Fuck. I'm such a loser I can't even post regularly in a blog nobody reads...

Damn. Where has the time gone? Maybe into the black hole that is currently my life. It always amazes me how I can spend so much time doing absolutely nothing. Like when I worked as a receptionist and wondering how I would ever pass the time between my average two calls per hour, brought vast amounts of homework with me to occupy my time only to discover as my shift ended that I had, instead of making some sort of progress on my reading, won 3,000 points playing Faerie Bubbles on neopets.com.

It's been almost a year since I last wrote a blog and the weird thing is not much has changed. Still in school (except now I'm a graduate student which basically means...nothing) and I am no longer unemployed, which means I'm going to have to get used to eating pasta every night again. God, I never thought I would say this, but I almost miss retail. Almost.

I just keep telling myself. Three more years.

Glenn Beck Wants to Kill Christian Babies

You know...something came to my attention the other day and I, as an informed American. felt the need to share it with you. Golf courses use fertilizer. Everyone knows that. You know...you're on the golf course commenting on the look of the grass, how green and lush it is. But what you don't know, WHAT THE LIBERAL MEDIA, refuses to tell you is that golf courses use a large amount of fertilizer. Studies have shown that chemicals from this fertilizer used on golf courses can runoff and contaminate the water supply. Now...why don't more people know this? Could it be because they just never thought the landscaping habits used at golf courses? Maybe they didn't know about the all the chemicals in fertilizer? Or maybe, JUST MAYBE, the LIBERAL MEDIA turned our attention AWAY from the harmful chemicals in fertilizer, and made HARDWORKING AMERICANS think about "universal healthcare" or "AIDS in Africa." Do you know who else had ties to the production of fertilizer? Hiter. Is that a coincidence? I don't know...I'm just an informed American helping YOU to make the right decisions. So the chemicals in the fertilizer, get in the water right and the chemicals get into the wildlife which lives in the water. Who eats the wildlife that lives in water? HARDWORKING AMERICAN CITIZENS. Not those liberal tree-hugging vegan pussies! HARDWORKING AMERICAN CITIZENS are eating the wildlife currently being contaminated by chemically hazardous runoff from fertilizer used on golf courses. And no one seems to care. Luckily, I CARE. I care enough to tell you the facts. The government doesn't care about fertilizer and chemical contamination! I just....I just love America so much I feel it's my duty to tell you this. What happens when HARDWORKING AMERICANS eat these fish which are contaminated by chemicals? What do these chemicals do? THEY EFFECT THE DEVELOPMENT OF FETUSES! Now...in this great nation, the nation freedom-loving people have fought and died for, fetuses are being POISONED by these chemicals. But what are people doing about it? NOTHING. Why would the Liberals care about a few deformed fetuses? They are already KILLING CHRISTIAN BABIES everyday by supporting a woman's "right to choose" or Planned Parenthood which promotes "reproductive health." What's a few more dead Christian babies? Now, I know ths has been shocking, I apologize, but I felt I had to inform you. But who do we really have to blame? Who do we have to fight back against? THE GOLFERS! Those elitist goons who go about their business every day just hitting the ball around not even stopping to THINK about how their actions are affecting the grass, which is contaminating the fish, which is leading to the posioning of CHRSITIAN BABIES. I'm just an informed citizen. That's all I am. Just an everyday woman brave enough to stand up for the truth. Do you know who golfs? Glenn Beck. Is it a coincidence that Glenn Beck golfs, that he frequents golf courses that use fertilizer? Is it a coincidence that the fertilizer contaminates water, poisoning fish? That the poisoned fish is ingested by pregnant women and harms CHRISTIAN BABIES? I think it's clear Glenn Beck wants Christian babies to die. But I'm just an informed citizen. I love America. I'm not insinuating that Glenn Beck WANTS to KILL Christian babies but...Glenn Beck wants to kill Christian babies. Look at the facts people! Ignore it you want to. Believe the LIBERAL MEDIA MACHINE. But dont say I didn't warn you.

Fuck.

That pretty much sums up how I feel right now. I think tonight is the night I actually admitted to myself that I was graduating in May (at least I hope I am, I have my audit on Wednesday). And in admitting to myself that I am going to graduate in May, I also had to admit to myself that I have no idea what I want to do with my life or where I want to end up. Actually, that's not true, I have too many things I want to do and too many dreams and goals to possibly be satisfied just doing one. I feel as though I have slacked off the past three years. I should have gotten an internship, I should have taken more political science classes, I should have majored in Sociology, I should have taken the opportunity to study abroad more, the list goes on and on. And I have no answers. For some odd reason I feel as though whatever I do will be settling. If I go to grad school and get my Masters of Social Work in urban development (which is my current plan) then I will compromise my dream of going to law school. But if I go to law school, I will compromise other goals. It seems whatever I do, I will be compromising. You know what I really want to do? I want to live. I mean really really live. Do what I want to do, when I want to do it. Not worry about money, or making my parents proud of me, or getting a "good" job, or marrying some guy, or becoming a mother, or any of those there ridiculous pressures society puts on all of us. I want to be able to travel the world. I want to live in London again, be able to walk outside of my flat and already be somewhere. I want to go back to El Salvador, the only place I think I've truly experienced love. I want to go to Vietnam and see the country that forever changed my dad into someone I will never know. I want to go to the little town in Germany that my grandmother's family came from in the late 19th century. I want to go back to Amsterdam and actually do drugs. I want to do everything and anything. I almost feel as though if I don't experience everything and take advantage of every opportunity, then I won't ever be complete. I've never wanted to get married and I've never wanted kids. I've always just wanted me and my own life to be what I want it to be.

But I can't do these things. I don't have the money. So I have to go to school and get a job like a good little girl. It makes me sick to even think about it. People always say that you have to contribute to society, take an active part and help to keep the country running. But what if my contribution is just living my life? What if my contribution isn't making money, spending money, getting promotions, getting married and having kids, etc.? What if my contribution to society, to the world is to just be.

My dreams are impractical and most likely unreachable, but I can't help thinking that I'm 21 years old and graduating college in May. In the four years of college, I was supposed to have had the time of my life, purged all the fun from my system in order to become a responsible adult. But I feel like I've been a responsible adult my whole life. How am I supposed to make decisions about my future and create future goals in my life when I don't even know what my life is or how I want to live it?

So now I'm pretty much fucked. It's too late to do anything about it. I've had so many amazing opportunities and I'm certainly grateful for everything I have had and for all the people who have sacrificed so I could have them, but I can't graduate college, get my Masters and become a part of something I find so repulsive without completely sacrificing myself. Fuck.

The Feds

I don't like to break laws. And typically, I don't. I always wear my seatbelt. I've never done an illegal drug in my life (I didn't even do drugs in Amsterdam!). And I think having to survive a two and a half hour amtrak ride to Chicago after drinking too much Smirnoff Raspberry and puking in both a sink and behind a tree at various points in the early morning when I was 18 was more punishment than even the great American legal system can give me. However, recently I was forced to lie. In a designated government building. By my own mother.

To being with, my mom has a problem with mail. I don't know whether it is some weird sense of entitlement or she's just crazy, but for some reason she really likes getting the mail. Lately, I have been ordering textbooks from amazon so I have been checking the mail pretty regularly. At around 3p.m. I peek my head outside the front door, open the mailbox, and collect the mail and my packages. The first thing I hear when I shut the front door is "Can I have the mail?!" Granted, this is my parent's house, they do pay the bills, and most of the mail is for them, but the fact that my mother has trouble even waiting for me to read the addressee on the enevelope without acting like a kid waiting to open her presents on Christmas is disturbing. Frequently, at around 3 p.m. I can hear my mother yell from the living room or kitchen to my room "Hey Rose? You got some mail...Can I open it?" This question comes in various ways and with various intros:"You got a letter from Dominican...Can I open it," "You got a package...It's from somewhere in Kansas? Can I open it?" "Hey, you got something, I think it's a book? Is it for school? Can I open it?" "Hey, you wanna come get your mail? I'll look at it and tell you what it is if you're busy!" "There's something for you from Bank of America. I might need to read this... school loans and all that, you know."

Once, I came home from class to find an message on my voicemail:
"Ashley, this is mom. Hey, you got something in the mail today, I was just wondering if you wanted me to open it. Well, call me back. Love you, Bye."
So of course I called back.
"No, mom. Just leave it on my bed and I'll open it when I get home this weekend." But funnily enough, when I returned home that weekend, I found my credit card bill opened on my bed. "Mom, I thought I told you not to open this."
"Well I wasn't sure, I thought it might have been mine. I opened it without looking..."
"Then why did you call and ask me if you could open it? Why would you leave a voicemail asking me if you could open my mail if you thought it was yours?'
Silence
"Well...I thought...Well..."
Silence
"You do realize that opening mail addressed to someone else is a federal offense"
"Ok, I had already opened it when I called you and I was hoping that you would say it was ok for me to open it and then it wouldn't matter, but you didn't. You didn't....I opened....It's my damn house!"

But my favorite, the one I heard just today, goes a little something like this:

sound of screen door shutting and front door being pushed into place.
"Hey Rose?"
"Yeah?"
"You got something in the mail"
quick slice of letter opener and sound of papers rustling"
"It's your bank statement!"
"Then why do I hear you opening it?"
"Well...."

This has been going on in various forms probably since I started receiving mail. However, lately it has become a bigger problem. I am forced by law to be an adult and in doing so receive my own mail that has nothing to do with my mother. The fact that she feels the need to open my mail, including my credit card bill pisses me off. It also invades my privacy, what I do with my money is my business. And though the most interesting thing ever charged on my credit card so far has been a box of tampons in the Hong Kong international airport. What if I wanted to order a dildo off the internet? Anway, it's just not right. Which brings me to the incident.

I'm in front of the fridge when my mom comes in the kitchen and asks for carpenter's glue. She has an opened package in her hand. "I'm sending this back," she says. "I need to glue the package back together because if you opened it they make you pay for postage," she says frowning over her task. "Well, why did you open it then?" "Because, I had to open it so I could see if I wanted it or not," she sighs in a 'no duh' tone. "It" being a cookbook from the Cooking Club of America, was to be taken back to the post office the next day by me. Before I leave to go to the post office she says, "don't tell them we opened it, then we'll have to pay." Don't let the fact that my mother asks me to lie to federal workers disturb you. This is the same women who let me scratch off lottery tickets when I was a kid, only succumbing to her higher moral standards when I won $1,000 on an instant ticket ("Rosie, you can't have that money! It's illegal for kids to gamble!")

Anyway, I go to the post office. A place I absolutely hate going to: it makes me extremely nervous for some reason, it also smells like glue and everyone always seems to be in a hurry. But today it was just me and coincidentally my mother's older sister in the office. She was mailing a letter using only two cent stamps which covered most of the envelope ("I might as well use them!") Maybe it runs in the family. Anywho, I give the post office lady the letters I have to mail, then quietly say, "This is to be sent back." She looks at the package and thankfully my mother's glue has stuck. "Did you open this?" she asks. For a split second I fear she's on to me. Somehow the federal government has created a postal fembot capable of knowing when someone is trying to get out of paying postage. I feel my face turn hot and I quickly mumble "No, I didn't open it," hoping the quick and subtle emphasis will at once profess my innocence and assuage my guilty conscience. "Ok then," she smiles "we'll just write return on this and send it back." She looks directly at me, "that way you won't have to pay postage." I smile, say thank you, and quickly leave the office. As I walk, I breathe deeply. The air is warm and I can feel myself sweating as I try to stop myself from walking too quickly across the parking lot. I get behind the wheel and tell myself I didn't lie. Not technically. But I can not dwell on my brush with potential criminality for long. I have other things to do. I slowly pull out of the parking lot, eyes brimming with laughter at myself in the rearview mirror, and head in the direction of the library to return some light summer reading. On time, of course.

If Everyone Cared.

The title of this blog is also the title of a shiteous song by the equally horrific Canadian band Nickelback that has been infesting the radio for far too long. Personally, I believe in what I like to call "musical darwinism," in that I believe if fans of real music come together and boycott horrible bands like Nickelback, their combined efforts will eventually phase out this type of pseudo hard rock, radio friendly music and thus, force record labels to sign and promote worthy musicians currently being stifled by the over eager and unimaginative buyers of current music. However, Nickelback's popularity seems to be growing. In a way, I understand it. Their songs can be catchy and they are on the radio so often any listener could be forced to listen to at least a few seconds of their drivel whilst simply changing the dial. That part I understand, but there is a big difference between listening to their songs in your car and actually buying a record or going to a concert. Their popularity completely puzzles me. I'm not campaigning for any particular type of music here, but I am campaigning for music that doesn't completely suck the will to live out of you. When I hear a Nickelback song a little bit of my hope in the future of music dies. Sure, they sell records and they sell out concerts and their videos are on V-h1 (whenever they play videos), but that is simply due to the fact that people can no longer distinguish between good music and shitty music created for consumption by the masses. But 30 million albums is a lot. And the fact that even when I was in China, I was unable to escape their music doesn't give me much hope for the future of music. Also...it's their look. I don't like to judge people on the way they look, but come on! Their lead singer reminds me of Sideshow Bob and he's not even bad looking in a good way, like Metallica circa Master of Puppets. And if you want to play rockstar you should at least look the part, even if your music does signal the end of the world as we know it. So anyway the whole reason I felt like creating this post is because of Nickelback's song "If Everyone Cared," which I'm pretty sure is the worst song ever written.

Honestly, it sounds like something a third grader wrote. An example, if you will.

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody died
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
We'd see the day when nobody died
And I'm singing

Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive
Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive

And in the air the fireflies
Our only light in paradise
We'll show the world that they were wrong
And teach them all to sing along

Seriously Nickelback, that's the best you can do? Died, pride, lied, cried? You're fucking geniuses! What's next? Two syllable words? Look out world, Nickelback's on the loose and they're taking no literary prisoners! Who needs Whitman when you have this brilliance?

But in all seriousness these lyrics, and I'm being generous in calling them that, are so simple and contrived that any self respecting ten-year-old could have written the very same thing. AND THIS WAS NOMINATED FOR A GRAMMY. Am I missing something here? The fact that this song is simple does not mean that all simple songs are bad. John Lennon's "Love" and The Beatles' "Yesterday" are two of the most simple and most beautiful songs I have ever heard. It's the complete lack of imagination and just...feeling in their music. If Nickelback doesn't care enough to create a work of music that means something or at least has some feeling in it, then why should the public care enough to buy it. But they do! For some reason people eat this shit up. 30 million albums worth of pure crap sold. I don't know whether its the generation in which we live, the soul sucking music industry, or the slow decline of western civilization as we know it, but I do know that Nickelback must be stopped. It's sort of like that South Park episode where Barbara Streisand morphs into a giant robot intent on destroying South Park and the only one who can save the city from robot Streisand is Robert Smith and his musical genius. But this isn't a cartoon and Nickelback has gone too far. And the question still remains: who will save us now?

Miley...are you listening?

Little Women

So today I walked to the library to take back some books and pick up some new ones. One of the books I checked out was a 1977 printing of a 1947 illustrated edition of Little Women. It looked pretty well read and it was falling apart so badly the librarian had to tape it up before I checked it out. But the inside had something pretty cool in it. Apparently a woman had donated the book to the library in memory of her friend and after the title page she had written a prayer:

"We are not all artists, God. But our eyes can shape our own masterpieces, whatever the landscape of our lives, wherever we look.

Let us see all things in this world with the enthralled naked eyes of the artist, Lord.

Let us find the beauty that lies in all the substance of living, in the grim as well as the good."

Pretty neat, huh?

The light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train...

I promised myself that I would not get too super personal because I really want to keep this blog more light-hearted, but that hasn't really worked in the past. But seriously, this year has probably been the worst year of my life. I can't think of any other times when I was more depressed, saddened, stressed, angry, or pitiful than the last 8 months. Not even my senior year of high school when an undiagnosed thyroid problem so affected my mental and physical health that I contemplated suicide. Not even then. I keep trying to get out of this funk, but I can't. I have officially screwed myself over with my London tutorial considering it should have been done in JANUARY and I can't wait until Wednesday when I present my research and can forget my whole London experience never happened. Actually that's not true, I don't want to pretend it never happened, London was pretty awesome, I learned a lot about myself and I met some pretty awesome people. I just want to forget the bad stuff.

This year has just sucked. I did not do half of the things I should have done (or wanted to do) whilst I was in London. I have slacked on my work to the point where I am potentially risking my good academic standing, I have lost two friends which has subsequently affected almost all of my other relationships to the point where I feel like a total outcast most of the time and am forced to eat dinner alone every night, which is something I personally hate doing. I was assigned one of the smallest dorm rooms at the Priory which did not exactly create an environment conducive to learning. My mother has been in and out of the hospital with a potentially life threatening illness. Money, of course, has been a problem as always. And Christmas was one of the worst experiences in my recent memory. It's just sucked. I know that I should feel grateful I have so many opportunities. That I was able to live in London for 3 months, travel to France, Belgium, Holland, take part in the most historic elections in El Salvador's history, and travel to China in the summer. But it's hard. And the worst part is, I can't tell anyone about it. Because I don't have anyone to tell. It's not that I don't have people around me to say things to, people that will listen or people that will at least make a half-hearted attempt at understanding, but I don't have people who will care. Maybe it's the individualistic environment of University life or maybe it's me and my reluctance to truly share anything personal, but I can't ever imagine telling my friends the problems I have been having for the last year, saying "my mom's in the hospital because she has blood clots in her lungs and I am afraid she's going to die" because they just don't care. I remember last semester, my grandfather died after a long illness. I had to tell my friends that I was going home for the funeral because I was supposed to go out with them that weekend. I didn't expect any huge condolences, I most likely would have felt uncomfortable with them anyway. But what I didn't expect was them to make a joke out of it. At dinner one night, after deciding to skip their night class and go see a movie (a movie which I was not invited too even though the planning of the night class escape happened in my presence) one of them came up with their brilliant plan. "We'll just tell Prof. Votaw our friend's grandfather died and we had to comfort her," she said. The other laughed commitingly. I felt my face turn hot, and for a few brief moments I felt as though I were going to cry, feeling not only sadness and the death of my grandfather who I selfishly did not visit in the nursing home as often as I should, but also feeling anger and disbelief at my friend's callous attitude towards something that was so deeply upsetting to me. People have accused me of not talking about my feelings. Is it any wonder? It's also difficult to talk about the utter alienation I feel at not being able to have a relationship at all with someone I once considered a friend and the subsequent alienation from group outings, Thursday night movies, and even dinner in the main campus dining hall, because she is still friends with the people I associate with and what's worse, a person I dislike has now seemingly taken my place amongst those I once considered my closest confidantes.

I thought that going to El Salvador (pictures and blog to come) would be a grounding experience for me, like it was last time. I thought I would find the familiar in the unfamiliar, which is exactly what I needed. And I did escape for a while and I did fall in love with the beautiful people all over again, but when I came back it was the same old shit just a different day. I guess I don't know what to do. I don't know how to handle what my life has now become.