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28 January 2009

Passive-Aggresive Herpes


Since I haven't written anything significant on here for a while (I've been writing loads of crap for other things), here's something funny I found on passiveaggressivenotes.com that I thought was appropriate because of my obsession with sex. Enjoy the site while I write scholarship/honors/class/competition essays...

23 January 2009

How Obama Saves Lives

Here's a column written by my favorite columnist ever, Nicholas D. Kristof, who writes for the New York Times on issues critical to the developing world and about our duty to respond to their plights. In this column, he describes how the Bush administration cut off funding to international organizations that provide abortions (or just information about them). These groups not only provide information and abortion services, but also supply vital birth control devices to developing countries (think condoms, IUDs, etc.).

What was ironic about Bush's idiotic policy was that in cutting off funding and supplies from these organizations, the administration actually helped increased the amount of unwanted pregnancies. This, in turn, leads to many more women seeking unsafe "back alley" abortions, especially in rural areas, and also higher rates of death during childbirth, both for mothers and their children. And, if all went well and the mother and child survived the birth, yet another mouth has been added to that family, one that probably cannot afford to have another child and one that will further exacerbate the vicious downward spiral of suffering and poverty.

But, thanks to the brains of Obama and his administration, the US has quietly reversed its stupid policy. To all those who would like to call Obama a baby killer, try to think for once. This policy will save more lives than Bush's ever killed. And Obama has stated many times that the US should focus more on pregnancy prevention rather than trying to deal with the unwanted pregnancies afterwards. (Meaning "fuck abstinence-only education, which certainly worked for Sarah Palin's daughter.")

[Oh, and if you read the first article, you'll see that when Palin was mayor of some bum-fuck town in Alaska, she charged rape victims for rape kits. We sure dodged a goddamn cannonball in '08!]

17 January 2009

For lack of a better title: Sick and Tired

Developments.

1. Devon and Josh finally got together. Laura totally called it, and she is stoked about it. [She is also going to start planning the bachelorette party, which will be the sickest thing since disease.]

2. Clinton isn't coming back to Austin. (Woahhh, didn't see that one coming! haha) Oddly enough, I don't really care all that much. When I talked to him, I realized that he's so far away from me these days that he might as well be on another planet, which Corpus happens to be in a way. I'll analyze this more in a bit.

3. Completely ended any chance that I'd go out with S again. I realize that sounds like I flubbed up or something, but I did it on purpose. It needed to be said. Still trying to figure out how or if we can be friends without his further hurt.

4. An undevelopment - I still can't hear. I went to the Coop yesterday to get a shiny new daily planner and realized how unnerving it is to be in public by yourself and not be able to hear up to par. I guess every other time I've been in public with my hearing loss it was with other people, who acted like my crutch. Being alone and without much sound puts you in a daze you don't want to be in, where other people can't touch you and you desperately need that feeling. Also, it is quite scary to walk in the dark without proper hearing and have a vagina at the same time. I almost keyed some worker's eyes out last night.

Other than that, I've been existing. Yesterday I slept almost until noon, did some grocery shopping, went back to sleep, watched some movies, then went back to sleep. Woke up at noon today with no plans and nowhere to be. During the semester I know I'm going to wish that I could have a day with no commitments like these, but for now they just seem so empty. On another note, I would really like to go to the gym but I'm still sick and feel like crap. I'd also like to ride my bike but since I'm sick I get all snotty and tired when I do, plus I'm scared to death of riding in traffic. Bleh.

Well, my sickness can't last that long and school will start soon. In the meantime, I guess I'll do the dishes, try to pop my ears, and maybe take a shower somewhere in there. My legs are hairy.

[More pondering on Clinton and S in an upcoming blog dedicated to the men and a half in my life.]

13 January 2009

Getting Lei'd at the Block

I am in the space between.

The space between the fall and spring semester. The space between Corpus and Austin. The space between lack of focus and too much of it. The space between being here and not being.

Somehow I think people arrange their lives into nifty blocks. Block 1, my childhood. Block 2, rebellious teenager. Block 3, ignorant freshman. Block 4, ? But more specifically, we cordon little sections of these blocks into parts that we can handle. The section I was in before was the "get your work out of the way, get some play, and get some ass." It was a time of caring about school, but not too much, of loving deadlines but not the assignments. It was a time of having a good time (in moderation) so that only a few Saturdays and Sundays I woke up wanting to be dead. It was a time of fooling around with love and hormones, dancing between the pieces as they fell. It was a time of finally meeting myself.

The next block I am about to enter: I will rededicate myself to school to prevent my near academic downfall this past semester. I will look for and hopefully find and create a stable relationship with a person as happy to be lost as I am. I will get out more, see Austin, meet people. I will stay in touch and genuinely connect with those around me.

But where does that leave me for the next couple of days? Well, here in my room, using my computer monitor for ambient light while I type Carrie Bradshaw-like on my Macbook. I really regret not writing more about my life. I always feel that I write too much in my blogs (which many of you have argued), but when it's your life, that's all you will have. For what are our experiences to us if we lose them to time?

Now, this has been rather melancholy. Let's reboot.

Although I still can't hear properly out of either of my ears (as proven by my dad's iPhone application, which told me I have much worse hearing right now than my 50 year old parents), I'll try to write a little about Hawaii.

And since I told Josh I would make him a list of all the awesome things I did, here it goes:

  1. Went snorkeling in a coral reef. Not as cool as the Great Barrier, from what my parents and sister told me (how uncool is it that I'm the only one in my family never to have gone to Australia?), but it was pretty neat-o. Really weird fish live under the sea (unda' the sea, down where it's...)
  2. Went on a whale-watching cruise. Awesome part - saw humpback whales breathe, dive, and breach. Sucky part - got seasick with an accompanying migraine that made me puke as we were docking. Then I accidently put toilet paper in their no-toilet-paper-or-else-you-die toilet, so I had to fish it out with my bare (then barfy) fingers.
  3. Saw Hawaii from a helicopter. Yeah, that was awesome. Although this is when my ear troubles began, it was quite worth it. I hadn't been in a helicopter before, so the experience was awwwwwesome. We saw a beached military ship that has since rusted, some wicked waterfalls, and chased deer with it. Dude, they really do have deer and we really did get to chase them with the helicopter. Righteous.
  4. Biked down a volcano. Minus the ear pain, it was sweet. We went up to about 10,000 feet (in a van, of course) and looked out at the volcano's crater, and then went back down to 6,000 feet and rode downhill. It's crazy how much speed you pick up going downhill on a 40-pound bike - I swear we just about wore out the brakes on the bikes. And although I had much more to think about on the bike, I appreciated the scenery much, much more than in the car. It was a sense of oneness with everything around you - the wind was in your ears (or, in my case, one of my ears) and on your skin, the sun touched you just as it touched everything else, and the sound of rubber on the pavement, speeding and turning, felt oddly powerful. Good stuff.
  5. Ziplined around the island. Yeah, I'm totally a natural at it...not to brag. But they told me there's a zipline around Austin, so I've gotta try it now. Any takers?
  6. Sat on a beach all day, without getting a sunburn.
  7. Drove on a road with 517 turns, 100-something bridges (about half of them one-lane), where the speed limit was 15 miles per hour and which had some breathtaking scenery. It was also breathtaking in that my mom, sister, and I were scared out of our whits that we were about to plummet to our gruesome deaths as a result of my father's driving techniques.
  8. Oh, and got a lei put around my neck by a nice Hawaiian man. (Okay, okay, it was the concierge, but who's counting?)
So yes, my trip was very satisfying. Oddly enough, it made me think about Corpus and what my town could be. We've barely tapped into the whole surfing/kayaking/kiteboarding/paddleboarding culture and instead focus on cheap strip malls and cheesy festivals. But Corpus will never be a Hawaii...figure that.

Oh, and one of my New Years Resolutions is to start being more punctual about returning calls/texts/posts/etc. I'm quite the bitch about that. But actually, I guess you can't call it a resolution for the new year since it's already halfway into January. I also agree with Josh, that you can change any time you want, so why make it the first? Ohhhh....here's my resolution - to keep making resolutions as the year goes on!

Oh, you're a slick one.

10 January 2009

Can I hear you now?

So Hawaii was great fun, which I will detail later, but for now I will bitch and moan about my illness.

So I got sick the day before we left, just the basic cold. It kinda sucked while we were there because I was always so damn tired and just wanted to sit on the beach all day (which is why most people go to Maui in the first place, but whatevs, not me).

Our first full day on the island we went on a whalewatching boat ride, which would have been awful fun if I hadn't got awful seasick. I nearly made it to shore without throwing up, but being Laura, I puked when we were docking. Yay me!

Then we decided to go on a helicopter ride and while we didn't go terribly high, I knew something was terribly wrong with my ears. They wouldn't pop. And from then on, I couldn't hear very well.

The day before we left we went biking down a volcano, which would have been crazy fun if my eardrums hadn't gone crazy on me. Weird popping, twisting, snotting noises coming from them (in my head, at least). Pain. (Oh, this volcano was about 10,000 feet high, which accounts for why my ears didn't take a liking to it.)

So we left the next day and my ears did pretty well on the ascent. But, being parts of Laura, they decided to fuck up going into Dallas at 5 am. It was one of the most painful memories I can conjure up at the moment. I felt like my ears were going to implode and leave a gaping hole in my skull, which sounds kinda cool thinking about it after the fact, but at the moment it was torture. Damn planes and their quick descents. And the flight to Corpus wasn't all shits and giggles either...more pain, accompanied with the strangest noises coming from my eardrum.

My dad looked at my ears that morning and said that the capillaries in my eardrums had burst, which often happens to divers, or some shit like that. What had happened was that I had trapped fluid in my ear when I was sick, which isn't good for helping ears change their pressure. So the stress or something from that caused my capillaries to burst, which isn't a very comfy feeling. But I was reassured that they would get better, yadayadayada.

But then they kept getting worse. I could hear less and less the longer I waited to get better, plus I had the same kind of sore throat I had when I first got sick. One night I couldn't sleep. At all. The pain was horrendous from my left ear, so I couldn't sleep and instead watched TV all frickin night. When I talked to my mom in the morning, she goes, "Oh, you've been taking your doxycycline [an antibiotic I sometimes take for acne issues], right?" To which I replied, "I told you two days ago that I stopped taking it a while ago."

And then she says, "Ohhh...well, your ears are probably getting infected."

Yay. Fucking. Me.

I've barely left the house since I got home because I feel so damn awful. I had the worst case of fever aches last night, the worst I've had since I was about five. I can't hear much of anything, so I have to watch TV at ridiculously loud levels, and I can't really listen to music because nothing I have in Corpus can get my music to the level that I need to hear it. I'm too tired to read, plus my eyes have fever hurt in them, so my existence is miserable at the moment.

Feel bad for me.

[A more positive post should come soon. I have loads to say about Maui and my theories on childhood illness and all that good stuff, but I'm having trouble concentrating at the moment. The sickness has gone to my head...literally. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if the infection leaks into my brain and eats away whatever is still left.]