My laptop…I think I’ve killed it. It’ll turn on and off, log in, and usually get to the desktop, but not much after that. It’ll freeze up and do nothing, or just show a black or pale blue screen, or restart itself. This is very annoying! And then, when I go to look for my USB flash drive, it’s nowhere to be found! Arghaldybarghaldybarg!!!
Ice Cream
December 27, 2007 at 10:01 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: Ben & Jerry's, Cold Stone Creamery, ice cream
Salivation is called the Cold Stone Creamery.I have neither been to a Cold Stone Creamery in my life nor have I ever consumed a bit of a Cold Stone product of which I am aware. However, I was led to temptation by a Facebook News Feed item. You see, it seems that some of my friends on le interwebz will be getting something along the lines of free ice cream from Cold Stone on one upcoming January 7th. Immediately, I set out to find such a creamery near me, but none was to be found. However, I did find myself nearly entranced by the Cold Stone homepage. Let me tell you, that company’s advertising is working on me! Tall, Dark, and Minty…Cake Batter Batter Batter…Dark Chocolate Peppermint…Pumpkin…such ice cream flavors sound and look oh so inviting to my taste buds. Plus, I just discovered that you can create your own custom ice cream flavor. Perhaps it is just me and my feminine predisposition for ice cream, but I kind of want to eat my computer screen when I look at those pictures.
In all fairness, the more local Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream is quite delicious and this I know from experience but…their main site just doesn’t have the same effect on me as that of Cold Stone!
Thought Storm
December 26, 2007 at 9:05 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: hate, thought, violence
What a whirlwind day. The leaves would not stir and the waves would not crash but my mind did billow like tides out of sync. Matters of heart, mind, and common humanity flew into me and left me feeling like a tornado’d passed through me. What is it that makes a person crave? What is it that drives someone to grand ambitions? And, harshest wind of all, what is it that pushes a man to hate? To hate and to hit, to aim to destroy another’s being…why? It is something unexpectedly thrashing out from the blue, or rather, out of the grey, for that seems a less noteworthy color (or lack thereof). It is horrid.
Anais Nin
December 26, 2007 at 12:17 am (Regarding literature)
Tags: anais nin, Delta of Venus, erotica, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
I ended up buying Delta of Venus by Anais Nin because, well, why not? It looked like it might be fun, so I’m giving it a shot. So far, some good, some bad. I must say that I’m not a fan of the pedophilial encounters. Sure, I’ve read Nabokov’s Lolita but that’s a different matter altogether. Lolita is a disturbing read but beautiful all the same. It never seems to aim too explicitly at arousing a reader with sexual descriptions of pedophilia, but a couple of the stories in Delta of Venus do. Some trysts are too forced for my tastes as well. Granted, this is just erotica and not the actual acts, so I won’t yet throw Nin to the bottom of my mind. After all, there are a number of better parts. Plus, I haven’t even finished reading the collection yet. Perhaps I will elaborate more at a later date.
Courses
December 23, 2007 at 9:58 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: college, courses
Last week I made up a list of the courses (and their brief descriptions) that I’m interested in taking for the spring semester (I’ll be non-matriculated so I can’t register until a couple weeks from now). I just took a gander at that list. It’s fifteen pages long. Fifteen! I started counting the courses but when I got to forty I stopped, so I’m guessing that there are literally far more than sixty courses that I’d like to take next semester. Guess it’s time to weed out the ones I’d like to take from the ones I’d love to take, huh? I’m ridiculous indeed. Back at my high school, a student could exhaust the course offerings given just a couple extra years past the usual four. Here I go!
Senior Quote
December 23, 2007 at 9:40 pm (Regarding literature)
Tags: anais nin, senior quote
SO. Last year I was looking for my senior quote to put in the yearbook and all and I came across and decided upon something to the effect of “The risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom” by Anais Nin. It was no big deal for me – just had to pick something. Hah…I never bothered to look up what Anais Nin is known for…just the other day I found out by chance as I was perusing random books in the regular ol’ fiction section of Borders. I happened upon Anais Nin’s books while sitting on the floor in the middle of an aisle next to my friend, who was laying on my coat talking to another friend on the phone and having a planning dilemma with him. Lo and behold, Nin’s books’re basically books of erotic literature! It isn’t the sort that one would find among porno mags/websites/etcetera, but it was definitely erotica. As it turns out, I used something from an erotica author for my senior quote. Great, huh? I love it. I have to wonder if anyone picked up on that on their own, just flipping through the yearbook. (Hey, at least I didn’t quote Jenna Jameson! Yes, someone at my high school did do that once upon a time.)
Prayer for Children
December 16, 2007 at 7:00 pm (Poetry)
Tags: children, ina hughes, prayer
This is by Ina J. Hughes, but I think that its message is quite strong enough to warrant my posting it here. Just think about it.
Prayer for Children
We pray for children
who sneak popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in math workbooks,
who can never find their shoes.
And we pray for those
who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
who never “counted potatoes,”
who are born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,
who never go to the circus,
who live in an X-rated world.
We pray for children
who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.
And we pray for those who never get dessert,
who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
who watch their parents watch them die,
who can’t find any bread to steal,
who don’t have any rooms to clean up,
whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser,
whose monsters are real.
We pray for children
who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
who like ghost stories,
who shove dirty clothes under the bed, and never rinse out the tub,
who get visits from the tooth fairy,
who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
who squirm in church and scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at and
whose smiles can make us cry.
And we pray for those
whose nightmares come in the daytime,
who will eat anything,
who have never seen a dentist,
who aren’t spoiled by anybody,
who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
who live and move, but have no being.
We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must,
for those we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance.
For those we smother…
and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.
Decision
December 16, 2007 at 6:02 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: Brandeis, college, medical leave
I have come to a decision. I am staying at home for the next semester. This would be as opposed to petitioning to return to Brandeis in mid-Jaunary. And why? Well, let’s see…first off, what uses do I have for college courses?
- In four or however many years it takes, they can lead to having a bachelor’s degree in (fill in the blank).
- They teach how to “learn/think/read/write/speak/communicate/etcetera better/more creatively/etcetera.”
- They teach background information that may be useful in a future job.
- They can make for fascinating conversations with friends and others.
- They “broaden one’s mind.”
These reasons are all great and I do appreciate them (and also know that many people could come up with many more reasons, but they are not relevant to me right now), but as someone I was talking to recently said to me, maybe following academic pursuits full-time just isn’t where my heart is at right now. At this point in my life, I want something with some more immediate returns. We’re living in a culture geared toward instant gratification after all, aren’t we? Just joking about that (well, only partly). I used to think that if I wasn’t spending a ton of energy on academics that I wasn’t working to my full potential. I expected myself to do that just because I knew that I could do so well academically without ever really stopping to wonder why. Sure, I enjoy learning about a whole bunch of different subject areas and I’ve gotten good enough marks in these things, but so what? I also love to dance. Going back to Brandeis in January would mean that I’d be a full-time student squeezing in other stuff when I could get the time. Staying here means that I can be a part-time student, have more of a job, take dance classes, and explore other activities more. Brandeis and other colleges tend to have a million and one clubs and activities available, but who really has the time and energy to take advantage of all of that stuff? My time at Brandeis was a time living under high pressure, high stress circumstances (given that I was also dealing with medical and social stressors simultaneously). That’s okay for some people, but if I can have the choice to explore more of what I enjoy, whether it be Spanish or some other academic area or photography or dance or something else without having to get so greatly stressed about it, then I’m going to take it. Now I have that choice.
Both of my parents as well as my sister have taken time off from full-time college and then gone back later, and I think it’s safe to say that it hasn’t done them any harm. If anything, it’s helped them. I hope it’ll do the same for me.
I’ll miss everyone at Brandeis – that’s for sure. I’ll just have to arrange some visits. It won’t be the same, but all in all it’s the best thing for me. I was sick and while I feel incredibly better, I still have to be careful not to dive too deep into something more stressful than I can be fully sure I’m ready to take. Chances are that I’ll be returning to Brandeis full-time at some point, but just not yet. If I don’t return, then so be it. Perhaps I will find another path to follow that’ll be more fulfilling to me than academics. Truth be told, a couple of years ago, I’d been intending on taking a year off between high school and college to work part of the year and to volunteer abroad part of the year, but I never got to do that. I think I need a bit more of a chance to explore because when people ask me what my major is going to be and I say that I’m “undecided,” I mean it in more than just the academic way. I’m undecided if I want my major focus to be Spanish or psychology or English or education or maybe even something more science-y or math-y or maybe even something that can’t be found as a major at Brandeis like dance. Maybe I’ll take up music again. I’ve always been interested in learning nearly any kind of dance that there is, but so far I’ve gotten to go seriously only for belly dancing. Maybe I can change that. I could get more into volunteer work like I used to when I was much younger. I can be more relaxed and make sure that what I’m doing is really what I want to be doing and not just what I’m expecting myself to be doing for no real reason.
Later, if I do return to Brandeis, I’ll be able to do so more confidently and intently, without worrying about getting dragged under by things that shouldn’t even be affecting me.
So there you have it. I am staying here.
