Today I Laughed

My parents came to visit me at my apartment today. Which I really super appreciate because my parents are my favorite parents and I like them.

After we ate some Chinese, I wanted to go to Wal-Mart for some baby dill wholes (which makes my mom giggle maniacally every time I say it). As we checked out:

Dad: Starr, why did you have to go to the self checkout?

Me: Because it's fun! I like the scanny thing. Makes me feel all space age. *Dad puts money into the machine*

Machine: Please take your change! *Spits out four dollar bills on the floor quite vehemently*

Mom: .....

Me: .....

Mom & Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Hahahahahahahaha!

Mom: That's how real checkout people should give you your change. Just chuck it at you.

Dad: *eye roll*

It's 1 a.m. and Egg is in Alignment

I'm sitting here at one in the morning listening to Pandora (Based on Mumford & Sons).

This is a rather lovely quiet. I'm lying. It's the quite of the city. Which is quiet with occasional squealing tires and the eerie sound of sirens (Unfortunately not the cool kind of sirens. No Odyssey for me) in the background. I have solved this problem partially by ambient farm noises, or sites like THIS. Though, there's a large chance that you'll creep yourself out with the flute bit, or really super need to pee not long after the creek noises start. I found myself feeling very Native American...

And then mixed together honey, yogurt, and egg yolk for a homemade face mask. Ummm, eww? It was stinky, sticky, and made my face look like a sunflower puked on it. (Egg is in alignment with my face!) Plus side, my face is so freaky smooth is crazy.

Oh, and for those who like a good fantasy RPG, this web comic is good for a few laughs and juvenile humor.

And now I sleep for in five hours I have Espanol. Which I cannot speak. (Or read, or write, or vaguely understand. Hole, porque? Porque!)

Hello, my imagination.

Hello Blogosphere and Many Many People Who Are Imaginary,

Thank you for your continued following in my absence. I have been incognito for awhile. This happens when I have dial-up, am lazy, or somehow wrangled my way into 8 a.m. classes everyday and one three hour night class that lasts til 9.

I don't have dial-up anymore, but the others are still applicable.

Nothing terribly interesting has happened in the recent weeks. My boyfriend is taking a semester off to put money up for college and is working at home since he has had the same summer job for four years at a pharmacy and they like him there.

This means I'm alone in my apartment pretty much all the time. I tend to go all Edgar Allan Poe when I spend large amounts of time by myself. Thankfully I can't bury any hearts under the floor, though. I live on the third floor. It would just plop bloodily onto the guy who lives underneath me who probably wouldn't notice because of all the wafting pot fumes that seem to continually be surrounding his door. Kinda reminds me of a high school bathroom, really.

I absolutely must put a list of books I read and liked this summer up (here or on Inside the Shelf). I a rather lot of young adult fantasy books in order to have a larger selection to recommend to my future students....WHAT?!

And now, I suppose I'll start getting re-acquainted with the wonders of blogging and talking to people who aren't my family or farm-life.

Tick tick tick. Time passing. Hello, time.


I wish I was as Sylvia Plath, because I feel just as angsty and slightly insane and don't have any poetic ability. I've been on anti-anxiety medicine for awhile. It makes me sick. I'm 5'7 and I weigh 129 pounds now. (Sorry, I know this isn't a personal ad.) It does not look healthy on me. I cry a lot. I write a lot of journal entries about nature because I dislike humanity. Also, I'm going to school to be a teacher. Leave your kids with me? Please? Please?! I'll teach them how to spell onomonopoeia!

I have the internet because I had to come back to my apartment after summer break started to get my plant. It's this lovely vine that I keep in the bathroom. I walked in and it had crawled half way down the sink (with it's leaves, no appendages to move about with.) There was also a pan that had heat up chicken Parmesan in it that I didn't deign to wash and is no a biological weapon. I'm keeping it in the closet.

One of my friends is moving into the apartment building next semester, so that's nice. She came in while I was napping today and told me I looked high. I'm not high, I'm just really tired. But I appreciate fresh frankness. It reminds me of Rhett Butler lines.

P.S. I'm on the look out for a sassy gay friend.

What are you doing? What, what are you doing?!

If I had a sassy gay friend I'd let them help me with my hair. As it is, I have to do it myself. Unfortunately I have really thin blond hair that refuses to hold curls, or even retain a modicum of volume. (I know, right?)

But I recently got this hair thing from Wal-Mart that is the JUNK. So I'm sharing the hair cool-ness.

An Excerpt From My Math Notes:

I'm sitting in my college math class and have absolutely no idea what is being droned at me. This has been a reoccurring problem since seventh grade pre-algebra.

I look around at my class fellows and observe their glassy-eyed blank faces. They remind me of computers in sleep mode.

Four minutes until freedom. He'll utilize every last second to reiterate the simple concept we all grasped before half the class period was over.

I pretend like I'm in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum. It is an improvement.

Now The Day Can See Me

Today I woke up. This has happened every morning for over nineteen years. Almost every morning I am faintly surprised. Again God? I have at least one more day to go before I rest. I brush my teeth and methodically apply my makeup. Tick. Tick. Tick. Clack. Clack. Clack. My life is a steady rhythm. If it breaks I will have to examine all the abstract variables that are right off the path. Waiting, waiting, waiting to become obstacles. Large smears of foundation to cover the emptiness. Blush brushed on for a facsimile of life. Blackest black eye liner carefully curved around. Carefully, thoroughly until no vulnerability shows. A faint purple lipstick so that I can speak. Now the day can see me.

You have seen me with no make-up on.

I have a childish dream of loyalty, purity, and faith.
I want the world to be a good place.
I dream of a time where trust is not misplaced.

I wish I were a fairy tale.


And I will fight for every tiny infinitesimal ground I can get towards my ideal.

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