LDS, LGBT, HRC (and several other letters as well)

As many of you (at least those of my readers who are in Utah), this past weekend was the LDS Church's General Conference. Conference is generally something that doesn't have much effect on me. I avoid trying to drive or eat at restaurants down-town and that's about the extent of my involvement. Like with all things to do with religion, I say to each his own. Live and let live.

This year the speech made by President Boyd K. Packer raised a lot of hackles. I'm friends with a lot of queers and consider myself part of the LGBT community. Not because I am LGB or T (although I have been declared an honorary gay boy for pride) but because I support their cause and believe that gender and sexual orientation shouldn't matter.

The press statement released by the Human Rights Campaign in response to Packer's speech popped up on my facebook several times this morning. I read it, and a few other articles (mentioned below), and then reposted it.

My friend Jeremy posted a reply with a link to this blog post which is, as he put it, "a good response to many of these allegations." I feel like at this point I should tell you that I greatly respect Jeremy's opinions. We don't agree on many issues (mostly involving politics and religion), but that's ok. He is an intelligent person and does his best to be well informed. As do I.

Anyway, you should read both things I linked to up there. Go on. I'll wait. The rest of this post is my response to them so if you don't read them you could probably stop reading now.

Connor Boyack makes some valid points, but his blog tips a little toward hypocrisy. I don't want to get into that. Hypocrisy is almost impossible to avoid in a heated issue like this. Boyack does make some valid points.

The HRC is certainly not an unbiased source, and a lot of their rhetoric is exaggerative in order to make a point and stir people to action. It's also probably true that most people who support HRC and LGBT causes will probably not read any further into the issue. That is a damned shame. People really should be willing to explore multiple sources for information and to look at both sides before they firmly come down on one side or the other. They don't. And that is how we get ignorant and uninformed people on both sides of an issue.

After reading the link Jeremy posted, I followed the link from that blog and listened to Packer's speech. I also read through "The Family: a Proclamation to the World" which plays a significant role in what Packer said. I've also read the article in the Salt Lake Tribune, the article in the Herald Journal and another blog, written by a member of the LDS church. I feel like I'm well informed enough to make an informed statement.

HRC has two, very important points. Packer's words are dangerous and, at times, inaccurate.

Inaccurate because same-sex attraction is not unnatural and it cannot be cured. People cannot help who they are attracted to.

Dangerous because what he said does effect the way the church members consider LGBT people. It is probably most dangerous to members of the LDS church who are gay. It creates a hostile environment for them in exactly the places they most need support. Being gay is hard enough without your community telling you it is unnatural and impure.

Moreover, there are people who will take Packer's words and will twist them to justify the kind of bullying and homophobic behavior that lead to the recent suicides. Yes, I know Packer didn't condone that sort of behavior in anyway. Yes, it's possible to twist anything to justify anything else if we try hard enough. But Packer is a very influential spiritual leader and his speech was pretty clearly anti-homosexual. A person in his position must be extra careful of what seeds he plants in his community. How hard would it have been for him to plant ideas of tolerance and openness? How hard would it be to spread a message of love and acceptance of all our fellow human beings?

ROAR (It's Totally a Thing)

It should be no secret to you that I am not the biggest fan of text messaging. I've mentioned it here once or twice and even gave it up for a while in protest. Granted that was a long time ago and I do use text messaging fairly often. I've begrudgingly come around to the technology. I blame Job o' Death. I spent so much time menially talking on the phone then that the very thought of a telephonic conversation made me gag. Not really. Still, I didn't love phones for a long time after getting out of that disaster.

Anyway, I don't really mind text messaging anymore. Notice how I am not saying "texting" that word still makes me cringe. TEXT IS NOT A VERB PEOPLE!!!!! Yes, that did warrant full capitalization. "Texting" and phases like "Do you text?" are such horrendous bastardizations of the English language (which is enough of a bastard already) they make me want to lock the speaker/writer (Gods! it's worse if they write it! Writing, at least, calls for proper usage of language. I can forgive a slip of the tongue, but you can do better if you're writing) in a steel box full of rabid, sharp-toothed, squirrels!

Deep breath.

That rantage aside, I will come to my point. I accept text messaging. I use it. I still don't love it and feel like there are some conversations that should not happen via text. Small talk, as I have mentioned before, should not be done with text messaging. Important "deep conversations" should not be done with text messaging. Emoticons should never ever be in a text message unaccompanied by actual text (rare... rare exceptions may apply). Nor should they come at the end of every message you ever send :). It's really annoying :). Almost as annoying as ending every statement with "lol" :). In fact, "lol" should probably never ever enter your text message/IM/internet commenting vocabulary... lol :).

Silly, joking, insubstantial but still fun banter is ok as text messaging. It can be kind of fun that way, plus you can then have record of the conversation so you can say to friends (when you are hanging out with real people), "Look how clever and witty I am!" Text messages are also ok for: Arranging to meet up (especially if an exchange of address is required), conveying quick info (running late; can't find the cheese; zombies on 4th and main! Run!), getting information to several people at once (NOT spamming, that's different and totally unacceptable).

Sigh of a ninja. I feel better now. That rant has been building up for quite some time. I'm glad I got it off my chest.

In other news, I leave for London in one week and 15 hours!

I think I'm going to give my blog a makeover before I go. Be excited.

Fembot Attack!

Consider the following bit of dialog:

Me: I worked as a waiter for a while.

Someone else: Don't you mean waitress?

No, actually, I do mean waiter. I also mean actor, not actress, when I talk about the merits (or demerits) of Rachel McAdams or Merill Streep. And I'll be damned if I'm going to bother with "he/she" in any kind of paper or essay when "he" suffices quite brilliantly.

There's a small feminist voice in the corner of the room now raving and stamping her feet. She's going on about patriarchal language and how it's keeping the WOman down. By using the masculine form of a word to mean either sex, I'm valuing the masculine over the feminine. I'm not only playing into the oppression inherent in the system, I am making it worse. How can I call myself a forward thinking woman and make such linguistic choices.

I'll tell you.

The way I see it, using the masculine version of a term is actually a kind of linguistic castration. Using "waiter" to mean both men and women who wait tables makes the term a-sexual. Once that is done, there still exists a term for a woman, but no separate term for a man. It basically cuts off man's linguistic phallus and renders him without sex. Eat that Sigmund Freud!

Moreover, because there still exists a feminine term once we de-sexualize the masculine term, we solve the problem of woman being defined by what she doesn't have. Suddenly woman is not that-which-lacks-a-penis, she has her own term and her own section of language that man is not privilege to.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Grumble.

People keep calling me "Ma'm."

That never used to happen.

I guess most gals my age (especially here in UT) are already married and have kids. Thus they qualify for ma'm status.

I don't like being called "Ma'm"

Criminal Trespass

This is pretty much why I often get frustrated with my dear home state of Utah. The church politics are so often completely absurd. The hypocrisy an intolerance that comes out of my state's dominant religion is incredible. It's so ridiculous that you just have to laugh about it.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Nailed 'Em - Mormon Church Trespassing
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

I am in no way saying that all mormons are hypocritical idiots. Most of them, actually, are absolutely not. It's just "The Church" - the masses of people who run this state with a strong bias toward their personal faith. Individually I'm sure most of these people are fine. I bet most of them are actually able to think logically occasionally too. But the shenanigans that The Curch gets up to in this town are nuts!

And then people here complain about Utah Mormons have a bad reputation for being back-woods, idiot, ultra-conservative, morons. There is a reason for that.

T-Mobile Fail

I logged on to twitter today for the first time in at least a month. Why? To see all the complaints people were tweeting about T-Mobile, and to add my two cents. It was the same two cents everyone else was adding; T-Mobile sucks.

If you haven't heard already T-Mobile users are suffering from a global outage today. People aren't able to get phone calls and/or use text messaging. Most of the day today I have been able to call people, but apparently no one was able to call me. Text messaging hasn't worked for me at all.

I can get phone calls now, but that's just been in the last 30 min or so.

T-Mobile's official statement is this:

T-Mobile customers may be experiencing service disruptions impacting voice and data. Our rapid response teams have been mobilized to restore service as quickly as possible. We will provide updates as more information is available

Nice and ambiguous. Thanks, T-Mobile. I feel like you're really on the ball.

I have been kind of frustrated with T-Mobile lately anyway. I don't think they have very good customer service and their website is the opposite of user-friendly. I think it's time to get someone else. I still have another year left on my contract. I'll have to look into how much it will cost me to get out of it early. Right now I'm thinking that whatever the cost, it might be worth it.

Oh wait! I just got a text message. Good. I still am done with T-mobile.

Foolish Mouth Noises

What is the point of talking to someone if you don't actually have something to say? Small talk is fine to fill in spaces if you're actually with a live person (zombies make terrible conversationalists) and you're really uncomfortable with silence. There's also all sorts of filler/greetings that is polite and expected when you start a live conversation (in person or talking on the phone). That's fine. I'm totally comfortable with small talk in certain contexts. But if you go out of your way to start a conversation, purposfully call me or send a text message for a little chat, for the love of egg salad, have a point!

The text message is an interesting medium for this subject. I know I haven't always been a fan of text messaging (my skin still crawls at every occurrence of the word "texting," though I have to concede that it is unaviodably made its way into the vernacular and cannot really be avoided). I do use it a lot. I like it for quick, informative and usefull messages (meet here at such-and-such a time, party at this place, etc.) or just to share something I found amusing with a bunch of friends all at the same time. When I send random nonsense to a bunch of people though, I don't expect them to respond. And I don't respond when I get the same sort of thing. In fact, that sort of thing is probably best reserved for Twitter. Ah, Twitter... that's a rant for another day.

Text messaging is not the proper medium for and actual, in depth, conversation. It is especially not the medium for small talk. It's condensed and restricted language. Its purpose is for us to get quickly to the point without having to go through all the awkward greeting, polite small talk, and build up, that comes in a normal context. It's quick and easy. It's abreviated. You cut to the chase and make your point concisely. It is not a format for superflous chatter - it was constructed to filter that out. To steamline our communication. Don't spam me with drivel - I won't respond. Have something to say and then say it!

The same thing goes for phone conversations, to an extent. Some small talk is to be expected, but don't call me with no further plan than polite greeting exchange ("hello, how are you? I'm lovely.") Even if you just have a super weak excuse to call, like telling me about the amazing fries you had for lunch; that's better than calling for no reason. I will spend hours talking to a person, but when they first call, I assume they actually have something to say so I generally won't digress until I've given them a chance to conduct their business. If you don't have anything to add after the initial hellos, chances are you will be listening to me wait politely for you to say whatever it was you called to say. After that, conversation can flow freely. Hopefully the description of your fries will lead to further conversations about any number of things. But a good phone call needs to have a starting point besides just filler. If you don't have anything to say, don't say it!

By the way, I like Mark Twain:
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

Holy War

I spent the afternoon at my parent's house watching the "big game." The BYU vs UofU football game is the event of the year here in my fair state. It's more than just a stand off between two rival schools, but it's symbolic of the faith divide that is more prominent in Utah than any other state in the US (I think. I don't really know). BYU represents the Mormons who dominate the population here and pretty much control the politics. Utah represents all us liberal nutcakes who hang out in Salt Lake.

Utah won. w00t. Actually, Utah more than won. We dominated. The final score was 24-48.

During time outs and boring bits, I flipped channels. I haven't watched TV in ages and I was relishing in the mindless glow of that silly little brain eater. I was accosted with Christmas on almost every channel. Some stations were already playing Christmas movies. Others just had millions of Buy-Your-X-Mas-Present-Here ads. It made me glad I don't have a set. Remember when Christmas season didn't really start until after Thanksgiving? Next thing you know, they'll start running x-mas ads right after the 4th of July.

Death Becomes Me

I didn't post yesterday, you might have noticed. I had a good excuse though: I was fighting for my life. Yes, your humble authoress was nearly the victim of really terrible poetry.

Anyone who has read the Hitchhiker's Guide knows that bad poetry can be deadly, or at least very very torturous. Last night I was reading two sets of 5 poems for my creative writing class. They were by two different classmates and I had to read them because we are workshopping. Of course, because we're workshopping, I had to read them carefully, closely and more than once. It was literally painful.

These two writers could give to Vogons a run for their money. It was worse than blog -poetry, though I wouldn't be surprised if they would put it on their blogs if they had them. It wasn't even poetry, really. It was fresh dog-shit dressed up in broken lines and declared "poem." It was an amaturish attempt to take the clay block and sculpt it; resulting in a "brilliant" exhibit titled Block. It was the poetic equivilant of the awkward acne riddled teenager drooling on his desk while sitting behind the hot, blonde, popular cheerleader. It was the prattle of an inarticulate idiot whose vocabulary is limited to the drivel picked up in kitchens and back alleyways (bad use of ordinary language, is to me, more vulgar than any profanities that you could throw at me).

I'm having way too much fun with my metaphores, it's getting out of control.

On an interesting, and completely unrelated note, I saw HotFedExBoy on campus today. I didn't talk to him because he was on one side of a window and I was on the other. It was odd seeing him though.

This is Just To Say

I was discussing with a friend of mine how I'm kind of stuck for things to write about here every single day. I've decided that I don't like posting every day, and I feel like the quality of my posts goes down when I'm posting just to post, not because I have something to say. But that is beside the point. My friend suggested that I post some of my writing (poems or short stories). It's not like I would be the first blogger to put up his/her own poetry, and it would be a easy, little effort thing to do (as long as I did stuff I've already written rather than write something new each day. Which is what I would do, because I would want to post stuff that's been milling for a while and might actually be good).

I'm not going to post my stuff. I am generally against blog poetry. Why? Because it is almost always completely terrible. And people who don't know any better leave comments on it like "zomg wow that was so amazing and deep your like the best poet ever" which only encourages bad poetry. The logical side of my brain says that just the act of putting a poem on a blog doesn't make the poem bad. The other side of my brain sticks its tongue out and says, "you don't know that for sure. What if it does!" I don't like it when my brains fight.

My friend made the argument that, even if the poetry is not very good, it serves a purpose. It conveys a message to people who know the author really well. It exposes the author in a safe, kind of personal level, to those who he is comfortable exposing himself to (hee hee, exposing oneself). To that I say, why not just write your close friends a letter/e-mail/text message. Or, here's a radical idea, call them if you're Feeling enough to write a poem.

I think the problem is that most people think that poems are all about feeling and/or things that happen. It's an easy mistake to make. Poetry, if it's done right, can be overwhelmingly emotional and can often capture very poignant moments. But, in the words of Stephane Mallarme: "you do not make a poem with ideas, but with words." Poetry is all about the language, the constuction, the process itself. All poetry is, in some ways, just about the poem itself. The subject matter of the poem is irrelevant. True poetry can stand alone without all the background information about the author and what he's been through. I know there are many literary critics who may disagree with that. But a good poem is still a good poem if you take the author out of it. You may not be able to interpret it exactly without some biographical information, but it is still a good poem.

I have never read a blog-poem that was good.

I've read some blog-poems that would make interesting songs for some hipster, obscure indy-band. And that has some merit, but it's a whole different thing. If any of my readers really want to read my stuff... well, let me know. I'm not above sharing my work, and it's always nice to get feedback. I'm just not posting it here.

Gardens

When I reach the stage of my life when I need a wheel barrow. It absolutely will not be red.

Furthermore, it will in no way be glazed with rain. And there will certainly not be any white chickens.

Take that William Carlos Williams!

Nothing would depend on a freeking red wheel barrow if he hadn't said that it did. Four bloody words at the beginning of that poem and all of a sudden it's so bloody brilliant that it has to show up in every single English/Writing class.

It's worse than Wallace Stevens and his blackbirds.

Maybe I'm just grumpy because I didn't get to sleep much last night.

Cool Clear Water

I live in a desert. With limited water available for use, conservation is really important. This means, durring the summer, if lawns must be watered, it should happen early in the morning or later in the evening. You know, when it's not so hot that the water evaporates almost before it hits the ground. It just makes sense. We've had a really wet spring, so I guess there's enough H2O in the resevoirs that we don't have to be as careful this year as in years past. Still, why wouldn't you want to water as efficiently as possible.

When I see people watering their lawns in the middle of the day, I usually roll my eyes or make a disparaging comment to whoever I might be with at the time.

Yesterday, however, I was kind of grateful for these idiots. It got up to 98 degrees yesterday afternoon and I was either walking from place to place or riding my bike in that heat. The jerks who were wasting water on their lawns in the middle of the afternoon provided a nice little cool down for me. I enjoyed their sprinklers very much, but they're still idiots.

All the Pretty Girls Go To the City

The other day a friend of mine told me I am pretty.

It's kinda funny, but I have never considered myself to be pretty. That's not to say that I think I'm unattractive - any of you who actually know me know that's absolutely not true. It's just that pretty is not the way I would choose to describe myself.

Pretty is just a small step above cute, an adjective which I absolutely abhor. Both terms suggest a lack of sophistication. Pretty is pleasing in a simple way, kind of standard. To be pretty is to be attractive, but not in any special way.

Cute should be reserved for puppies, kittens, and shoes. If you want to get on my bad side, tell me I'm cute.

Much better adjectives to describe attractiveness:
Beautiful
Striking
Alluring
Breath-taking
Comely
Gorgeous
Ravishing
Stunning
Pulchritudinous

I'm not saying that all of those apply to me, but I'm not saying they don't either. My point is that I'm certain there is more to my beauty than just prettiness. I'm not a traditional beauty, and that's part of the appeal.

Or maybe I'm giving semantics way too much weight. But, since we have the tools to be precise with our descriptions, why not take advantage of them? There's so much subtlety and art in language (less in English than some others, but it's still there) that most people simply ignore. It makes me sad. I urge everyone to really think about how you articulate your thoughts and utilize all the tools at your disposal.

Thoughts on Gender

I just recently went through an ordeal that has me pondering how you guys think. I wouldn't give it a second thought if it weren't almost exactly like something a few of my friends have experienced recently too. I'm not going to go into great detail in any case, to protect the guilty (they might know who they are anyway). The duration of the ordeal, and the specifics of what it involved varied, but it was, in all cases, basically this:

Boy meets Girl, they hit it off, have wicked chemistry. There is some sloppy make-outs and maybe a date or two. Things seem to be going pretty well for a while, there is potential for a real romance, but they're still in the water-testing stage. Neither party is anywhere close to falling madly in love or anything, or necessarily looking to fall madly in love anytime soon. It's just one of those things, just one of those crazy things, one of those bells that now and then rings.

Then all of a sudden, Boy drops off the face of the planet and starts giving girl the cold shoulder. He stops calling. He'll still answer her calls, but won't be much for conversation. If they are together in person, he'll be distant and cold. Basically, he decides to be a big jerk.

I have a friend who was on the Boy side of this situation once, and I (after kicking him for being an ass) kinda got his side of the story. He said that he felt like she wanted more out of the relationship than he was willing to give. He wasn't looking for anything serious, and he thought that she was. I happen to be friends with Girl in that case too, and she was really not looking for seriousness, just some fun. She was annoyed at Boy for being so dumb about it, but she didn't waste any time crying into her pillow about it or anything like that.

In my case, I don't know what Boy was thinking exactly, but I would bet it was something along those same lines. The thing is, I was so far from being serious about him that I was also dating two other guys at the same time. I'm not sure he knew about it (because it's kind of a jerky thing to flaunt boyfriend#2 in boyfriend#1's face), but we had clearly established that we were not serious at all. Still, he started blowing me off and I have a feeling it's for the same bull-shit reason that "I'm looking for more than he's willing to give right now."

Ok, so... why is it that this happens? Do you guys just automatically assume that we gals are crazy into you and looking to get hitched or something? Gender stereotyping? I don't know. Why can't we be expected to want a regular, non-serious, buddy with whom we occasionally swap spit? It's not fair.

I, of course, have to address the way the situation has been handled. Seriously, how hard is it for you guys to give us the heads up about what's going on? And if you just bothered to talk to us about it, you might find out that we're really not expecting anything more than some no-strings-attached fun. Giving the cold shoulder is kinda childish and really annoying. You guys who do this should know better by now. I believe there is a term for this kind of behaviour... now what is it? Oh yeah! Ass-Hole

I Less Than Three You!!!

It's February 14th again! Time for the stupidest holiday ever invented. And don't you people go off and say that I'm just bitter because I'm single and no girl really hates valtentines and all it intales, as long as she has a special someone to share it with. It simply isn't true. I'm glad I'm free of all expectation and bull-shit that comes with spending today with a "special someone."

I'm absolutely not bitter because I'm single. I like being single. (I can see all you v-day people rolling your eyes and saying "aww that's so cute, she's trying to be strong, but deep down, I can tell she's hurting." You should all be shot) I absolutely dread somebody making some big romantic gesture for me today. I'll accept big romantic gestures almost any other day of the year, but today it becomes less romantic and more annoying. Plus, I'd have to question their true motivation. V-day makes everyone desperate to be with someone. I roll my eyes at the whole concept. As I've said many times before, there is nothing LESS romantic than a day set aside for romance.

So happy Thursday! Here's some fun stuff from the internets to entertain you. Maybe they'll even make you glad you're single (if you are).

First, a friend of mine has written a Valentine's Survival Guide which kind of made me laugh. I am totally failing at following any of the steps though. Oh well. It may not be too late for you!

How about a little movie? It has nothing to do with the holiday, but it sure is fun. Enjoy watching it. Maybe even watch it twice to be sure you didn't miss any of the many nuances.

If you bought your sweetheart any of these, you might be a dumbass.

One of the greatest love stories of all time is The Princess Bride, right? (I nearly fell out of my chair laughing at the ROUS part. Explore that site a little, it's kinda fun)



Ok, well enjoy your day! What? What's that? What am I doing tonight? Would I like to have a lovely and romantic candlelight dinner with you? Hell No! Erm, I mean, sorry, I already have plans!

<3

Trees vs Solar Power

This morning while I was getting ready for work I heard an interesting story on NPR. Basically, in California somewhere, some guy asked his neighbor to cut down his trees because they were shading the solar panels in his back yard.

What's really wonderful is that there is a law in CA that says the neighbor with the trees has to do it.

Apparently, solar-guy put his panels in after tree-guy had planted 5 redwood trees in his yard. Most of solar-guy's panels are high enough that they aren't really affected by the trees, but there are some in his yard that are shaded now that the trees are 30 some-odd feet tall. But legally tree-guy has to cut down two of his trees.

Something about the whole situation has me scratching my head. It's not the law that Cali has, though it is kind of odd. If you are setting up your home to run on solar energy, you're obviously concerned about the environment, right? So... last time I checked trees were good for the planet. Not only good, but kind of important for the whole producing oxygen and reducing greenhouse gasses thing. Unless you're doing solar because you're a tight-wad and don't want to pay for your power anymore, forcing your neighbor to cut down his trees is just a little contradictory.

Bucket Shmucket

What is with all the "bucket lists" that are showing up all over the webnets now?

Perhaps that's the wrong question to ask. I get that it's from that movie (that I don't want to see) where Jack Nicholson and Morgan Feeman play a couple of old dudes who are going to die so they do stuff. I can kind of see the appeal of thinking about what you want to do before you "kick the bucket." Is it some sort of viral marketing whatever for the movie? If it is, I still don't really want to see it.

What all these "bucket lists" really are (especially the "bucket list 2008 meme" which is a list of shit you want to get done in 2008) are cutesy new year's resolutions. I would be willing to bet most people will put off the things on their lists until they're much, much closer to dying than they are now. And maybe by then, they wont even really want to do some of the things anyway. Or they will have done them without the list in mind.

And if you finish your "bucket list" before you're 30, does that mean you can go ahead and die? Or do you have to start a new bucket list? If you keep starting new bucket lists, does that mean you can never die because you will have unfinished business still? I guess that wont really stop you from getting dead. So you'll end up as a ghost because you still haven't crossed off the last three things on your 14th bucket list. Oh No!

Forget the fucking lists people. Just live life as best you can. If the opportunity to do something amazing shows up, take advantage of that moment. Grab life by the balls and go for it. Who needs a list?

Good Golly!

There are several things that I've considered blogging about which would be a good use of both my time (as a writer examining these things and putting organising them into readable order) and yours (as readers of such fascinating and important analyses). These topics have included, but are not limited to: my take on the presidential primary race, a review type thing of the Masterpiece Theater airing of Persuasion last Sunday, and/or a few observations about the poetry of William Carlos Williams.

I'm not going to blog about any of those. Why not? Because I am at work at job#1, or, as I like to call it, death. Being here is anti-stimulating. I start writing about something worth wile and within the first paragraph I run out of steam, sigh, and stare out of the window with a queasy feeling in my stomach. So it seems I am stuck with a subject I'm sure you're all tired of reading about. I am completely capable of endlessly complaining about my job.

I agree with most of you who say "so quit." And I will, soon. Yesterday I applied for a job at the library (which I may not actually be allowed to have, as my mother works there in a fairly high up position. She says that it should be ok though, as long as she's not my direct supervisor). Regardless of what might happen with that, I'm going to give my two weeks notice next week. I want to quit on a pay day so that my last day will be on a pay day. That way I can walk away from this place with money in my pocket and never look back.

In the mean time, I feel horribly guilty about quitting this time of year. I know the admin department is swamped what with all the getting ready for taxes stuff. I tried to get next Friday (25th) off for the ULX and was told that they absolutely could not spare anyone to cover the front desk. Incidentally, that will be the day I give notice. The point is, they're really busy down there (heaven forbid they let me do something to help out, I'm not at all incompetent, which I would think they would know by now). Adding to their plate the task of finding a new receptionist certainly isn't going to help them any.

I wouldn't care, but it's my job that I hate, not the company or anyone I work with (with one exception). I'd rather not leave under a cloud of resentment. However, I've become so listless about my job, that I have very little motivation to do it well. One would think that it would be impossible to mess up my job. What do I do? I answer the phones, I sort the mail, I receive packages.... what is there to mess up? Somehow I am finding little things to not do (perhaps I need to take back my previous statement about being competent. I'm certainly not making a good case for myself right now) and I can see that I'm sabotaging myself, but I absolutely Do Not Care. Shit, if I get fired, I don't have to work those last two weeks. I don't want to get fired, of course, but it certainly wouldn't be the end of the world.

Down With Censorship

It is Banned Book Week!

Go out and read yourself a banned book.

"What book should that be?" you ask.

"I don't know any banned books. Why would I want to read that filth anyway?" you continue.

That's it, we're not friends anymore. I personally think that banning books should be a crime. Books are a wonderful way to safely experience extraordinary things. They provoke the imagination and stretch the mind. A book that contains controversial material is one of the best kinds of books because it does evertything I just mentioned but it also can open up dialogue about something that needs to be talked about. It is not filth! I slap you upside the head for saying so.

"Oh. I'm an idiot. I will read TEN banned books to make it up to you. But I still don't know which books have been banned." You say, with your head hung in shame.

You might want to start with the most challenged book of 2006: And Tango Makes Three a true story about gay penguins at Central Park Zoo.

Since you're going to read TEN banned books, you should check out this list of the 100 most challenged books from 1990-2000. I have personally read exactly half of the list. Seriously, I just counted. Check out #88 though. What is controversial about that book?

Happy Reading!




Amendum: I totally lied. Due to a very silly mistake on my part I miscounted the number of books I've read on that list. It's actually only 25. I am a shmuck.

ZOMGWTFWBDJD?

Here's a no brainer. It turns out that text messaging (omg i nvr wooda thawt this culd happn) makes kids dumber! Ok, not dumber, just less litterate. There's a big surprise, eh?.

Devoted readers of my blog (ha ha ha omigod I'm funny) know how much I love text messages from my rant a good while back. This article just adds another item to the list of why I don't like 'em. The art of constucting a decent sentence is being distroyed by technology! I'm sure it applies to more than just Irish kids too. Maybe we don't notice it in our American youth because they're all electro-brain-washed and inarticulate/illiterate to beging with. It's all very tragic, I think I may cry.

(insert exasperated sigh here) It's really no use resisting such technology as text messaging. Yes, I did give it up for a month last year, but that didn't really do anything. My friends who communicate soley by text got a little annoyed with me. They still sent me texts messages and I called them in response. It was all very silly.

I'm tempted to give it up again, but it's kind of nice to be able to talk to friends when I'm at work and can't really gab on the phone. By no means is this a necessary diversion, but it's kind of nice. Anyway, I always practice safe texting (still HATE that word! I'm all for turning nouns into verbs on occasion, because it's fun, but this is yucky. Texted is worse). I send complete sentences with my texts; often they are long winded sentences with words that the autospell on my phone doesn't recognize. I absolutely refuse to use "i m speak" unless in mockery of people who speak completely in letters. I refuse to let my literacy slip through my fingers as they work the number keys of my phone! Not that it's likely to do so, it's pretty well ingrained in me.

It's also scary when people text and drive.

Speaking of driving, This.

I feel very unhappy for this world of ours. I would feel much worse, I'm sure, if I hadn't ridden my bike to work today. Especially since my gas tank is empty and I would have had to spend 40 some odd dollars to fill it up if I drove it today. Yay bike!