Okay, I'm fine. I am just really tired. I miss my family. Maybe things won't seem so cruddy after Christmas break.

The Many Lessons of Life

I haven't really been active on here. Or anywhere else for that matter. The reason for that comes down to this: I'm tired. I am so tired. I want to go home.

But I can't. I have a year lease on my apartment, so I couldn't go home to community college if I wanted to (and I do). I can't tell my family any of this because I don't want them to worry. I just...Everything is so hard. I'm doing fine in my classes. I'm making A's and B's. I just want my family. I want for some of the things I know now, to unknow themselves. I want to grow up and be able to deal with all of this, but I don't know how.

I miss when I thought I was a grown up.

But I won't quit. And maybe things will get better.

Resource Learning Center: The Benefits of Being an Education Major

Okay, so far my college experience has been mostly composed of going to class or hanging out in my apartment with Tyler. Which is extremely pleasant and filled with music, video games, and reading, but...Extremely non-conducive to studying*. Not to mention I still don't really know anyone on campus that isn't in a class with me. Don't get me wrong, this isn't one of THOSE posts. I'm quite happy with life at the moment. My time and social life just aren't well balanced.



On the extremely bright side: I get to spend almost all of my time with Tyler. Profuse smiling here. My apartment has internet from Charter opposed to dial-up and so my iTunes is growing exponentially.

I realize that I never mentioned it, but I did in fact have to change my major from English to Secondary Education English. Which saddened me quite a bit at first. Then I was introduced to The Learning Resource Center earlier today. This center is only open to education majors and is AMAZING. You can check out a variety of useful things like laptops, digital cameras, hand puppets (!! I know!!), different toys for teaching your classroom, and AND (Yes, this excited me the most) they have a room full of books for teaching your class room. K-12th fiction and fantasy literature. Two shelves of graphic novels. I get to read young adult fiction books in order to better my education! Me for the win!

I checked out and read the first two books in Bone by Jeff Smith today. They are really super awesome, though I hear they get darker in later issues. I highly recommend that you go read them, and once I've read them all I'll post a review.

*The class I spent hours studying still beat me down. I hate you mathematicians.

Baby Hitler

Today in my English 1020 class wer ewre discussing an essay by Peter Singer about animal rights. The premise is that animals are just as intelligent (if not more) than infant humans. So why don't we experiment on baby humans instead of animals etc.?

Prof. Austin: If you were on a boat and someone else's baby and your dog fell into the water who would you save? Keeping in mind that you can only save one?

Entire Class: Uh, the baby.

Prof. Austin: Why? Why is the dog's life less important than the irrational infants?

Me: Well...logically the baby has more to offer society since one day it could be a doctor or rocket scientist (or high school English Teacher. xD)

Prof. Austin: Perhaps, but that baby also has a chance of being the next Hitler.

Me:.....

Guy Beside Me: That dog has a chance of being Cujo!


Guy Beside Me=1
Prof. Austin=0

Pumpkin Spice Fraps

So I sit here with my two hour interval between classes, and ask myself, "Starr, what should we do?" I, with only a 2% chance of failure, always come up with a plan to trek to StarBucks, get a frappicino, and trek back half a mile to my apartment and listen to music for awhile. It's really quite lovely. (Not to mention that long walk might compensate for my constant sweet coffee drink intake.)

But, alas, I have squandered my time elsewhere and must be off to THE CLASS OF SATAN!

I leave you with a poem:

Life Lost, Love Gained by me

Once I was passion, light, and love,
Tinged with melancholy and anger.
Free to hate and hold in turn,
I saw life laid open before me.

Then your smile captured me,
My heart recognized yours and cringed.
For you are my soul mate,
And I was compromised.

Whoops

I would like to apologize to anyone who gets my blog via RSS for my last post that has now been removed. I was tired, medicted, and think I may have had water poisoning. Long story.

Fall

It is the fall of the year, so forgive me the current leaf-y blog background. Also forgive me for completely having no links due to whoever made said layout. One day I will learn HTML and write a medicore template, and be HAPPY with it. Why? All the super hard effort that I know would be put forth.

I'm very much not in the here and now. I've had a very stressful past couple of months, but now that I'm actually enrolled, confirmed, and living vaguely on campus, my stress levels will drop until finals come around.

So far college life is...okay. It's okay. I haven't met hardly anyone. Most of the outgoing people on campus are snobby and look down on us less attractive creatures.


"No, I do not way one hundred pounds and plan to continue eating, chubby thighs or no. This shirt? Yeah. I did get it at Goodwill. Also, I do not spend more than twenty minutes with my morning toilet."

I'm far from unhappy as of yet... I spend a good deal of time studying the demon Algebra. I'm enjoying my English class quite a bit. So it evens out, yes?

Last Week

Well. The past month has been...full. I'm constantly queasy, have raging stress acne, and have put on around six pounds. (Explain to me how I'm queasy and still eat more than usual, please.)

I've put myself tens of thousands of dollars in debt. (I hope. I've been running around a terribly organized university website trying to make sure I have this money, because of I don't...I can not go.) I'm still working on figuring out how I'm going to pay for things. It's...This sucks.

I found out that the dorms were full due to an overflow of girls and that I would get to live in a medicore hotel off the interstate. To avoid possible death, and feeling of hotel disgustingnesse I have found and rented a studio apartment. (Which will be cheaper than a dorm, and has a kitchen and bathroom. That's a winner.) I've just got to make sure I have everything I need.

Bed (Comforter, sheet sets.)

Furniture (One recliner aged 19 years, one table, two chairs that mostly match, and a night stand.)

Living stuff, which includes shampoo and the like.

I still haven't bought my books. I'm searching desperately to find out which ones I actually need. Also everything else needing for general learning.

This includes Math skillz long abandoned. The last math class I took was sophomore year. I'm so dead. Dead like a kid who is going to fail college Algebra. I don't even remember how to FOIL. (And no, not the type of foil you associate with arch nemises or grills.)

I'm very much in a state of great anxiety. But, you may go back and read the above in both an optimistic and deranged-I'm-going-to-explode-voice. I'm feeling them in both ways. I'm mostly stressed over making sure I'm recieving those student loans.

I'm very bipolar as of late. I apologize, everyone who must endure me. Including small animals and passerbys distrubed by my muttering.

In-Progress

My poetry blog is sadly lacking in maintanence/all things needed to make it attractive, so I'm putting anything poetry related on here until further notice. (I don't have that much, anyway)

"The Letter" by me

I came home and saw his letter,
Written on old blue lined paper.
Careful words covered more than half.
Dazed I drifted through unchanged rooms.
All our things were still there.
Only the keys and his clothes were gone.

And because I appreciate me some Ambrose Bierce (author of The Devil's Dictionary):

"Weather" by Ambrose Bierce

Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote--
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
"Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."

Roger Alan

This is the longest I've went without seeing my boyfriend in close to a year. So I'm getting to know myself without interruptions (sans text) again. By that I mean I drink a lot of caffeinated drinks and spend my time having imaginary conversations with my friend Roger Alan. Who is also imaginary.

Roger Alan was originally two people when we first met fourteen years ago. Roger, who had black hair and was super intelligent. Alan, who had brown hair and was a knight errant. (I had a whole family of imaginary friends all with special abilities and back stories, but the ones who came through with the most detail were Roger and Alan.)

By the time I was fourteen I had decided that Roger, Alan, and the rest of them were actually spirits that inhabited the rather ancient graveyard behind my house. This would explain why I had less conversations with them as I had grown older. You see, when you are first born your soul has just came from something like the same plane of existence the dead are in currently. Therefore the younger you are the more susceptible you are to getting chatted up (minus pervy connotations) by the deceased. With notable exceptions of older people with open minds.

This theory of mine was supported by a lady who lived down the road from us. A devout Catholic lady who used to live in Mexico, she stopped when I was 3 or so (I was personally told the story when I was 13 by my mother.) to inform my mother that there was a confederate soldier sitting under a pine tree in our yard. That he was lost and that she should go out to the tree and tell him he was dead. Oh, and by the way, did we live near a graveyard? My mother did this without telling anyone about it, and nothing more was said. (For a time after hearing the story I was dead set that Roger was the ghost of the Confederate soldier.)

As I grew older and it became anathema to have an imaginary friend, I pretended that he was no more. When actuality I talk to myself and refer to the voice that answers back as Roger Alan in loving memory.

And when asked if I ever talk to myself I can honestly say, "No, I'm speaking with Roger Alan."

Censoring Children's Books

Neil Gaiman posted a link to an article about a book written by a children's novelist that has a sex scene right at the start.

I'm very pro-censorship when it comes to children, but not complete and total leaving them in the black. I think having children's books that deal with more adult situations are acceptable if they are not graphic or written in a way that makes children want to/comfortable with bad situations. (A Clockwork Orange, Lolita, Crap Books etc.) In order for ANY book to have bad things in them, I think they should be set in a horrific light.

Now, here's the author's response. It seems that she was quite open about the adult nature of her books, and there was even a warning inside the jacket of the book. If that's the case, I don't understand why journalists are prosecuting her via media. If she didn't write the book for young children, made it known that it wasn't for children...Then it's the parents fauts. Don't be an idiot, parents. If you don't want your child to be exposed to the more awful things in the world, then you should put forth effort, doncha think?

Whatever the case, the book looks decently interesting. It's called Tender Morsels and is a play off some Grimm fairy tales. I'll investigae it some more, make sure the author isn't Devil Ruining Children Incarnate as some people think, and then report back.

Reporting Back: After reading some reviews etc. it does look like it's a dark book, but the recommended reading ages are 14-up.... Fourteen makes you a freshman in high school. I'd read some pretty shifty stuff by the time I was that age, though I can understand that a good deal of people read less and therefore encounter less.

The deciding factor for me would be rather or not it's just non-stop graphic awfulness. Obviously that would be a fail.

If there was a moral/redeeming quality to it, then that's a different matter.

Deerskin by Robin McKinley for instance deals with a girl being raped by her father. But McKinley, tactfully has the character be mostly unconscience for this. This is a take on a tale of Grimm's that is pretty upfront about that going on. She also is completely open about the adult quality of the book. It has Deerskin's (main character) recovery and ability to move on from the experience and is ultimately one of my favorite books. It's a book about living, not rape. That, my friends is the difference.

Yes, life. I know.

Hullo, life. It's a beautiful day out, and the pigeons are cooing songs about trees on my front porch. I've been avoiding you lately and I apologize, but you have to admit that I've done well at it. Even if the only way to do so was to let my mind glaze over and immerse myself in fantasy.

Yes, life. I know. No, you're right.

So tell me, what's there to do now? I mean, childhood is technically over. I'm deciding what to do with my life, which is disappointing. Once I've made that plan I can never fantasize about being other things and have that silent promise of, "You've time yet."

Life, you are more realistic than what I once thought, and I've had enough of it. Really, what gives you the right to burst my bubbles and use a battering ram on my castles in the air? How dare you. Yes, you! How dare YOU!

P.S. I'll still be a Lady Knight if I want to.

Starr

Blue-y Dave!

(Okay, I will probably regret posting this in the morning, but right now I want to share.) I recently paid three dollars for a frog at Target's that I call "BLUE-Y DAVE!!". (Please slightly widen your eyes and do jazz hands. You will look rather like a cliche'd car lot salesman.)

He always looks shocked and surprised and is...jiggly? He's made out of rubber-y stuff. So you can squish him around and he make more faces...And they ALL make me laugh. You are welcome, world. :)

Bereft

Though I'm sure we've all had our fair share of Robert Frost (As we should. He's quite good, yes?) I really liked this poem, and since my, erm, poetry blog is dusty ragged and ill-maintained...


Bereft
by Robert Frost

Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking downhill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and day was past.
Somber clouds in the west were massed.
Out in the porch's sagging floor
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.

He is my Penguin

It is late, I have drank an entire liter of orange soda, and for some reason am thinking in a pompous British voice inside my head. So forgive me if I sound pretentious. (Would someone explain to me how orange soda and sleep deprivation are linked to odd thinking voices? Though...I did do some half hearted crunches today. The exercise must have gotten to me.)

It has, in a blast of carbonated citrus-y goodness, occurred to me that I have never extolled the virtues and wonders of the other half of my soul. This is mostly due to the aversion I have of bringing boy troubles onto the purity that is "THE BLOG". So out of habit, and respect towards those who just don't care he's not had sonnets written to him as of yet. (And is not likely to, I prefer double dactyls for such things. Baha.)

His name is Tyler. And I love him.

Love is an odd thing, and when you finally get the real thing...It's not what you expect. The best I can say is... It's like my soul has been permeated through with his. Everything I do somehow links back to him. Because of him I am a better person. Things I'd be willing to do a year ago (shifty things that are better off not acted on) I now refrain from because I don't want to do anything that would affect him adversely.

He is my penguin.

Soulless Creature Most Miserable

Over the past half-year or so I've managed to let my brain go to complete flab. I've written absolutely nothing and now seem to have lost the ability to compose things as simple as well rounded journal entries. And to the me of half a year ago this would have been die worthy, but I've just...let go? The past couple of months. I'm not for sure what's going on.

It's been a bout of creative wasteland and unoriginality that has swept my world. Oh terrible terrible wasteland, let loose my chains! *Dramatic chain shake*

But, writing and creativity aside, it's even been a bit of a drought on reading. Which is a mortal wound to my soul! Yes. You are correct, sirs (And madams if it pleases you.) You are reading the blog of a soulless creature most miserable.

Of course, I have but myself to blame. (And this odd bout of complete brain-flabness.) I'll just hop back into the sieve, shall I?

Muddled Times

These are the middle times were thoughts are muddled, hmm? I sit through summer filled with maudlin and fuzzy thoughts of now and clear thoughts of the future. How is that, and shouldn't it be the other way around?

It's very disconcerting when you know who you want to be, but you don't know how you are going to get there. You have a destination, but the paths to get there aren't just a maze. It's a terrible labyrinth that doesn't include David Bowies's crotch.

Honestly though, there are so many paths to get to where you want to be, but make the slightest misstep and you're a different person. Not necessarily a bad person, but instead of driving a Honda you have a Dodge, or you buy a Dacshund instead of a Japanese Chin. (Or a MASTIFF! Whoo!)It just amazes me how all these tiny little deviations can eventually lead up to who you are. Amazing.

Side Track

I am currently (supposed to be) working on an English paper. Which must pertain to one of the following. "What Good Do I Have For The World?" or "Why Should Anyone Listen To Me". First paper we've written in that class all year, which needless to say is disappointing considering we've not really been taught anything either. At the very least he could have offered me the oppurtinity to increase my writing prowess.

This, is my last full week of senior year. So, it's that odd mixture of "I'm going to miss some of these people", "THANK ALL THAT'S HOLY THIS IS OVER!!", and "Ooooh crap, I have no idea how to deal with life sans parents."

Okay, now that I've checked off random blog post on my "Things to distract you from papers" list, I'm on to play scrabble on the MUSH.

Crisis Moderation

I seem to always be in some kind of angsty crisis that involves me not having any idea of who I am.

So, I give up on that for awhile. I am me. I strive to be good. Period.

Problem with knowing myself is, I've not done anything worth knowing about and I'm trying to find something that's not there.

It's time to know other people. Sometimes I think about life and see it as infinity because time seems so trivial in all of my history books. In reality I have perhaps eighty years here. I'll be damned if I spend it all like this.

Spring

Spring its the best time of the year. If asked, I often claim that fall is my favorite season. The smell of leaves and bite of chill in the air reminding me of Halloween and years of marching band fun.

I lie, apparently. By the end of winter there's a seventy percent chance that I am ridiculously depressed. Due to bad weather and the inability to get out in the sun. No flowers. No lake. No creek. No laying outside and reading. It really gets to me.

Spring is now, and though winter will come again and again, each spring is enough to get me through til the next. I will pick buttercups and eat lunch with Tyler outside, and everything will be okay. Regardless of life's problems.

What is school and money to God? Because that's what the Earth is. A symbol that God is with us, and he is beautiful. So, sneeze and rejoice, good people. Spring is here.

Time For a Grand Spiel

In order to learn more abstract concepts you must approach a thing with an open mind, yet the more open minded people I meet, the more I think the "open minded" are just morally corrupt who need an excuse to hide behind. This "open minded-ness" just a cover for experimentation and vices. So, what I am saying is this, I spare no fondness for this new wave of open-minded people. I think the old ilk of open minded philosophers perhaps need a new term for their mindset.

So, maybe being open minded isn't such a good thing. Perhaps the thing that I admire and try to practice is acceptance. (Acceptance of other people's ability to choose their own religions and beliefs, not acceptance of the increasing depravity of the world, or the medias insistence on desensitizing everyone to the atrocities of the world. Different spiel, different day.)


What I'm trying to tip-toe around I suppose is this, "I've spent the past two years trying to be insanely open minded and I think it may have been a mistake." I think I may have allowed myself to fall into a level of immorality that is just unacceptable. It's not to an extreme degree, but I find lately that I do not like myself. I wish I was a better person. But wishes mean nothing, and all I can do is recognize a mistake I've made and try not to let it dig me deeper into a pit of gibbering-fall-for-everything excrement.

God, throw me a ladder? Ah, but I already have a ladder, it was the God given ability to recognize when you are doing something wrong, and however late, try to fix it.

Internet Access: Granted

The past couple of weeks (months really) I have been the victim of computer suckage. Which led to the terrible and gruesome deprivation of interwebbing.
But, lo, my saviour! Is that Kel? Aslan?! Harimad Sol?! NO! It's a new laptop. ;)

Seriously though, I've finally got a decent computer to work with, (I had to buy one for my college venture.) I can now...Err...What did I used to do on here?
Unfortunately, I only have dial up at home and have to travel about places with wireless in order to use it.

(Hullo from fifth period Mythology!)