What, pray tell, is the internal atom structure of Quartz? or WHO THE HELL CARES

I'm pissed. I took my first geology test today. Let me preface this by saying that, I know I suck at science, and so I read and took notes on EVERY SINGLE WORD in EVERY CHAPTER for this test. I even did those review questions at the end of the chapter. Needless to say, this is FAR more effort than I usually put into a class. Do you know what this man asked me on the test? SEVERAL questions were as follows
"What is the internal atom structure of Quartz", feldspar, blah blah blah.
140 pages of geological stuff and you think im going to remember the fricking internal atom structure of ONE SPECIFIC MINERAL? lets get real. I know how volcanoes form, I know what a ferromagnesian mineral is, I know all about the Ring of Fire. But oh no, you dont want to ask me about those. You want to know what shape little particles I CANT EVEN SEE are in, in one in FIVE MILLION DIFFERENT TYPES OF ROCKS. Man, you suck.

One-Upped

So I make this 80's post, which Jon countered. Every one of those things you listed I could ignore, like, yah that was good, but not worthy of a decade. Except. Then you brought the A-Team into it. Ouch. God that was a great freakin show. Im humming the theme music as I type this. You did forger MacGuyver though.. that was sweet too. So my post is this.. I amend my statement to say "The vast majority of media (music, television, etc.) that came out of the 80's was obnoxious and embarrassing.. But then theres the A-Team." Oh. And yes, Robaroo's birth was also good..:) He was born June 8th, which makes his conception in 1979 though.. (just cause you were wondering, Jon)

Ha. :)

Me and my roommate were going through MP3's tonight listening to songs that were popular way back when we were in high school. Do you remember that song "Freak Me" by Silk?
Here is the first lyric.
"Baby don't you understand
I want to be your nasty man."
Ha! hahahahahaha
I dont even need to make a comment, that one speaks for itself...

Declaration.

I stand by my assertation that The Breakfast Club was the only worthwhile thing to come out of the 80's, and without it the entire decade could be wiped out. Except for my birth.

Laureate

So Im the Assistant Editor for the Laureate, Western's undergraduate literary journal. Submit things!! You can submit up to 3 pages of poetry or 1500 words of fiction and it's due by November 1st. We also need cover art, so if you paint or do photography or anything like that, you can submit that too... you turn everything in to the front desk of Lee Honors College (you dont have to be in the Honors College to submit, though).

Freudian slip?

So I'm at work tonight, and Im at my table,and Im getting a drink order. If you've ever been a server, you know that you kind of have an order that you repeat things in, just because its easier to remember everything that way. So mine is "I have six local beers on tap, a full bar, wine list, ice tea, lemonade and pepsi products." So I start to say this to my table and I say "I have six local beers on tap, a full bar, wine list, ice tea, le-" and I get the "le", but I cant for the life of me remember "monade", all i can think is "le-sbian". But I know that thats not what I mean so I just stop and stand there and think really hard and start cracking up.
My table is like.. "umm.. okay."
In other positive news, someone in my apartment complex is blasting Tupac and Im loving it. How they are getting away with it in my riot-prone, heavily police-surveillanced neighborhood, I have not a clue, but Im loving it... Speaking of which, when I pulled onto my street there were four police cruisers hanging out, surveilling or something. I just get this awful feeling that somewhere in this city someone is getting mugged or a store is getting robbed, all while four cruisers are chilling in the parking lot of Jimmy Johns, making sure that no one is playing music too loudly..

Some Nice Thoughts...

"Earth is a dynamic planet!"- my geology book (hee hee)

"The highest compliment one can be paid by another human being is to be told "because of what you are, you are essential to my happiness"- Nathaniel Brandon

A Couple of Things...

I haven't posted in a long time, because I havent really had anything much to talk about. But now I do. I realized just now that I only post when Im pissed off about something. Therefore, at the end of the post, I will make a conscious effort to be positive. But for now, heres what pissed me off today...
So Im coming home from my photography class, and im all in a good mood, because the pictures I took this afternoon turned out really good. And then the top 5 countdown comes on. Most people, when they hear a song with stupid lyrics, they laugh. Not so much me. I feel genuine rage when I hear people on the radio with retarded lyrics, because I know that there are a million struggling people out there with good lyrics that write their own songs, who are waiting to get a record deal, probably playing in little clubs every night of the week, working as a waiter/waitress to pay the bills.. (digression..) In addition, I feel great rage knowing that Im going to have to sit through this song everytime I get in the car and turn on the radio.
Any how, here were the lyrics to the song I heard...
"Oh-my- starry-eyed surprise
sun down to sunrise
were going to dance all night to this DJ
dance all night to this DJ"
First of all, who the f@#k uses phrases like "starry eyed surprise"? wouldnt you just laugh at yourself if you said something like that?
Ignoring, for the sake of argument, that that is the dumbest phrase Ive ever heard, WHERE in the song is this 'starry eyed surprise'?
there is no follow up.
is the starry-eyed surprise the fact that they're going to dance from sundown to sunrise? Oh, big freakin surprise. Call the newspapers on that one...
I think the real starry-eyed surprise is that anyone gave those people a record deal.
Im getting all pissed off just thinking about it. And its one of the top 5 requested songs!! Granted, I was listening to the corny station, but nonetheless, who called in and requested that?
But now, for something happy.
I had a vegetarian sandwich from Schlotzskys Deli tonight. It was so good. I love vegetarian stuff. I have no money, so Im hoping that my boyfriend will buy me a lemonade at OP tonight. Hopefully he's reading this so he'll offer without me even asking.
In additional happy news, Im going to the apple orchard with my sister, brother-in-law, niece and my mom this weekend for a little hayride/apple picking thing. That will be great fun, my family is really cool.
Have a nice night everyone, despite my incessant bitching...

My Feelings on Rocks

Id like to take a minute to let you know what I think about rocks. I hate rocks. "What", you ask, "have rocks ever done to you?" Its not what rocks have done, but rather what the University has done. I have to take a science class with a lab for my gen ed 7 area, and so I spent two hours yesterday in a lab identifying different kinds of rocks. Just for the record, yes, I am being narrow minded about this. Im like the high school kid who says "why the hell do I need math?" and then goes bankrupt because he cant balance his checkbook. Math I can understand as being necessary. I suck at math, but I took it for my gen ed area without complaining, Id even say I kind of liked it. But rocks. If you can come up with a reason that I, in my anticipated life as a fiction writer and Creative Writing Professor will need to know that Flourite cleaves in four directions at 90 degree angles.. I will shut up. Email me with just one good reason, and I swear I will shut up, but Ive got to tell you , I just dont see one...

Rant or WHERE IS YOUR EMPATHY?

What is with all of the anti-September 11th memorial stuff lately?? There have been two articles in the Herald in the past two days about how the memorials are ridiculous and more or less self-indulgent, and how the US has killed as many people as were killed in the WTC, how can we say its so sad
. You know what, I bet that is true. But that isnt the POINT of the memorials. I am going to a memorial tonight, not because I think the government is so great and we've been oh-so-wronged. Im going because there are over 3,000 families in the US who have SUDDENLY and VIOLENTLY lost someone that they loved, and they had to sit there and watch the buildings collapse on TV that they knew their loved ones were trapped in. Now, that should make you stop and think about how unbelievably sad that is and how you should think about your own life.
It's not like youre going to be like "Oh, we killed your people, you killed ours, I guess we're even and we deserved it." Deserve it? Are YOU willing to lose YOUR life for a bad decision that your government made? Do you DESERVE it? Maybe America the government deserved it but the American people in that building did not. No. Matter of fact, if you've got that view, than you're part of the problem that is exacerbating this entire thing. We dont see it the same way as Muslim extremists, they dont see it the same way as us, so we kill each other. Whats the problem, they did it to us they deserve it, right? We did it to them, we deserve it right? Eye for an eye. Except that its REAL PEOPLE that are getting used as bargaining chips, that are paying for what we "deserve". Im pretty sure no one agreed to that. The people that jumped out of that building weren't the ones that said "well gosh, how about we kill poeple in other countries to get good gas prices" No. They went to work every day and did their job, and were thinking about how they had to pick up milk on the way home when a plane crashed into their building and they had to jump from the 110th floor because they had no hope of getting out.
And you know what, its true, we killed people in Afghanistan, and we are wrong, wrong, wrong for it, I totally agree with that. But I tell you what, I bet they are memorializing their people too. I hope they are, because that means that they are understanding the human aspect of the whole thing. Because anyone who is looking at the big picture of "We kill, we get killed back, we deserve it" is missing the same point as the terrorists and the american government are which is, THOSE ARE PEOPLE. There is no
"fairness" or "were even" or "eye for an eye" - its HUMAN LIFE.
Now I know that people are going to say things like Americans are spoiled, we bitch about, for instance low gas prices, and so our government does what it has to get the low gas prices to get re-elected. You know though, do you really think that people are aware of whats going on so that they can have gas 2 cents cheaper? Because I am with Anne Frank, I think that people are basically good at heart, and they dont know whats going on. So yes, as Americans we are rather uninformed. Thats not good. But does it warrant dying in a collapsing building? No. You know who IS responsible for that? The person that MADE the decision to kill people for low gas prices, and the complete lack of morals. I try to stay well informed, i read papers, take classes on current events, try to understand whats going on, but Ive got to tell you, I work 20 hours a week, take 15 credit hours semester, take photography classes, eat, sleep, have meaningful relationships with friends, and I have to do my laundry in there somewhere, and I may have, somewhere along the way, bought a can of tuna that wasnt dolphin-safe, but really, I dont think that I deserve to die for that.
NO ONE can be aware of EVERYTHING thats going on, NO ONE can be 100% sure that every company they buy from is upstanding and moral, that every American policy thats passed isnt harming other people, thats why we elect people to make it their JOB to know.
WHY cant we rely on the people we elect to make the best decisions?? There's the real problem.
What all of this comes down to is that those people were innocent and deserve memorials. In addition to that, dont you think that its good for people to take time out for a reality check and say, 'hey, wow, this kind of thing can happen, and I should think about my own life, and I should kiss my wife when I leave in the morning, cause I might never see her again." Go to a memorial and think about all of the people out there who are exactly like you, who loved things and wanted to go places and had families and think about the unbelievably tragedy that they lost that.
My favorite quote from one of those anti-memorial articles was "am I supposed to cry for these people that I didnt even know?" (sorry, thats not a direct quote, but you get the idea). Yeah. That kind of attitude is the same kind of attitude that the writer said he hated in Americans, the "I dont care as long as it isnt me". Not only that, but its unbelievably sad and inhuman. And thats exactly what terrorists were thinking when they slammed into those buildings, as Americans as a large chunk of people to hate, not as individuals with families and lives like their own
In conclusion, even if you think that the government was wrong and we had it coming, that isnt what the memorials are about, you should be able to empathize as a human with the tremendous loss of life and the unbelievable pain that the families of those people are dealing with. Maybe if everyone can think of each other as humans and give up the hatred and retribution bullshit this wont happen again..

Read this story, worth your time
Flight 93
And for Joe, here's a link you'll like

"So what is love then, is it dictated or chosen?
Does it sing like the hymns of a thousand years,
or is it just pop emotion?
And if it ever was there and it left, does that mean it was never true?
And to exist it must elude,
is that why I think these things of you?"
-Indigo Girls from "Mystery"

Upon Waking
by Denis Johnson

At the far edge of Earth, night
is going away. another
poem begins. slumped over

the typewriter I must get this
exactly, I want to make it
clear this morning that your

face, as it opens
from it's shadow, is more
perfect than yesterday; and

that the light, as it
hesitates over the approach
of your smile, has given this

aching bed more than warmth,
more than poems; someway

a generous rose, or a a very
delicate arrangement of sounds,
has come to peace in this new room

Lost Patience
I did something mean today. I was at Target, which is having its parking lot repaved, so there is only like two rows for parking, and they dont have any lines, so everyone kind of parked cockeyed... fine.. it was pretty much everyone parking next to each other except for this ONE lady who parked out in the MIDDLE of the driving lane, so cars could barely fit through and the trucks had to back up because they couldnt get through. HELLO? I got paper out of my car and wrote "You park like a fuckwit" and put it on her windshield. A little harsh? nah...

Some thoughts on fall semester...
I am now aware of what people are talking about when they say its different when you live in your college town year round. Last year Jenn stayed all year and she thought it was so wierd when people started coming back, and im like "why?" Yes, now I see. It is a drastic change to have everyone back here.. I dont know if its the large packs of girls in high heels walking down the street or the fact that everyone's couches are now on their front lawns... I feel like my town got invaded. I am now a college summer snob. Dont get me wrong, Im generally all about the college thing, I love that everyone in this town is up at all hours of the night. This is my problem. I live in an area very heavily populated with students. This is what it sounds like outside my apartment at night now. Cicadas, cicadas, cicadas, random "WHOO HOO! YEAH!", cicadas. Its not that the noise bugs me, not in the least. Its just that, come on people, you're fucking retarded. I go out with friends a lot. I have a really good time. At no point in time do I feel the need to scream at the top of my lungs "whoo hoo yeah." And the fact is, I can see you out of my sliding glass door. You're sitting on your lawn drinking beer. That is hardly something to "whoo hoo" about. So, If you get my point, the fact of the matter is Im annoyed by you only because you are making a complete ass of yourself and its hard for me to watch.