My mom and I went Christmas shopping last Sunday. We were in JCPenny's, looking at watches for my brother. She picked one up and said "Mmph?" I replied "Mmf." She put it down. I picked one up and asked "Mhm?". She promptly answered "Muhum."

A lady stood by and stared at us talking in grunts.


How close can a family get when its members begin to communicate without words, when even with the slightest tilt of the head, raise of an eyebrow, murmur, each one knows what the other is thinking.

My dad has the bad habit of never finishing his sentences sometimes. Yet, we all know exactly what he's talking about.

There's a kind of sublime unity that a family reaches when its members truly care for each other.

This Christmas I realized what I enjoyed every year was not opening my gifts but watching everyone else open theirs.

Pictures to come later.

Normally, I can make some scrumptious delectables. In my home, I'm known as the Muffin (Wo)Man as I don the traditional red apron and wave my spatula like a madman at whichever miserable soul wanders into the kitchen while the bakelust is upon me.

However, it seems I've lost my touch recently. The last batch of cookies I made turned into a fiasco. The dough was too sticky, the cookies melted into huge flat circles that looked like they got run over by a truck. And somehow the edges burned but the center was still undone. I threw my hands up in despair while the Brother gorged himself on them anyway out of desperation.

I shall go forth on another sally into the kitchen. Perhaps, just maybe, I'll be able to salvage my dignity and reputation.

In other news, I received a pink present from Molly in the mail.

I've spent that last few days shaking it and attempting to divine what could be inside it. My guesses:

1. Another scarf (the easiest way to make me happy)

2. A sweater (you know, 'cuzz I'm always cold. Must be because of my icey cold heart.)

3. Some gorgeous headbands made by none other than Molly's cousin (tell her to get an Etsy shop Molly!)

4. A pony.

More later.

Summer Song

This song reminds me of hot summer afternoons, eating dinner on our porch as the drizzling honey sun drips onto us and lights up the tile floor and flower pots and yellow checkered pillows on the old wooden bench with euphoric resplendance. Later, my parents play songs from their childhood and ours too and we dance barefoot on the cold floor until our souls give out and we drift off to blissful repose on pillows of nostalgia.

Mmm, I can't wait for the summer.

Summer by zemotion

Summer Escape by exoticpeach

Summer Horizon by Leonard Art

Chilly, ain't it?

All the Single Ladies

I just happened to be traipsing about the Fedora Lounge and found a link to this sparkling little gem. A Guide for Single Ladies from 1938.

Don't you think these rules (well, most of them anyway) should be revisited by today's society? I was shocked by the dancing one. I always try to be friendly with guys I dance with, just to ease the awkwardness of being so close to each other and not knowing who they are. Do you think this rule applies to guys today?

The Undead Post

You thought I had fallen into a coma, didn't you? Admit it. Once you took a look at my blog and had seen no new updates for several days, you gave it all up. You lost all hope. But suddenly, a glimmer of hope rises in you with the lemon drop of a winter sun and you return to where you had last seen me. And lo and behold, I have returned with a post!

Tricked ya, didn't I?

So as I crawl back into the monotony of three more weeks of school until Christmas break, I awaken from the immortal slumbers of bliss to give you an update on subjects you don't care about at all but you need to waste some time and procrastinate so why not let your brain fall into a numb contentedness and read my blog?

Ah, Thanksgiving. The feast of gluttony.

A trip to San Jose ended the week quite nicely. The day we got there, a wedding had overtaken the hotel's ballroom and as we took a stroll outside to visit the downtown area, ancient limo reminiscent of the car from The Great Race pulled up and deposited a peroxide bride.

I waited impatiently for Tony Curtis to leap out after her but to no avail.

Ah, but I must toddle off now. My chemistry book awaits.

'Til later.

Feeling Low?

Here, try some of this.

I lied.

I haven't uploaded pictures and probably won't get to until next week.

So to console you (actually I'm consoling myself since I don't get to swing dance this week due to a silly school dance where people don't actually dance), here's an amzing lindyhop video.




*cry*

Schwing

I want this shirt from Snorg Tees. What better shirt to wear to swing dancing?

Which reminds me...

Friday was the Costume Party at the swing dance hall. EVERYONE had the most amazing costumes. I didn't think people could still be that creative. Pictures will come later (when I'm not too lazy to upload them).

Anyway, for your information, Molly and I give nicknames to most of the fellows we dance with, since we can't remember all their names. So one of them is Motorcycle Dude, since he always appears with helmet in hand. So everyone is dressed up in their most extravagant outfits, and Motorcycle Dude comes in with jeans and a white t-shirt and a wood board attached to ropes that are attached to his shirt that look like he's sitting on a swing. Because, he's a swing dancer.

And Anthony came in a kilt and full Scottish dress (oh, and a wicked longsword). I was forced to ask him, "How does it feel to be the one dancing in a skirt this time?". I also had to refrain from asking who wears the pants in his house.

More later when homework is done (and pictures!).

A Quote (Or Two)

"If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral; everything would be lawful, even cannibalism."

::::

"Yes, life is full, there is life even underground," he began again. "You wouldn't believe, Alexey, how I want to live now, what a thirst for existence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these peeling walls. Rakitin doesn't understand that; all he cares about is building a house and letting flats. But I've been longing for you. And what is suffering? I am not afraid of it, even if it were beyond reckoning. I am not afraid of it now. I was afraid of it before. Do you know, perhaps I won't answer at the trial at all.... And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands of agonies -- I exist. I'm tormented on the rack -- but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar -- I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there."

Mitya from The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

Were I There Wednesday

Ah, to get away from life for a while. Someday, someday, I'll visit you, Europe! Picture is of some beach in Britain (I believe it's Cardiff but I'm probably wrong). Click it for full version (in which you can see every single blade of grass. I kid you not. Actually I do.)

My English teacher is from Cardiff. She knows some Welsh too. It's the only class where the students like listening to the teacher's voice.

Tango Argentino

100 ideas for the artistic soul.

A page of 100 ideas for an artist type to amuse themself.

Food For Thought

I have followers, it seems! Does that make me a cult?

Photograph by Darkened~Flame

"With food, everything can be resolved."

That's my dads motto, and a statement he swears by. It's biblical, he says.

Depressed? Have a snack.
Getting divorced? Cook your husband a homemade meal.
Arguing with family members? Invite them over for dinner.

Of course, he says this to be humorous (I think. I can never tell with my dad), but perhaps there's some truth to it. Everything happens at the dinner table. It's where we convene to share our day, our thoughts, before we rush off again into the mad, mad world.

Since I was a little child, some of my earliest memories have been of people coming over for dinner. It seems that my family often has these dinner parties and I'm not quite sure if it's a culture thing or a family thing. I don't believe I've ever heard any of my friends say that they're having guests over for dinner (at least on a regular basis).

It's stressful at times. My mom, the ultimate clean freak, sets us all scrubbing the ceilings and mopping the walls and mowing the lawn. And then, there's the cooking, which is of course the most important part. My mom is such a good cook, she should have been a gourmet chef. Yes, I am that spoiled. Every lunch or dinner is a masterpiece. We're so used to being fed well that I'm suprised we're not all quite round and chubby.

And once the food is prepared, we hurry to shower and put on our best clothes and all that jazz until the doorbell rings. A few wine glasses and a good conversation later, we begin the meal. And over that meal, we laugh, we cry, we tell stories, we share our worlds. And it's peaceful. My dad says all the problems of the world could be solved if we just gathered around a good meal.

I've got to go help my mom bake cookies now.

I'll cook and sew...

Proust and Faust

Mirror Mirror on the Wall by Eize

What is it about these silly quizzes that fascinates us (by us I mean me, unless you count yourself fascinated too!)? Is it that it feeds our ego and lets us vent all the frivolous facts about ourselves that we want people to know and admire? Whatever psychological vice it feeds (hence the mention of Faust in the title of the post), I love seeing other people's answers. So I'll post my answers and hopefully someone decides to do it themselves (this means you Molly :D ).

The Proust Questionnaire:

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being lost in a bakery full of cheesecakes, I suppose.

2. What is your greatest fear? I'm not afraid of much.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? My self-consciousness.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Hypocrisy, over-sensitivity, superficiality, lack of reasoning or critical thinking.

5. Which living person do you most admire? My parents, because I can't just pick one.

6. What is your greatest extravagance? As in monetary? I don't spend much but if I do its on clothing or books.

7. What is your current state of mind? Nonchalant.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? I don't believe that virtues can be overrated.

9. On what occasion do you lie? Little white lies, I suppose, if I have to keep someone's secret.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance? I'm not too fond of my face. =]

11. Which living person do you most despise? Oh, it's so hard for me to despise anyone. Disagree with? Yes. Despise? No.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man? Independence. Or confidence. Or manliness. :D

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman? Genuineness.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “I suppose...", "cool",

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life? God.

16. When and where were you happiest? I'm such an indecisive person I can never answer this type of question.

17. Which talent would you most like to have? I would love to have a natural gift for lindyhopping.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I would probably make myself cooler. Or give myself green eyes. =)

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement? Learning the basic lindyhop step. If you can learn that, you are unstoppable.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? My cat. She makes sleeping look like an art.

21. Where would you most like to live? A cottage near the beach in some like seaside village in Europe.

22. What is your most treasured possession? My guitar and my books.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Being a pathetic self-pitying person who doesn't care for anyone else except one's self.

24. What is your favorite occupation? A chocolate maker, of course. :p

25. What is your most marked characteristic? Whenever I think about something, I exaggerate by rubbing my chin with my fingers like in the cartoons. Everyone knows me by that.

26. What do you most value in your friends? Self-sacrifice and generosity.

27. Who are your favorite writers? In no particular order, Victor Hugo, P.G. Wodehouse, A. C. Doyle, C. S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Dumas, Cervantes, Dostoevsky, ...and the list can go on forever.

28. Who is your hero of fiction? Agh, I can't decide...

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with? …Napoleon of course. :]

30. Who are your heroes in real life? My parents.

31. What are your favorite names? Camille, Alice, Simone, Raphael, Sebastian

32. What is it that you most dislike? Dull pencils.

33. What is your greatest regret? I have none.

34. How would you like to die? Painlessly.

35. What is your motto? "You're alive. Do something."

Checkerboard Socks!

Flamenco

Ah, if only I could play guitar like that.

Musical Monday: Ever Present Past

World War 2 Poster

The New Camera

I celebrate the new camera with photos of my habitat. The second picture is from my backyard, the former being from the nearby shopping center. I'm still trying to figure out all the features in the camera by taking pictures of the neighborhood, no doubt convincing my neighbors that I'm spying on them.

Plus, a picture of my wall.

Oh yes, and for no reason, my cat.

Lindy-Hoppin' Monday

The Year's Last Hours

The Scarf by TheNass

Photo by Sweet Reality

A Spirit haunts the year's last hours
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
To himself he talks;
For at eventide, listening earnestly,
At his work you may hear him sob and sigh
In the walks;
Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks
Of the mouldering flowers:
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

The air is damp, and hush'd, and close,
As a sick man's room when he taketh repose
An hour before death;
My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves
At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,
And the breath
Of the fading edges of box beneath,
And the year's last rose.
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

-Lord Alfred Tennyson

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,

With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,

Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,

And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!

Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,

Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand

Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,

Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!

Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended

So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging eaves;

Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;

Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;

And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,

Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ah, autumn. Sweaters and scarves, chilly breezes that cool the sun's rays, cups of cocoa and apple cider, leaves dressed in their evening attire, and cuddling up with a black and white film, a cup of tea, and thee. My favorite season.

True poetry...

Every Weed's a Rose

i shall imagine life

i shall imagine life
is not worth dying,if
(and when)roses complain
their beauties are in vain

but though mankind persuades
itself that every weed's
a rose,roses(you feel
certain)will only smile

e. e. cummings
Photo by Mousha

The eye of a little god.

Blue and intelligent, they took in the scene of people passing up and down, and up and down the sidewalk, cars rumbling, tumbling down paved destinies, and the murmur of life as it squeezed by him. A cat, painted like orange marmalade, smeared itself against an old man's trouser leg as he minded his shop, the cat meowing and complaining until at last the old gentleman bent over and scratched it behind its left ear, its favorite spot. A matronly woman had her hands full of grocery bags as she walked to her car (the one she used for daily life, not the classic automobile her husband kept in the garage for Sunday drives). A boy, one of the dying breed of knights, leaped to her side to help her, eager to earn some small reward in Heaven. Two little girls made bouquets out of flowers plucked from an abandoned lot next door, thoroughly unaware in their innocence that they were actually weeds. A young woman tried to hail a taxi, not noticing a button had fallen off of her coat when she dressed that morning in the dark, early to work for the first time all week. A father and his son walked by returning from the park with a ball and bat, the father with gray hair encroaching on his black locks and his son with age encroaching on his youth.

Blue and intelligent, the eyes of the little boy sat in his head as the boy sat on his porch which sat on a house which sat in the middle of the block. Blind, he could not see these things but he knew they happened just the same.


"The eye of a little god,
four-cornered,
most of the time I meditated on the opposite wall."
Poem excerpt from Mirror by Silvia Plath.
Photo by Shana Rae
Short story by me.

You Do The Math

Video was emailed to my Pre-Calculus class by Mr. McClung, the math teacher.

Mr McClung is so geeky...he has a clock with radians (of pi) instead of numbers and a wrist-watch with a built in calculator.

'nuff said, I think.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

In a small town the local bell ringer was retiring. The town elders put out the word that they needed a bell ringer. Nobody applied for the job until one day a man with no arms showed up at an elder's doors. The elder told the man that he couldn't possibly want the job as its very difficult.

"You must climb 2 flights of stairs, every hour on the hour, not to mention the bell is very heavy and most importantly you have no arms to pull the rope, how can you possibly be a bell ringer" said the elder.

The man begged, please, just give me a chance, let me prove to you that I can do this job. The Elder was moved by the mans plea and told him to come back tomorrow, and he will be tested. The man happily skipped away.

The next day rolled around , the man showed up at the bell tower at the appointed time. The elder and the man climbed the steps, when they reached the top the elder told the man "Go ahead let me see if you can ring the bell" with that the man went to the farthest point of the belfry and took a running start and ran right into the bell. ""BBBOONNGG" The man turned to the elder with a huge smile on his face. The elder told him if he could keep it up he had the job. The man was as happy as a clam and thanked the elder.

Weeks went by, the man doing his job perfectly. One day the man was walking up the bell tower and he heard voices at the top. He ran the rest of the way up and surprised a bunch of kids hanging out in the bell tower, he chased them off but didn't notice the mess they left on the floor. He knew he was almost late for the bell ringing, in a hurry he backed up as far as he could go and started running towards the bell, he didn't notice the banana peel, the man slipped, fell over the edge and plummeted to his death.

As he was lying there people congregated around, one gentle soul came out of the crowd and asked who this man was. Another bystander spoke up: "I don't know his name - but his face rings a bell."

---
Is it just the "lameness" of the joke or the image of a armless guy bashing his head on a giant bell repeatedly that has me laughing to the point of tears. Or maybe it's just my appalling sense of humor (or lack thereof).
---

On another less tinny note (rimshot please), I was shocked and scandalized (perhaps even gobsmacked?) by two news articles, one on msnbc.com and the other in Newsweek.

The Death of Cursive?

I shudder to think of it.

These articles go on to expound on the idea that now with the advent of technology and such gifts to our society as Twitter, Facebook, and other "necessities of life", cursive has become an archaic notion of backwardness and antiquity. Who writes in cursive anymore besides the elderly? What's more, with cellphones and texting and internet, who writes at all?

Less than a hundred years ago, writing was not just a daily necessity but an art. Now we live in an age of virtual communication in which we write less and less, slowly losing our ability to write in any legible fashion (much less use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling, but that's another complaint that I won't make you, dear reader, go through just yet). Cursive, the authors of the articles say, wastes time and who, in these harsh economic times, can afford to spend extra minutes adding a few flourishes to their writing? We type everything we do, on our cellphones, on our laptops. No need for pen and paper anymore.

My own handwriting is admittedly terrible itself. This does not stop me however from writing all my notes in cursive and putting some effort into it. ( I need never worry about my fellow pupils cheating off of my notes; they can't even read good handwriting, much less my own). Perhaps it's because of my love for anything old (except of course, for last week's leftovers. I toss that out, thank you very much.) or maybe I'm just a sucker for tradition. I simply can't bear the thought of eradicating cursive from existence. The very idea is abhorrent to me. Get rid of yet another sense of decor for the simplicity of saving time? What then shall we get rid of next? Frills on our clothing? Paint on our walls? Vocabulary in our speech? For what other trifles will the bell toll next?




Poetry Manuscript from The Little John Collection

A line of glorious tone

Photo from mbgrigby

On leaving some Friends at an Early Hour

GIVE me a golden pen, and let me lean
On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;
Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,
Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:
And let there glide by many a pearly car,
Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,
And half discovered wings, and glances keen.
The while let music wander round my ears,
And as it reaches each delicious ending,
Let me write down a line of glorious tone,
And full of many wonders of the spheres:
For what a height my spirit is contending!
’Tis not content so soon to be alone.

John Keats

In the swing of things...

Recovering from last night's dancing. Oh yes, and I'm taking lindyhop lessons(!). My life's dream is almost accomplished. Now to find another life's dream. I just have to remember to triple-step (It helps if I say it to myself in my head).

I hate it when your partner does hold you tight enough. Their hand is on your back and it just resting there so when you swing out it feels like your going to fall. I guess guys are afraid of hurting their partners or are afraid of being too forward?

We learned the Groucho and I bet we look funny doing it. =)

Blinded Me With Science

http://zombietime.com/john_holdren

Good God, and this man is the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology.

People on the Pavement

The Thinker by Thomas Eakins

Richard Cory
by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich -- yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Carniceria

"4 June 1962. Navy chaplain Luis Padillo was walking around giving last rites to dying soldiers as sniper fire surrounded him. A wounded soldier pulled himself up by linging to the priest’s cassock, as bullets chewed up the concrete around them. Hector Rondón Lovera, who had to lie flat to avoid getting shot, later said that he was unsure how he managed to take this picture. Norman Rockwell eeriely used this photograph as a template for his Southern Justice painting, “Murder in Mississippi“.
It was taken in Puerto Cabello Naval Base, Venezuela, the city of 80,000 beside the nation’s largest naval base 75 miles west of the capital Caracas . In June 1962, Puerto Cabello was the scene of one of the bitterest fighting in modern Venezuelan history, now known as the Porteñazo.. The bloody struggle between government forces and guerrilla rebels in the naval base who had the support of the residents of Puerto Cabello. Official casualty figures for the military were 47 dead, 89 wounded. But unofficial estimates put the toll, including civilians, at more than 300."

Source: http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/aid-from-a-padre/

Stolen from The Crescat.

Ironic isn't it, that the sign in back says "Carniceria" which is Spanish for "butcher-shop".

Bei mir bist du schoen

A Short Story

Love by Guy de Maupassant

http://www.classicallibrary.org/maupassant/swgem/11.htm

An Education

Movie I'm looking forward to most this year?

This.

Why? Set in the 60s, gorgeous costumes (I want the dress from the poster -->) and music (and actor), at last a decent plot, beautiful filmography (as far as I can see from the trailer). It's the story of my life, without the 60s, gorgeous costumes and music and guys, plot, and filmography.

Return to (In)sanity

Even teenagers need breaks from their hectic summer schedules of sleeping in, roaming the house with nothing to do, plotting your demise...

So the ol' Vergara Posse made their way down to the giant 'hood known as Los Angeles for a week. The first night, we're sleeping on inflatable beds in my G'ma's living room and we did not sleep at all. Let me lay out the land for you. The street is wide enough for one car to drive through and one whole side of the street is completely filled with cars. If you see one open space, jump for it, even if that's not even your street, because chances are that you're not going to find another parking space for about a decade. LA is that crowded. Then, there's the hotshot next door with a wife, newborn kid, and souped up car that has had more money spent on it than the rest of his family. Oh, and don't forget his fuzzy loveable pet, his new minibike. So, maybe it's his way of relaxin', you know, just chillin' after work. After all, who doesn't love a warm sunny afternoon/night, with hours to spend on RIDING HIS FREAKIN' MINIBIKE with a motor that you can hear in the next timezone. I'm serious. It's midnight, and this guy is out riding this thing the size of a Hot Wheels toy and waking up the whole neighborhood. Yes, a nice time to practice charity. I like how my grandpa so kindly put it. "One of these days, I'm going to take that old pellet gun and give him a few in the head." Not only that, but he rides it in the afternoons, (kindly mowing that lawn for his neighbors in that he goes over their grass and rips it up) with his baby boy in his laps. The poor child is an endangered species.

And then there's the punks who drive by in their modified little cars and rip down the itty bitty street at gazillion miles an hour, making their cars rumble out a subtle "LOOK AT ME I'M SO BADASS". And then the garbage trucks pass by early like five in the morning. They sound like they're ingesting another car. Any minute, I could have snapped and yelled at them all to shut up.

To the right, a photo of me waking up that first morning.

I feel like those old men that wave their canes in a rather threatening manner at the kids screaming "Damn kids, get off my lawn!" as audibly as my dentures allow.

Anyway. My aunt took me to a ballet of Romeo and Juliet which was absolutely magnificent. I was wrapped up in the rapturous beauty of the dance and the magnificent costumes until my cousing Jasmine, who is entering freshman year in highschool, leans over to me and says "Those guys in tights don't look like they're wearing anything at all." I don't know why men can't wear some loose clothing or at least some other kind of pants that allow movement. Because from that moment on, it was kind of hard to concentrate on the storyline when there are five men doing leaps across the stage in skin colored tights with the physique of the statue of David. Thank you, God, for men with beautiful leg muscles.

That reminds me...on our road trip back from LA (Los Angeles, not Lousiana), we stopped by Santa Barbara (lovely town, except for the nightlife which consists of a road of nichtclubs and bars filled with unsavory characters that stumble across your way so precarioiusly, they are obviously drunk). As it was a Sunday, we went to Mass at the Mission. I forget what order of priests are in charge of the Missions but they were brown robes and sandals. Anyway, the priest officiating the Mass was young (compared to the Mission itself), bearded, and friendly in the "So anyone from out of town? Let's all welcome Anna Sassin from Washington and Gene Poole from Conneticut with a round of applause" kind of way. He does his homily which was fine, and then walks back to the altar while the lady, who must have been in her forties, leans over to her mother and whispers audibly "Wow, that's one good looking priest." I've seen very handsome priests before but still, it just feels like blasphemy to say such a thing out loud (especially during Mass!). It's one of those things that you just can't say, like "Gee, you're fat" or "Your dad's hot". How can you say that your priest is cute? It's just...awkward.

Vacation was great though, it really was. Monterey was fantastic although it was dark and cloudy all the time. The view of the ocean was marvellous though. I wish I had a nice camera to take pictures because it was so picture perfect. It was night time, and gray sky and gray sea and you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Just an endless expanse of thundering waves and thundering clouds.

That reminds me...While in LA my lil bro and I went to the beach with the cousins and received a thorough sunburn. I feel like a patchwork doll. I will tell you, though, that some people should not, for anything in the world, wear speedoes. Please. For the love of God and for the sake of our eyes. Don't.

The return home. We are greeted by a cat who yells her welcome backs and a dead bird in our hallway. A welcoming gift, to be sure. She was rewarded by Ewws and Awws.

There's no place like home.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl

requiescat in pace

Death. The Final Frontier. That undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

It comes suddenly and sometimes unexpectedly. Who saw Michael Jackson's death coming? Certainly we expected Farah Fawcett's, what with the cancer and all. And what about Ed McMahon? I haven't heard a thing about his death on the news.

Some say death is a part of nature, but what is so natural about not living?

My point though, to get straight to it, is the fact that we're all unprepared for it. We live our lives "to the fullest" and then once everyone is at your funeral and your life is being reviewed, you kind of realize that while we enjoyed life very much, how many of us can say we led a successful productive life?

Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living". Yes, we go from day to day worrying about petty things, but have we ever taken a step back to examine our life and see where it's headed? What is our ultimate end? Or how about examining or past and see how far we've come?

I ask you, "What is your goal?"

You say, "To go to college."

I then say, "And then what?"

"Graduate and have a career"

"And after that?"

"Get married and have a family"

"And then?"

"See my kids off to a successful life."

"And then?"

There is that last "and then" which most cannot answer.

You may say I'm rather harsh, but I am of the opinion that if you have not lived your life and dedicated it to the advancement of or have helped your fellow man in anyway, it would be better if you had not been born.

You see, if you go around, toiling and living, but only for yourself, what is the use of your life? Man has only a limited time here on earth and in all the years one lives, what have we done that we can say, I've made a positive impact on the world or I've made a change in someone's life?

Yes, Michael Jackson made music and there are bajillions of people who think he's God's gift to music. But in examining his life, would he have considered it worth living? Sure, he had millions in the bank. His face was known around the world. He lived as a superstar. But for what? How has he bettered humanity, other than being a source of entertainment?

I know, I must sound a little overcritical. Don't get me wrong, I respect the man for the musician he was and as a human being. But do all those hit records and loaded bank accounts make him a better man than the average chum? Do those aforementioned things make him superior to Joe, who works all day to bring home money to support his family, loves his wife, teaches his children to be good people, is of service to his neighbors?

People were reported to be sobbing and laying flowers on Michael Jackson's star on Hollywood Blvd. Why do we not do the same for every poor soul in the obituary section of our newspaper?

Princess Diana and Mother Teresa died on the same day and yet there were more people persent at Princess D's funeral than at Mother Teresa's. Why? Princess Diana threw a lot of money at charities while Mother Teresa gathered people from the streets, raised children, sacrificed herself for her fellow man, wore herself out giving and giving until she could give no more and then somehow found more to give.

What makes life worth living? Achieving pleasure for yourself, making yourself happy, enjoying yourself? Sure, all those things are good and right, I won't deny that. But is that the ultimate end of life? Or is it achieving something greater, the knowledge that your life was given to better the human race?

Rest in peace, Jackson, Fawcett, McMahon.

The Invisible Cretinizer

Quote of the Week

"Everything popular is wrong." -Oscar Wilde

How to say I love you.

The Good Club

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece


This article is one of the most infuriating and frightening things I've read. Imagine, an elite few, made up of billionaires, are getting together to plan how to reduce populations and control the masses. My gosh, it's like something out of a science-fiction story.

"Gates, 53, who is giving away most of his fortune, argued that healthier families, freed from malaria and extreme poverty, would change their habits and have fewer children within half a generation." Good God, because less children means healthier families. Is he calling children a disease? So we people are nothing more than vermin that need to be controlled?

"“Official projections say the world’s population will peak at 9.3 billion [up from 6.6 billion today] but with charitable initiatives, such as better reproductive healthcare, we think we can cap that at 8.3 billion,” Gates said then." It's been proven that the whole of the world's population can fit inside Texas. And Gates wants to "cap that" through "reproductive healthcare". In English, "Let's neuter the masses like we would a stray dog so that they will not reproduce anymore and we can keep them under control." What are we, animals or people?

"The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change. " Great Scott (to quote another eccentric old man), these "philanthropists" want to overcome our government and religion (which we are still free to practice last time I checked the Constitution) to change. Change what? Change our minds? Our society? Our lives?

Yes, I sound like a conspiracy theorist because I am.

One Classic Dame

Your result for The Classic Dames Test...

Myrna Loy

You scored 12% grit, 43% wit, 19% flair, and 33% class!

You are loaded with a quirky kind of class that people find irresistable. Men turn and look at you admiringly as you walk down the street, and even your rivals have a grudging respect for you. You usually know the right thing to say, do and, of course, wear. You can take charge of a situation when things get out of hand, and you do it with great poise and chic. Your wit and sense of fun endear you to your partner and every other man in the room. Your screen partners include William Powell and Cary Grant. You're quite a catch...if you want to be caught.

Find out what kind of classic leading man you'd make by taking the Classic Leading Man Test.

One of my favorite actresses. It's funny, though, how the results always contradict reality in these quizzes. lol

And by opposing, end them.

Current Mood: Ecstatic

Hey look! Shiny! Why yes, that is in fact a Doctor Who mood thingy. 8D It's like a mood ring for your blog.

So, why are the Doctor and I so happy? I got a good grade on my Algebra finals, which I was sure I was going to fail. 8] Happy, happy, happy. Deliriously happy.

Anyway, I've entered the homestretch. The rest of my finals are tomorrow and I guess if I can pass my Algebra 2, I can pass anything. Bring it on, world!

Going on to bigger things, this means that I have only two years now until I run off to college. My childhood is slipping away through fingers. Why yes, I do have a Peter Pan complex. I don't want to face the real world yet and I don't think I'm ready to. Of course, I still have two years to go, but I know they'll pass by too quickly. Life is like that I guess.

Yesterday, my lab partner and I finished dissecting a grasshopper. To be frank, its insides smelled like Taco Bell and looked like it too. I wonder if the grasshopper (the species is called "lubber grasshopper" which we found later that lubber means a big, clumsy, fellow. Needless to say, we had fun with that word all day) is looking down on us from heaven (or hell, who knows, he could've been part of a plague) and is wondering at the audacity of us tearing up his body. But we plunge forth, through grasshopper thoraxes and entrails, all in the name of science!

We arm wrestled with the grasshopper's feet after we cut them off.

Is this what life is? We struggle and fight for our way in the world and in the end we shuffle off this mortal coil, only to find ourselves on a cold slab, our insides bared and mocked by highschoolers.

My partner Bailey couldn't stand to cut open the grasshopper and gave me the proud honors of slicing open it's abdomen, saying that she felt sorry for the insect and felt like a murderer. What a metaphor. Stealing a phrase from the Prince of Denmark, does conscience, then, make cowards of us all? So cowardly, that we are afraid to dig beneath our exteriors and see the ugly mess that is inside?

Which reminds me, I recently watched the movie Everything Is Illuminated with Elijah Wood in his younger days. It's the only movie in which I think he's cute, but that's besides the point. Fantastic movie. I reccomend it.

Getting Holy With It

XD lol It's very hard to imagine the priests at my church dancing like this.



...Now you know, don't mess with nuns. D8

How To Tell If Your Cat Is Planning To Kill You

http://www.catswhothrowupgrass.com/kill.php


Bahaha, this is my cat, totally.

Of Paupers and Rockefellers

""One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious- because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe- some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others- some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. "But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal."

A quote from "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee which I am reading for English class. The quote is from Atticus Finch's defense speech to the jury, urging them to acquit Tom Robinson.

Alert: New Goal In Life

I want. To dance. Like this.

The Devalued Prime Minister of a Devalued Government

Impressive. The video's somewhat old by now, but I'm impressed by his rhetorical skills and the fact that he's not afraid to say what the rest of the country is thinking.

To Bomb or Not To Bomb

(Homework for World History class)

The Paradox Society


On August 6, 1945, the nuclear bomb “Little Boy” was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, killing as many as 140,000 people and leaving many more affected by radiation and lead poisoning. On August 9, only three days later, “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 80,000 people. In both cities, the majority of the dead were citizens. Japan announced its surrender to the Allies on August 15, officially ending World War II.

Months before, on May 7, Germany had signed the Instrument of Surrender, ending the war in Europe. The Allies had triumphed there, ending Hitler’s mad reign over the people. Everyone had been appalled by the barbarous treatment of the over 6 million Jews and other people who were murdered or tortured by Hitler, something the world had never seen before. Even today, one cringes at the thought of the Nazis tossing people into a furnace or mowing them down with machine guns.

However much we are disgusted by Hitler’s actions, when it comes the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we remain indifferent. It was a necessary evil, we say. But how necessary was it?

President Truman, who signed the executive orders for the attacks, insisted that the decision to deploy the bombs was his and so was, therefore, the responsibility of those deaths. To justify the atom bombs, Truman figuratively pointed a finger at Pearl Harbor and said “Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.” Despite the harsh brutality of the Japanese army, it’s hard to justify the deaths of thousands of men, women, and children.

The rationale of the bombings then came to rest on the idea that by bombing the Japanese in this way, we would save half a million American lives or more. These lives would have been lost, the government said, in the planned invasion of Kyushu and then in the invasion of Honshu the following year. However, it was calculated that the most lives lost in such a case would have been about 46 thousand Americans.

Truman’s own chief of staff Admiral Leahy said, “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” High military officers such as Eisenhower and MacArthur condemned the bombing as barbaric.
Gertrude Ascombe, a prominent Roman Catholic and British analytic philosopher, frequently criticized Truman, condemning him as a mass murderer and a war criminal. In 1956, she protested against Oxford, where she had graduated, giving Truman an honorary degree, saying “for what is the difference between the U.S. government massacring civilians from the air, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Nazis wiping out the inhabitants of some Czech or Polish village?”

Following her train of thought, what if our military and government leaders had approved dropping an atom bomb on a German city, believing that it would weaken the Nazis so much that they would be lead to surrender? It would have certainly ended the war, but would it have justified the killing of thousands of innocent women and children? Would we have looked at it differently than we did at the atomic bombings?

Truman did not exhaust the possibilities of ending the war in another way. Instead, he opted for the most powerful and jolting manner in which to stop the Japanese. However, as Major General Fuller, a military historian, said, “Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified.” For what other reason then would laws and ethics of warfare have been created if not to stop heinous acts of barbarism such as the atomic bombs?

Leo Szilard, a world-renowned physicist, stated in 1960 that “If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.” If we look at this event without attaching names or nationalities, it’s impossible to see the bombings as justifiable. A nation drops two atomic bombs on cities in another nation, killing thousands and thousands of innocent people, men, women, and children, for the purpose of ending a war. Who then is the greater criminal?

Murder on the Seventh Floor

These are the facts. Dr. Dan Kliman, 38, was found dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft on December 1. Apparently, he was a doctor with a practice in Alameda, and a co-founder of a four year old activist group Voice for Israel. The building was the Sharon Building on 55th New Montgomery Street where he took Arabic classes. He was an active pro-Israel protester and gay. Classes were canceled on the 25th, the day that police investigators believed he died. He was found on the floor of the elevator shaft, clutching a purple pen.

At first glance, it seems like a fantastic story for a murder mystery. I would have expected such a plot from an Agatha Christie novel or an episode of Mystery. However, this is real life.

'Frisco is treating this case like an accidental death. The majority of the comments on the page on the San Fran Chronicle are made by people who believe that this was truly an accident. I can't believe people can be so naive.

Listening to Savage yesterday on the radio, I became more acquainted with the facts. He was carrying a backpack with a laptop and $1500. True, he was to go on vacation sometime soon. The camera in the lobby is motion-censored, so it caught Kliman waiting for the elevator. It went off for sometime as there was no movement. However, the camera turned on again because of some movement, but there was no one there.

Police investigators believe that the elevator, which was working perfectly at the time, had gotten stuck in between the 6 and 7 floors, or the 7 or 8. Kliman, they think, tried to open the elevator doors with his purple pen and must have fallen backwards.

There are so many points here that even we the average citizen can find something terribly wrong with.

First, if there were no classes that day, why wasn't Kliman informed? Who's duty was it to email students and tell them?
Second, if he were stuck in an elevator, why didn't he press the emergency button to get in contact with someone? Anyone as intelligent as Dr. Kliman would have known to press the button.
Third, it is impossible for him to have opened the elevator doors. On Savage, two elevator repairmen/technicians called in to say so. Even more impossible is that he tried to open them with a pen.
Fourth, if he had managed to open the doors, why would he be wearing his backpack and clutching a pen? Wouldn't he have put the pen away and throw the backpack to safety first, and him afterwards?
Fifth, if he had fallen backwards, why was he still gripping the pen? Wouldn't he had let it go to grab on to something or in the fall?
Sixth, his bones were completely shattered. He would not have been able to be holding the pen anyway. Unless...he was in what they call rigor mortis, which means that the body stiffens after, I believe, 3 hours? That's the only way he could have still been holding the pen. And if he was in rigor mortis, then he would have to have been dead some time before falling down.

As morbid and gruesome as this story is, I can't help but be fascinated by this. It's like watching a murder mystery.

My brother and I decided that if Hollywood ever made this into a thriller, the title would be something like Fall or Falling Down. Unless it was made in the 30s, then it would have been like The Great Fall.

I need to get a life instead of sitting around concocting plots. =P

Two Idealists in a Broken Submarine

Foudn a poem while doing a poetry project for English. Aimed at no one in particular, mind you. I just love the last line.

Hate Poem
Julie Sheehan
I hate you truly. Truly I do.
Everything about me hates everything about you.
The flick of my wrist hates you.
The way I hold my pencil hates you.
The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped
in the jaws of a moray eel hates you.
Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.

Look out! Fore! I hate you.

The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m digging
from under by third toenail, left foot, hates you.
The history of this keychain hates you.
My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases
hates you.
The goldfish of my genius hates you.
My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors.

A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious
symbol of how I hate you.

My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.
My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate.
My pleasant “good morning”: hate.
You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my head
under your arm? Hate.
The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit
practices it.
Layers of hate, a parfait.
Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate,
I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one
individually and at leisure.
My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity
of my hate, which can never have enough of you,
Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.

More Quotes

"I have nothing to declare but my genius." - Oscar Wilde

"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself." - Charlie Chaplin

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." - Louis Hector Berlioz

"Every fight is a food fight when you’re a cannibal." - Demetri Martin

" Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. " - G.K. Chesterton

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein

2+2=5

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1462066/federal_health_care_grab_in_stimulus.html

First it was Obama's overturn of the Mexico City Policy, allowing the US to send money to Planned Parenthood and other similar companies to perform abortions overseas. Overseas as in, not United States. Not only is that an open support of abortion, but in economic troubles, we're sending money to other countries to kill off their children?

Universal healthcare for children was next.

I'm not saying healthcare is bad, but universal? That destroys any competition to give you the better product. That stops companies from trying to give you the better services, doctors, etc.

Obama signed a bill something or other that creates at least six detention facilities in every state, for citizens. That means any time there's a riot (or any other excuse), citizens can be placed in the detention facility by the police.

Now, it's federal health care. Now the government owns the doctors. Now the government is telling the doctors how to treat you. What's to say that the government can't tell doctors to give you the cheap medecine now? Now, if the government takes it in their head that it'd be better to let the sick die to save money, they can.

And yet people actually believe Obama is our new savior, our new demi-god who is come to rescue us from the black abyss of our own misery. People actually place all their blind faith in a man who is returning the favor by taking away their freedoms one by one. Like sheep to the slaughter, the Obama-nites are fooled into believing that all is for the best. Somehow their vision of reality is so distorted that they have no understanding at all of what is being done to them. And Obama and the rest of his henchmen are brain-washing people into believing them.

I sound like a madman, don't I? Like a conspiracy theorist. But I can't help it.

Mr. Orwell, looks like you weren't so paranoid after all.

"...the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty."

"We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull."

Quotes from "1984" by George Orwell.

We think too much...

...And feel too little.

The genius of Charlie Chaplin in his parody movie The Great Dictator.




I believe this is the greatest speech I've ever heard.

"I walked home in the rain..."

"...'Cause a person cannot lie." "Grey or Blue" by Jaymay



As much as I love cold sunny days, I really want a big thunderstorm right about now.

I can't stand days when the sun is sort of there but not and the clouds are light grey. Either it's bright and sunny or its dark and stormy. Please, make up your mind, Mr. Sky.

I really want it be dark and stormy for a while so that when the sun finally comes out I can play the song "Mr. Blue Sky" by ELO and it would be relevant.

A quote

“To retain respect for sausages or laws, you must avoid watching them in the making.”
– either Otto von Bismarck or Benjamin Disraeli

Momentary Fit Of Rage From Yeast

Greetings, readers of this unknown and rather dull blog (Who reads this stuff anyway?). I am Yeast. I'm temporarily taking over this blog while Paola the original author is dashing her head against the wall, muttering something about the stupidity of humanity. Which is something I wholeheartedly agree with. Not the self-mutilation of course, I mean the stupidity of humanity.

It seems that Paola found a short paragraph in her Biology textbook which seemed to upset her and it upset me too. Mind you, this is a textbook found and used in many human schools and held in as much respect as the Bible for science teachers. In this paragraph, which is included in a chapter about classification of living organisms, the author(s) states something so horrendous, so appalling, that I am deeply offended. May my fellow Yeast forgive this human for his ignorrance. I will not repeat this paragraph verbatim, not worrying about giving credit for Yeast cannot commit plagiarism (a rise in crime?) and also to protect the annonimity of the author.

"...humans have a gene that codes for myosin, a protein found in our muscles. Researchers have found a gene in yeast that codes for a myosin protein. As it turns out, myosin in yeast helps enable internal cell parts to move. Myosin is just one example of similarities at the molecular level -- an indicator that humans and yeasts share a common ancestry."

For you humans who did not catch the most flagrant slur in the passage I will point it out to you.

"...humans and yeasts share a common ancestry..."

Are you shocked yet?

To think that you, yes you humans, you despicable tyrants who use and abuse, who leave men and women and children dying in foreign countries, who murder your unborn, who take advantage of and exploit fellow human beings, you humans could be related to we noble Yeast? Disgusting. We Yeast are a noble organism who everyone loves to be around (Hey, I'm a fungi), who are so necessary for only the most important staple of your diet, bread and beer, who have never done any harm to anyone, we be related to you humans? I am ashamed. How can we Yeast, plant-like organisms share a common ancestry with you?

What I find more ridiculous than this slur on our reputation is the natural logic that the author uses to arrive to this point.

Humans have myosin, Yeast has myosin, therefore they must be blood-brothers, or at least third cousins twice removed?

Is it customary for respected scientists of your human species to make such wild accusations without proper logic and reasoning? Or does he usually spout such horrendous things along with "That cat is very nice and likes to have his whiskers pulled. That tiger looks like a cat. Therefore he must enjoy having his whiskers pulled."

I must tend to Paola, seeing as how she has made herself unconscious.
Sincerely,
Yeast