. It's also easy to make it to your own tastes. If you like it strong, leave it in longer, if you just wet the bag and take it out, that's easy to do as well. Tea is as bland or as strong as you need it to be. You can flavor it with ginger, or lemon, or honey, or sugar, or orange or flower petals, or whatever you want! You can even get tea made from ginger or flower petals with no tea leaves at all.

Warnings: If you drink hot liquids too fast frequently, it can lead to throat cancer.
Thus concludes my rave of the day.

Inked

I love tattoos. While there are plenty of ugly tattoos (for some prime examples, visit http://ugliesttattoos.com), tattoos are such a unique method of body art and self-expression, I find it difficult to stay away from them. I have one tattoo so far. I plan on getting a few more, when I come into some money.
This is my first tattoo. It came into being when I was 12, and busy being an aspiring author (that dream didn't work out so well). I was writing a fantasy trilogy, and one of the Goddesses was named Ravenheat, the ruler of the sun and birds. I was a clever and original preteen nerd, eh? In any case, as I was her High Priestess, I designed this standard for my Goddess, and it stuck with me. The picture is a little blurry, so I will describe it. It is a sun circumscribing a raven. It's a very simple design, I must say, but I like it. A rock is very simple, but if you use it right, you can still knock someone out with it, right? This design, over the years, has come to represent my aspirations. No, I don't want to be a raven in the literal sense. However, ravens are really smart (just look at videos on youtube) and thus I would like to raven-like, in that I want to be intelligent, to shape the world around me, to be creative, and have that aura of power that I find so compelling in ravens. They're common creatures who have achieved their own mythology. I suppose that makes me rather ambitious, and I hope that if I reach my goals, I will have done it in a way that is just.
Which is the inspiration for my next tattoo: a compass.

PS: Can you tell I've been reading fantasy novels? I feel that my language is much more formal and florid than usual. Maybe I am still an aspiring author.

Would you want to know?

I've been thinking tonight about people who do not-good things and the people who love them. If someone you loved did something you think is bad, would you want to know about it? Would it change the way you think of them? Could you still love them if it was "bad enough?" If they did something incredibly rude, and didn't think it was wrong, how would that affect your relationship? How long would it take to forgive them? Could you forgive them? If your best friend stole from a friend, or you discovered your brother had raped someone, or your fiance was a drug dealer and user, how would that change you? Would you forgive, forget, ignore, resent them, leave them? What relationship can you have with a bad person?

Libro the Lion roars "Rrrreeeeaad!!!"

I recently returned to my local public library, as I mentioned in an earlier post. I have read 12 books in less than a month. Some good, some bad, some entertaining, some infuriating. My favorites have been the favorites of the past. I have been rereading the Dragonlance Series. They're still great. : )
I also reread the Wayfarer Redemption series, by Sara Douglass. I found out that there's a second trilogy to the series, so I read those as well. The first half was as great as I remembered. The second newer half was awful. I have left better novels than those in the toilet. If you haven't read the series, I strongly recommend the first three books. Ignore the second half. It sucks. So. Bad. It completely undermines the entire purpose of the first trilogy, and destroys any chance of coherent plot or believable characters.
I also read "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. I didn't like it. I think it's mostly because I wouldn't like him as a person. He has very captivating writing style, even though he wrote the whole thing in one giant paragraph and then cut and pasted it into the book, with chapters and paragraphs. Normally, I don't enjoy stream of consciousness very much, but it worked with this beatnik of an author. The fact that I found him a pretentious arrogant ass didn't exactly make me enjoy the book, though.
I also read "Watership Down". It was very good. I liked it very much. Well written, creative insight, good characters and development and an interesting plot. It's about rabbits doing things that rabbits normally do and do not normally do, from the point of view of rabbits. I strongly recommend it.
Up next on my reading list: "The Sound and the Fury," by Faulkner. Apparently, he's more difficult than Eudora Welty, who was a challenge to read. "Delta Wedding" is a good book for readers looking for a postmodern book to deconstruct, even though you pretty much need a family tree for reference.

Lets make-a ze tutti frutti pizza!

I am really craving pizza. Crispy thin crust pizza with marinara sauce, pineapple, onions, diced tomatoes, green peppers, garlic and spinach with feta and cheddar cheese. Mind you, I've never had this pizza. According to the pizza builder on the dominos.com website, a small pizza with the above specifications costs around $15, and I fail at making pizza crust most of the time.
In any case, pizza is great. : ) If anyone reads this, feel free to share your favorite pizza toppings.

Speaking of pizza, I'm learning Italian. Slowly... I suppose I have until January to get the rudimentary conversational Italian down. My interim/Jterm/January class is a political science class about political identity. And where better to study political identity than central Europe? Thus, I and 17 other students and a professor are going to Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia during January. I am going to for sure learn some Italian, and I am going to try to learn Croat, although I can't imagine an English-Croat dictionary and grammar book are easily accessed. I'm hoping Italian will be fairly common in these Slavic states, considering Italy is, you know, right there. If that falls through, I'll try to get by on French and English, but I doubt they would be more common than Italian.
Italian and French are very similar, both in spelling and pronunciation and sentence structure. So far, it's very easy for me. I will have to get common tourist phrases down for my week of vacation in Italy in February, and learn some more intellectual vocabulary that relates to politics and sociology for my class, although all of our classes will be in English. But I hope to get to talk to real people, not just professors and students. We're a unique niche of society.
I love travelling, so I am very excited for this trip, despite the additional $4k in tuition that it will cost me. I have never been on a trip with such a focus on one aspect of society. Normally, when one travels, one sees historical sites and art and food and spas and museums but not the society and history of their country and culture.

Trivial Pursuit

Lately, I've been enjoying watching "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and "Jeopardy!" during the 4'o'clock hour of my jobless college student summer. I find I have trouble with art-related questions. Considering most people on Millionaire win at least $16,000, it makes me want to go on the show and play. I could probably get $25,000. No one ever really gets past $50,000 since I've been watching the show recently. It'd be great to win $50,000. I mean, it would all go to paying of tuition loans, but it'd still be great. I suppose I would get a nice used Toyota or Honda and a couple more tattoos as well, but that'd leave me with $40k. That's almost a whole years tuition.
I personally prefer watching Jeopardy to Millionaire, but Millionaire pays better. I should buy Trivial Pursuit to improve my trivia. I might join Quiz Bowl at my school next year. It'll be like high school, where I was in Knowledge Bowl. One of my funnest extracurricular activities, I must say. It gives theater and orchestra a run for their money, in any case.
I like playing intelligent games. It makes me feel intelligent. : )

Concern for friends of the library

I know, I know. I just wrote my first post an hour ago. That post was boring, though. That post is so 60 minutes ago. That, and as an unemployed college student sitting in a coffee shop for 3 hours, I have run out of things to do.
I am waiting for the public library to open. They changed their hours. The hours are now usually 10-6, except Monday and Wednesday, when it is open 12-8. Not a big inconvenience for me, being unemployed, but they don't really benefit anyone else. And while unemployed people need to use the library, the new hours do not work for anyone besides them.
But the library needs to save money, and cutting hours saves money. What else can they do? It's not like they can sell their books, or fine people more for returning them late. That'll decrease the usefulness of the library and turn people off. They could have a large fund-raising event, but who gives money in this economy?
I think they need to increase usage. The more people use it, the more sponsors and donors will see that it is needed and continue or increase support. However, cutting hours to silly times when only unemployed kids and maybe families with a stay-at-home parent can use it is not the way to get more people to come to the library.
Of course, I am in no way an expert on how to run a library. Or how to get money on such a large scale. When I go there, I will ask if they need volunteers for anything.

Welcome to my dirtrag

Hello. I have decided to start a blog, because I want to say a lot, but I don't want to force everyone to read my notes on Facebook, or be limited to 140 characters on Twitter. I'll try to keep Facebook a happy place, where my sometimes strong opinions and rants and perspective may offend a "friend."
In any case, I am not just some Pissed-off College Student. I am also a very happy person who loves everything, even things that make me angry. I am sometimes a Whimsical Optimist, or I can be a real Hard-ass Pessimist. Most of the time, I am a Hard-ass Optimist, though. I may be hopeful, but I'm not stupid. : )
I also like smiley-faces, but not emoticons. I mean, I'm not morally opposed to them, but they're distracting. I'll stick with creative character faces.
(>^.^)><3<(^.^<)
See, isn't that cute?
If you decide to follow me, you'll learn a lot about me. I don't want to share all of my likes and dislikes and views of the world in the first post, now do I?