Still Not Getting Anywhere

I'm taking Sociology this semester.

Today, we were speaking about socialization, or rather, what brings us into a society. The topic quickly got on how "my generation" (and potentially yours too, I'm completely unaware of the age group of people who stumbled across this and read it) would be the first one to know less than our parents.

My instructor said that a bunch of educators would go online and argue about this. It is, of course, a complete load of bullshit. Anyone in this day and age who is unedcuated is that way because they want to be. Education does NOT just take place at an instituion. You know where I've done most of my learning?

On my fucking couch, with either a book I borrowed from the library or my laptop. I Googled something because, gaspshock, I wanted to know about it! I got a book because I wanted to read about this. And you know what else? Most of the people I know--they do that too!

What a surprise! You don't have to pay two thousand dollars a semester to learn something. I know, I know. It was a weird idea for me too.

Here's the thing; no one I know had the OPTION of going to college. It wasn't "Are you going?" The question was; "Where are you going to college?" Even for my friends who are first generation college goers were pushed and told that education was a big deal.

Sadly, many of them, Mistah Jay included, didn't have unending support from their families. Most of us struggle on our own. We fill out paperwork, we take out loans. I'm twenty one years old, I've never had a credit card, and I'm already six thousand dollars in debt. Let that sink in. All but a thousand dollars of that is on my own shoulders because of school. (The other thousand was the surgery I needed last year for my broken foot. It was walking without a limp, or pay the money. She Who Must Be Kept and I decided walking was important.)

I'm STILL NOT GETTING ANYWHERE. I've been in colege for years and I'm not closer now to being more educated, to being smarter, to having a better life than I was then. I still sleep on my mother's couch. I still don't drive. I still have nothing but debt and a pile of unpublished manuscripts.

One could, of course, argue that this is my own fault. And it is. Because I'm in school. My school schedule does NOT allow for a job. Not with the option of sleeping.

Then the instructor talked about why fewer minorities go to school. He must have missed the luncheon last semester where our dean or president or someone in power who has since disappeared and only is heard of in the monthly newspaper that gets sent to my house said that we are at an ALL TIME HIGH for minority enrollment.

Then he got mad because I said it happens to white people too. In my own family. I'm the only one in college. Minus my cousin who has a baby and keeps dropping out because, you know, SHE HAS A FUCKING BABY. I lost the class when I admitted that I'm white trash.

It is not ANY harder for minorities to go school than it is white people, I don't think. They have tons of scholarships and the options for loans and they get accepted because colleges now have some kind of quota to fill for minorities. Really! It happened at U of M a couple years ago. Everyone took a test, and if you were a minority, you got X amount of extra points.

I've been to classes with PLENTY OF MINORITY KIDS. I'm friends with some of them! You know, it never crossed my mind that they were a minority and I was not. Is that a sign of the times? That I don't look at them and go; "Must be hard for you to be here because of the color of your skin!" I know lots of minority kids who pushed them to go to school because they wanted them to have an education, actually. Just like I know a lot of non minority kids whose parents did the SAME THING.

Actually, I look at EVERYONE and think it must be hard for ALL of them to be here. It's hard to make yourself get up, go to class, do the homework, take notes, show up for exams. All of us face that struggle. Every. Last. One.

It just hurts my feelings because you know, I'm struggling to be here. The instructor then talked about kids not wanting to be here. Yeah, I've been pushing myself taking between thriteen and eighteen credit hours every semester because I don't wanna be here. I've pushed myself to such a state of exhaust and misery that my doctor said; "Don't do this again, you're making yourself sick. This is really hurting you." Because I DON'T WANNA BE HERE!

However did he see through my clever ruse of attendance to know that?

He then stated he wished we'd all eave and come back when we're thirty five. Because then we'd be more motivated.

...Piss off. Seriously dude. PISS OFF. I AM MOTIVATED! If I wasn't motivated I wouldn't show up with a fever and a sinus infection. I wouldn't go on the days when my seasonal affective disorder bothers me and it makes me want to cry to get out of bed. I wouldn't talk, take notes, I wouldn't even be there.

We are ALL motivated because we're THERE. And we're motivated because we don't want to be like the thirty five year olds who didn't go to college the first time around because they got a factory job.

We're there because WE KNOW BETTER.

And for that matter all those "motivated thirty five year olds" I know are rude, selfish, and self entitled. Know why? Because they think they deserve a fucking prize for going back to college. Because it's sooooo much more difficult for them. No, you can piss off too. Like I said, we're all struggling to be here, and yours isn't any deeper than my own.

I'm sure this post will have a contiunation later. I'm still raging. I love the class and the Professor. And I get what he was driving at here, but I don't feel like he had the proper way of going about it.

Our Own Mad Love

My older brother put Batman: The Animated Series on my portable hard drive for me. When I first got the thing, I had loft goals of backing up all my novels, putting all the Louis Theroux (the most WONDERFUL documentarian, and I'm not just saying that because I think he's sexy) on it, getting maybe one or two movies...

But no. None of that happened. I've got got this nineties children's cartoon on it. I'm trying to get all the Miyazaki films I like on it. I'm nowhere near as sophisticated as I like to pretend.

I spent a lot of time when I was growing up watching this. I remember being stretched out on the futon in front of my baby sitter's television, one or the other of her dogs stretched out next to me as I watched. What's strange is that I don't really remember any particular episodes, I just know my brother and I watched this show.

I do remember Harley Quinn, but my favorite "bad girl" of all superhero--dom. (Is that a word? Oh well. For the purposes of my blog it is now!)She's funny, she's fake ditzy, and she's really adorable. Not to mention she wears red and black, both my favorite colors.

As I was watching the show, I watched her relationship with The Joker, Batman's arch nemesis for the purpose of this show. He could have been in the comic books too, but I never read many of them, so I can't say yes or no. I know he was highly feature, so take that as you will.

I've decided that the confidence giver is my Joker. He tries to ignore me, gets upset if I'm not fawning over him, loves the attention I give him, and sometimes pretends that he doesn't need me. But if I call his bluff, it's the end of the world.

I can't decide if that's healthy or not. I can't decide if this is the greatest adventure of my life, or the worst thing I've ever done.

Black and White

I love my Sociology class. My instructor is about a billion years old (HYPERBOLE IS THE BEST THING EVAR)and adorable as a button. He uses phrases like "noodle" and calls himself a "busy little bee". He's like a grandfather that would give you lots of candy when your mother's back was turned.

Also, he is intelligent. I dig it.

Anyway, he was talking today as a for instance and mentioned abortion.

"I'm sure most of you are anti abortion!" a handful of us shook our heads and he shrugged. "Well, for the purposes of this we'll pretend we all are." Which was fine, he was just using an example, he didn't REALLY care about our opinion.

But it got me to thinking. Yes, I am pro choice. I don't consider myself "pro abortion" though, which was the phrase he used. I mean, I'm not running around with a lubed up wire coat hanger, chasing women as they exit their OB/GYN. That's the image I get from that terminology, for reasons I can't quite explain.

Anyway...

I'm not pro abortion. I'm pro choice, which is almost equivalent to saying I'm pro minding my own goddamn business. I do acknowledge that is a particularly dangerous way to be thinking. Sometimes you SHOULDN'T mind your own business, sometimes you DO need to speak out, even if you're the only one standing.

I don't think this is one of those times. I don't get those people what murder doctors who perform abortions, because they say how precious life is. And yet they took one away. What is this, an eye for an eye? Or is he less worthy to live because he's taken away another life?

What's more, is that really for us to decide?

I don't feel like I have the right to tell another woman what she may and may not do with her uterus, her fetus, and her own guilt. I do not feel like I have the right to stroll on up to another human being, point them in the face and call them a murder because they removed what some might call a parasitic being from inside their body.

Some women do it as a form of birth control. A whole lot of women don't. Rape. Incest. Illness. A deformity in the fetus. These are all reasons that some women have abortions.

I'm not pro abortion. I'm pro allowing women the right to choose what is right for them and their child.

Mea Culpa

The words that I speak,
Hold less weight than the words I don't speak.
And these words are echoing inside of me,
Bouncing around,
The voices shouted into an empty museum.

I am a mausoleum of your failures.
I am a canvas, splashed with the blood from your soul.
I am battered and broken,
A beloved toy finally thrown away.

I am the the sum of your every regret.
But somehow you don't look away.
You keep coming back to me,
More and more and more.
You have sucked me dry.

Mea culpa, my love.
Mea culpa, my most regrettable love.

When you come back around,
When you're ready for me.
I'll be here, silent and thoughtful.
Will you be ready?
You never could stand my silence.

I wish you could hear the screams inside of me.
The voices all whisper your name.

Who Won't Play Games Behind Me

The confidence giver and I are talking again.

It's wonderful and strange and I hate it and love it.

He watches me when my back is turned. I don't know whether I should be happy he looks at me, or sad that he can't do it when I'm facing him. He's apologized for everything that he did. And he gave me the reasons.

I can't quite fault him, either.

But anyway.

He says certain things just to piss me off. He pushes my buttons in ways that only he can. Should I be happy that he's interacting with me, doing things just to see me angry? Or should I hate that he's not coming up to kiss me on the cheek and ask me how my day is?

These are the questions that I can't ask him. That would be laying out my hand. That would be breaking the rules. I've always hated rules, but this is one of the most important games that I have ever played.

If I lose, I lose YOU. If you lose, you lose me. And even if we can't have each other in the capacity we're dying for right now, we can't stand to not have one another at all.

Oh darling, I just want to hear you love me again.

I'm Getting Closer To Letting Go... To Letting Go of You.

Once there was a little girl. She had long hair and wore a purple bathing suit. She followed her big brother around everywhere. Her big brother had a friend, and they never let the little girl play. They pulled on her long hair and made her get Kool-Aid and cookies.

But they never did play with her, even when they promised.

The years passed by, turning pages in a book, the faded chalk likes from hopscotch. The girl was not so little, and her hair was not so long. And no longer did she let anyone walk all over her.

Until she saw the boy, her big brother's friend. He looked across the art room table at her and was taken in by the color of her eyes and the swell of her hips, not to mention her quick tongue and the way love flowed from her, like blood from an open wound.

And they fell in love.

And he left her.

And the years passed by again, and again, like drying river beds, like broken headstones. He saw her in math class applying clear gloss to her lips. He followed her out of the room, watched her bend over to pull on the laces of her high black boots.

"I am so sorry for everything."

These words would be repeated more times that she cared to count over the next year. He took her to his home, laid her in his bed and made love to her, ripping her apart on the inside. She didn't complain, because sometimes love hurts.

He mentioned his own little girl, and the girl plied him with hair ties, advice, movies, anything and everything.

But his own daughter left.

And he left the girl.

But he came back, like a bad penny or a good luck charm. He was always at the back of her mind, like a pebble in her shoe.

So they crawled through time together. She coaxed him through dark depressions. Coaxed him through alcohol binges and screaming matches. She flinched as he raised his hand to her more than once.

But he left again, the allure of the white powder and the places it took him too strong. He left her again, and she vowed that this was the last time...

Too bad his own little girl died.

She won't come and comfort him now. Even his heart break can't convince her that she won't be pulled into his web again. And if she does, she won't come out alive.

Cold Is The Night I See You Bold, Searching For Your Romeo

I read this website called Something Awful. I don't have an account there, I can't really be arsed to spend the ten bucks on it right now.

Anyway, today someone found this link to a church that was full of furry Christians. While I have no problem with Christians being furries, or vice versa (although I don't really get the whole furry fetish, just like any other fetish I just don't get. If it floats your boat, whatever, I guess...) I don't see the point in combining the two.

In the first place, this pastor (and I hesitate to even call him such. I understand the point is to bring people closer to God) was giving misinformation and myths about Judaism and its parallels to Christianity. I don't feel like this is a good way to bring people to Jesus. In the second place, I felt like he was trying to make something that's about sex somehow cleaner, somehow--not about sex.

And that doesn't work.

I have some fetishes myself. I like being choked. I like being tied down. But I don't try to make these things anything they aren't. I like being choked because it gets me off. I like being tied down because, well, it gets me off. I won't make any excuses for that, and I acknowledge it isn't for everybody. (Disclaimer: Choking is dangerous, I understand that and fully acknowledge that. Please, please, please, if you decide to indulge in things like that, make sure you're with someone you trust, know how to safe/word signal out, and KNOW YOUR LIMITS.) Things that get me off don't really have anything to do with God.

I know that there are churches targeted for homosexuals/bisexuals/trisexuals/whatever-sexuals... But I sort of feel like that's different. I can't even understand why. Does that make me hypocritical?