allichaton

I was talking with

nonnycat yesterday about college and classes and stuff, and all the cool courses UCI offers. She mentioned that I should take a forensics class if they offer it, and I wholeheartedly agreed. I looked it up in the general catalog last night, and they do offer one--hot damn. :D Except I did more research today, and it's a major only class. So...fuck. Mrowr.

Then I decided that maybe when it comes time to buy books for my courses next quarter, maybe I'll just buy the book(s) for that class, too. Assuming they're not like $100, like some course texts...

I just looked up the definition of "pornography" in the Oxford English Dictionary, because I was talking in chat about erotica vs. pornography, and it occurred to me that one of these days, I'm going to have to support my "Erotica is not pornography" claim. According to the OED, pornography originally referred to a description of the life, manners, etc of prostitutes and their patrons.

This means that technically, the book that I read in my anthro class (Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes) is pornography.

ROFL! I love it!

"Mom, my anthropology professor assigned us pornography to read!"

*helpless with laughter*

My anthropology lecture today really pissed me off. Not because of Prof Boellstorff's views--he's a great lecturer and more sensitive to these sorts of things than just about anyone I know--but just because of some of the facts brought up.

We were talking about the article we had to read, "Hermaphrodites with Attitude", which talks about some of the horrible things children born with ambiguous genitals go through, and the crap that doctors pull. Performing operations to assign the baby a gender without getting the permission of the parents. Telling the parents that the baby died, but a twin lived, in cases where they said "it's a boy!"(or whatever), then realized it was anomalous and changed the gender. The article talked about a case where a mother, after having given birth, was kept drugged and sedated for three days every time she asked about her child, while the doctors deliberated over what sex the child should be.

This all relates back to an article we read a few weeks ago, dealing with "matter out of place", and the human reaction to it. The article was about the rules on what animals can and cannot be eaten in Leviticus, but the concept permeates all areas of our culture. We don't see clothes as inherently bad, unless they're laying on the floor. A dish can be left on a counter or in the sink for a day or more without much bother, but put it somewhere it isn't supposed to be--on the bed, say--and you can bet it's going to be snatched up and dealt with right away. It's something that oversteps our culture's defined boundaries, and in doing that, it's dangerous. It threatens our culture's notions of what is and isn't. Cultures throughout history have had varying ways of dealing with "matter out of place", from killing it, to worshipping. In America, we chop their genitals off.

Doctors even have "rulers", that they use to measure the genital length of newborns. If it is less than .8cm, it is termed a clitoris. If it greater than 2.5cm, it is termed a penis. But genitals between .8 and 2.5cm are "unacceptable". Because gods forbid a girl have a large clitoris, or a man have a small penis.

There have been articles published in medical journals where doctors have actually claimed that it is better for a child to undergo these surgeries--which are often incredibly painful and take many, many operations, often not stopping until the child is old enough to resist--than to suffer teasing in the locker room, or to not be able to pee standing up, "in a steady, unfluctuating stream".

I am utterly disgusted.

We are mutilating people's genitals, for the sake of appearances. Never mind the fact that they may never find sex satisfying or, if they're men, will never be able to get an erection in their manufactured penis. Never mind the fact that intersexuality only very rarely causes health problems. They have a normal appearance, and that's what the medical field is concerned with. And for the love of the gods, we are doing this to children. Infants. Newborns. We are doing this behind the backs of the parents, often without permission.

I sat in class today, listening to Prof Boellstorff talk about all this, and I thought, "If Erik and I have children, I am making our doctor sign a fucking written contract that no one brings a scalpel anywhere NEAR my child without my express, written permission." They aren't going to with fuck my kid like that. Maybe I'll have an intersex child, and he or she won't be "normal", but by the gods, he/she will be whole and unaltered, at least until he/she's old enough to make the choice for him/herself. I am not going to do that to my child, and I'll tear the throat out of anyone who tries to.

Gods. Gods gods gods gods. I am so upset about this. I just want to track down all the doctors of have performed clitorectomies and clitoridectomies and chop of their dicks, and let them know what it feels like.

Mrowwwwwwwwwwrrrrr.

Current Mood: infuriated

First, Nano.

After studying my NaNo Excel Report Card Spreadsheat Thingie, I realized that I'm about 7k behind where I need to be to make 100k by the end of November. I'm not anticipating getting much written in the next five days. If I get nothing written (the worst extreme. Unlikely, but still, a possibility), I'll have to write more than 5k/day in order to catch up. That ain't gonna happen. And I've been letting my class reading slip, which is NOT what you want to be doing the first quarter of your first year of college...not a good habit to get into.

I've messed around with my Excel Spreadsheet thingie, and I think I'm going to downgrade my goal from 100k to 75k. That's 2.5k/day, and that puts me a little bit ahead of where I need to be. And if I get nothing written between now and the 18th, I'll have to write 3.225k/day in order to catch up. That's still less than my current daily goal for 100k. So it's all good.

And I understand that this may still be more of a time commitment than I can afford to put into NaNo. That's okay, too. I'm not dropping out, and as long as I make 50k by the 30th, I'll be happy. It's more important to me to be able to write and succeed in school, than to write a lot, at the expense of my schoolwork.

I'm bloody paying for college. I'm not going to pay for it just so I can sit on the computer and type 24/7.

----

And now, Dallas. As most of you know, I'll be flying to Dallas tomorrow morning, for

nonnycat and

robertsloan2's handfasting, and returning the evening of Tuesday, the 18th. I'll be bringing my laptop, but I don't think my hotel room has an internet connection, so I may be incommunicado until Tuesday or Thursday.

For those of you not able to attend the handfasting, I'll see you all next week! :)

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Savage Garden -- To The Moon And Back

Done. And it's about damn time. I've only got 40 minutes left until I have to leave for classes.

Yesterday was hell, for many reasons, one of which was the massive amounts of homework I had to do. I had to:

-Read my 70 page Anthro article
-Write a 2-page reading response on the anthro article and turn it in when I went to my discussion at 2:00
-Write my HumCore essay Rough Draft, in spite of the fact that I didn't understand at ALL the chapter we're supposed to do it on
-Answer 42 study questions for reading we did two weeks ago
-Finish my essay for my Interpersonal Relationships class
-Write a journal entry for my Interpersonal Relationships class about my feelings on what we did last class.

*whimper*whimper*whimper*

Meow. Meow meow meow meow. I am now very, very upset with Shubhra.

For those of you who haven't heard me gritching in chat over the past few days--Shubhra and I have been having silent window wars. For some godsforsaken reason, she wants the window open 24/7. (This is not an exaggeration. She put a sign up next to her side that says "Please leave window open AT ALL TIMES.") I was fine with that when it was hot here, but the weather's decided that it's winter now, and it's getting freezing. And still she wants the window open constantly. Even if she's not in the bloody room, and I'm wearing every sweater I've got and huddled in my quilt and am still shivering. Yep, even then.

The night before last, she kept her window open when she went to bed. The room was freezing all night, and made it damned impossible for me to sleep. Last night when I went to bed, she wasn't in the room, so I wrote her a note and taped it on the window-opening mechanism. "Shubhra-- Please leave the window closed at night. It is very cold outside, and makes the room freezing, which makes it impossible for me to sleep." I wake up, the window's cracked a bit, but it's fine, because the room's warm and I didn't have any trouble sleeping at all.

Shubhra gets up, gets ready for class, and just before she leaves, she tells me, "Since there are two windows and two of us, I think it's fair that the right one is yours and the left one is mine, and if it's stuffy in here I should be able to have the window open." I told her, "Yeah, fine, if you're in here, but if you're not in here and I'm freezing my ass off, that's not okay, and I'm going to close the window." She said, "Yeah, but I mean at night, when we're sleeping. I think it's fair that I can have the window open if I want it."

Um...okay, maybe it's just me, but I see a huge, gaping flaw in her logic. There are two windows, sure, but it's ONE BLOODY ROOM!

And WHY is it okay for me to be freezing, but not for her to be hot? I'm trying to find a compromise that works okay for both of us, but all she cares about is keeping the damned window open. MROWR!

Current Mood: aggravated

I am roflmaopimp.

(rolling on the floor, laughing my ass of, peeing in my pants, for those of you who don't know ;))

I've got my powerstrip set up next to the side of my desk. My phone charger is currently plugged into it, the phone is connected to the charger, and sitting on the top of the desk, so the cord connecting them hangs down and forms a loop.

I had to go to the bathroom really bad, so I got out of my chair and made a mad dash for the bathroom. My foot caught in the loop of the charger, so my feet stayed and my body kept moving. I ended up imitating Superman as I flew across the room. :p

I'm fine. I'm uninjured, and laughing my ass off at myself.

----

Also--got my grade back on my anthro midterm today. 100%! WOOT! Hot DAMN, I knew I did well, but I wasn't expecting THAT!

While wading through my HumCore reading this afternoon, I came across the longest damn sentenc I have ever seen in my entire life. This is worse even than Milton, and I didn't know that was possible.

( click if you dare )

Yes, I typed up all of that. *faints*

Current Mood: shocked

I got my Antigone essay back today--the first essay of the year. I was really worried about it. I always am the first time with a new teacher, because I don't know how they grade or what they're looking for, or anything.

I got an A-! :D:D:D:D:D HOT DAMN!!! My teacher even read the whole thing out load to the class as an example of a really strong essay, pointing out all the good things I did, where I had really strong textual analysis, etc.

YAYYYYYY!!!!!

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: Mambo No.5 --Lou Bega

God fucking dammit. I am so goddamned fucking pissed I don't even know how to express it. It's just fucking everything It's all the people outside and in the hall who apparently think that "quiet hours" mean "Yell as loud as you BLOODY FUCKING CAN". It's the fact that I've laid in bed for the past forty-fucking-five minutes trying to get to bed, and having no damned luck of it. For a girl who falls asleep at the drop of a hat, that's a goddamned long time. And it's dirty laundry that I'm not going to air because I'm being stupid and selfish and irrational and my mind my be saying, "Fuck all that, you deserve to rant", but I'm not quite infuriated enough to have lost the last ounce of control. I was in a bad mood earlier and I didn't know why, I'm in a worse mood now and I DO know why, but I can't fucking rant about it because I don't want to be hurtful or make people feel guilty or act like my needs are more important than someone else's. But dammit, it's goddamned fucking frustrating and I don't have any fucking outlet for any of it. I can't go yell at the assholes who don't have to get up in the morning and don't care if anyone else does, I can't yell at whatever the fuck it is that's keeping me from being able to fall back asleep, I can't yell and my goddamn bad mood, and I don't want to yell about the dirty laundry. No, that's not correct. I do want to yell about it. I want to go stark raving mad about it, foaming at the mouth, ranting and raving and screaming like a fucking banshee. But I'm not going to, and that's hard, and that only makes the seething bad mood worse.

And to top the whole damned thing off, I'm having waking-nightmares about the damned movie, The Ring. Watched it several weeks ago, didn't bother me until tonight, but suddenly I was laying in bed paralyzed by fear while images of the dead bodies flashing through my mind. (If you've seen the movie, you'll understand why those images are so bone-chillingly terrifying. If you haven't...you'll have to either watch the movie or do an image search on Google. I can't--I'd have to look at the pictures to see if they're the right ones, and the memory of them is horrible enough. I don't need to be reminded about all the horrible details that I missed because I had my face buried in my quilt and only caught a flashing glimpse of it.

I'm tired, I'm pissed, I'm depressed, I'm guilty, and I'm scaring myself to bloody death. I just want to fucking cry, but I can't even do that, because I always feel worse after I cry, and if I do cry, dammit, I want someone on the phone to comfort me. But that goes back to the dirty laundry, and not acting like my needs are more important than someone else's.

MROWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Okay, things just got incredibly stressful in the past...hour. Bleargh. As if stress about midterms wasn't bad enough.

1) I realized on the treadmill at Helm's Deep that I completely forgot to go to my Anthro discussion today. Big oops.

2) I went to check out the readings for my IR class from the Housing Office today, and--surprise!--they're gone. They're not checked out--they're just gone. No one knows where they are, I have no way to get them, and I need them read by class tomorrow. Joy. (And doesn't it just figure that the readings that look REALLY interesting are the ones that I CAN'T read? Ugh)

3) I signed onto the Evo forums to just chill and relax for a bit...and--surprise! again--there's a post by Nonny about the NaNo workshops next week. Oh yeah. Volunteered myself to do one of those. Oh yeah--volunteered myself to do TWO of those. Never mind the fact that I've never given a workshop before, and am not quite sure how the hell to go about it.

Uuuuuuugh.

*thunks*

Okay. *deep breath* I can do this...

Current Mood: intimidated

Dylan called me boring at lunch today.

*laughs her ass off*

Current Mood: amused

We watched Titanic last night--well, the girls did, at least. *sniffs* Good movie. Made even better by the running comedic commentary by Whitney. Including this joke that I found rather hilarious:

Q: What do you get when you cross the Atlantic with the Titanic?
A: About half way.

Current Mood: sleepy

I experienced something that people around campus have been talking about for a while. It's called "boba"--and it's these little squishy black ball things that are put into drinks, and you eat. I've never had the guts to try them until last night, when the five of us were at Cha for Tea. Monica had ordered a honeydew tea with boba. I asked her what they tasted like, and instead of just telling me, she offered me a sip. :p

Those things are...weird. Very very weird. There these little wrinkled brown-black balls about half an inch in diameter, and when you eat them, there all squishy and jelly-like, except you can't bite into them. I tried, because I didn't have a clue what you were supposed to do with them once you sucked them up the straw and had them in your mouth. They just bounced back. And they don't really taste like anything. They're just bloody weird.

And I suspect they're a southern California thing. I had never in my life even heard the word "boba" before I came down here, and all of a sudden I'm surrounded by places selling it and people drinking it.

Maybe if I'd grown up with it, I'd like it. But...blech. I do not want to be swalling little balls of un-chewable, tasteless gelatin stuff. Blech blech blech. I'll stick with my regular tea, thank you.

Current Mood: confused

Conversation between me and Dylan:

[we're at Cha for Tea drinking tea, and Dylan and Erin are playing chess. The song with the lyrics "Girls don't like boys, girls like cars and money" is playing, and Alea is singing along with it.]

Dylan (laughs): You know, I find her singing this so ironic because it's so true.
Me: So you think I'm going out with my boyfriend because of the money in his bank account?
Dylan (considers): I don't really consider you to be a girl.
Me (rofl): What am I, androgynous?
[Dylan ponders this for a moment, then nods.]
Dylan: Yep. That's about right.

Oh JESUS. *collapses in a boneless heap on the floor* I just got the shit scared out of me.

I'm sitting in my room reading one of my old WIPs. All of the lights are off, so its pitch black except for the light from the screen. It's hot in here, so I've got the windows open and my fan going, and suddenly I was jarred out of my story by this tap on my left shoulder--where no one should be, because the door's on my right and the window's about four inches away from my shoulder on my left. I jumped about a mile out of my chair. (And I watched Signs earlier today, so I'm already edgy :p) Ishrieked, looked over my shoulder, and it's just the damn blinds blowing from the breeze through the windows. But YEESH. Scared the bloody CRAP out of me.

Current Mood: scared

I've been dissed. Actually, several of us have. They went to dinner without grabbing us. About...twelve of them. They didn't grab me, they didn't grab Amy, they didn't grab Lizzy, they didn't grab Dylan...

*sigh*

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: Oh Maria -- Sister Act Soundtrack

Mrowwwrrrrr. I am pissed. Snarling, hissing, foaming-at-the-mouth furious.

A little backstory. For those of you who have checked out my class schedule below, you may have noticed that on Tuesdays, I have class from 9:30 - 2:00, except for one 30-minutes break at 10:30. That is when I eat my first meal of the day, and because the commons is always switching between breakfast and lunch at that time, the only thing available to eat is cereal. That's my breakfast, and my lunch, and that's how it was today.

Shadowfax typically heads down to Pippin at 5:30. I like to go with my friends. Eating alone sucks. At 4:30 today, Dylan came to me and mentioned that he was going to be heading down to Pippin at 6:00, and insinuated that he'd like me to wait for him. I said sure, no problem. I feel sorry for the guy; just about everyone hates his guts. And I enjoy his company, when he's not being an ass.

Around 5:00, I started getting really hungry, because I ate so early. Everyone left for dinner at 5:30. In spite of the fact that I was hungry, I stuck around, so that I could head down with Dylan. By 6:00, I was starving. I headed over to Dylan's suite to grab him for dinner. His door is closed. I knock on it. No answer. His roommate comes out of a nearby room, so I ask him if Dylan's in his room. He says no, he headed out somewhere. I ask if he went to dinner. He's not sure. I say okay, thanks, and head down to Pippin.

The gang is still there. I grab my food and eat with them, and because I eat faster than most of them, I'm finished by the time they're ready to leave. We leave, I come back to my room. at 6:50, I hear Dylan talking to someone at the end of the suite. I catch him as he walks by my door, and ask him, "What happened to 6:00?" He gets deffensive, and then offensive. He was down in the study room, what's the matter? I tell him I waited for him. He says, essentially, "So what?"

I am fucking furious. I don't think Dylan realizes just how widely he is despised. None of the girls in my suite can stand him. Amy, from the third floor, enjoys being mean to him and teasing him. Karen and Erin loathe him so much that when he enters the suite, they hide in their room and lock the door. He has managed to piss off just about damn near everyone in this hall. I don't think he realizes that he has just given the only person in probably the hall, and definitely the suite, who gives a damn about him the overwhelming urge to say, "Fuck you" and spit in his face the next time she sees him.

I. Am. So. Goddamn. Fucking. Pissed.

Current Mood: irate
Current Music: Travelin' Soldier -- The Dixie Chicks

I just got out of the shower, and decided to put on the monochromatic-blue sleeveless sundress thing I've got, that Mom got in Hawaii, IIRC. Emily glanced into the room while I was sitting at the comp, and gasped and came running into the room.

"Oh my god, you're all dressed up. Where are you going?"
"Um. Nowhere."
"Oh, how come you're wearing a dress?"
*shrugs*
"Here, stand up, lemme see!"
*stands up, waits as Emily oohs and ahhs over the dress.*
"That's really pretty. Oh wow, I'm gonna go take a shower and put on a dress, too!" *runs off to the bathroom*

Yikes...it's not like I'm wearing a formal gown...it's just a sundress... o_O ...

Current Mood: confused

It's midnight...and there's a one-man Broadway revival going on in the room next door... *grin*

Only in college, man. Only in college. *grin*

Current Mood: loved

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allichaton

April 2009

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Entries tagged with school

Mew

ROFL!

Matter out of place

NaNo and Dallas

Done, and it's about damn time

Meow. Meow meow meow meow.

SuperKitten

The longest damn sentence I have ever seen

Hot damn! Got my essay back!

Bad damned mood

Panic

Boring?

Titanic

Boba

Dylan. Again.

oh JESUS

Dissed

Mrowwrrrr

Dressed up? Huh?

It's midnight...