If My Sister's Dogs Ever Snap and Maul Her To Death...

I submit the following as possible justification of their actions.

Sometimes I Think About Crazy Things

For example, who the hell was the first person to decide to eat a pineapple? No, seriously. Look at that thing. The top is all spikey, the outside is all spikey and you have to dig the damn thing up out of the ground. Who pulled up the spiked thing (which can sometimes hurt if you're grabbing that top the wrong way!) and said "Hey, we should try eating this"? It looks like the fruit of death. I would think that primitive man would have looked at it and said "Hey, this looks painful. We should use it as a weapon!". That seems far more logical, but someone decided they were going to eat it. I like to imagine that it was done on a dare. I think it'd be a pretty good dare to force someone to eat the spiked fruit of death.

And while we're at it, do you ever wonder if people first picked oranges and tried to eat them like apples and were like "This fruit is rubbish!" because they were eating the skin, so oranges didn't get eaten for hundreds of years until someone went "Hey, if you take this nasty stuff off, the inside is really yummy" and then the orange was somehow redeemed? Sometimes I wonder if that happened.

Places I'd Love To Go But Probably Never Will

London

Ok, well, by London I mean the entire UK in general.  My friend Jeff is from the UK and he's pretty cool, so the place can't be all bad right? England produced Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, The Beatles, Monty Python and Eddie Izzard.  What wouldn't make me want to go there?  I mean, it seems like the country that is quite possibly made of awesome!

France

I know it's so cliche, but it's beautiful and romantic and seriously, how many movies are made about Paris?  I want to go and pretend that I'm the leading lady in the movie of my life.  Yes, I realize how lame that makes me sound, but I don't care.  Also they make the most fabulous awesome amazing pastries, which is good because Becky loooooves yummies.  Plus, I want to see Versailles, I want to see the French countryside, and I want to ride a train so I can obnoxiously quote the movie French Kiss to Jason.

Rome

I want to see the ruins in Rome before they uhh....you know, fall down and stuff.  Rome has tons of history and sculpture and architecture, all of which I'm sure are fabulous and beautiful and I want to see them in person.  I also want to walk around telling Jason to call me Spartacus the whole time we're there.  Yes, I am the tourist that people hate.  Oh, I wouldn't say things like that while in public, but I'm pretty sure that deep down, everyone would know.

Tuscany

If I'm going to be in Italy, I should go experience the Tuscan lifestyle right?  I mean look at this landscape, it's stunning!  It's full of vineyards and rolling hills, and I don't even like wine but I would drink it while I was there because it seems like it might be some sort of insult not to.  I think it'd be awesome to ride a bike through some of the villages and just take in the atmosphere.  I dunno, it just looks peaceful to me.

Venice

Everyone tells me that Venice is stinky and kind of yucky, but I don't care.  I want to ride in a gondola and take pictures of the city and I'll be sure to go sometime when it's semi-cold weather so it won't be too terribly stinky.  I think it's just one of those things that you have to do and then if you hate it you never have to do it again because you got to do it once.  Kind of like climbing to the top of the Statue of Liberty.

Vienna

To be honest, I can't tell you why I want to go to Vienna.  I saw teams go there on The Amazing Race and it looked really beautiful so I thought it might be nice to go and take in the city and maybe discover something I didn't know about it prior to going there.  Or, maybe I'll just hang out and be a tourist or something.  

Santorini

Every picture I see of this place is gorgeous.  It's got amazing views, it's got the ocean, crazy architecture with buildings stacked on top of each other, built on cliffs and mountains.  It looks amazing, and again the whole island gives off this impression of tranquility when you see it in pictures.  Maybe it sucks, but I'd kind of like to see it with my own eyes.

Japan

I think Japan is one of those really beautiful countries that is at a crossroads between becoming a very modern nation and yet wanting to cling to it's really rich and amazing history.  I think that's really amazing and I'd love to go and experience some of that history and some of the tradition that they have managed to hold onto in an ever-changing world and an ever-changing society.  It seems like it would be really exciting.

Fiji

Umm....LOOK AT IT!  'Nuff said.

Fuck You John McCain

Ok, I've kept a bunch of my political views under my hat for the most part so far, but when education came up in tonight's debate, my entire head exploded.  The fact that he thinks that you can't throw money at a problem and help solve it when it comes to education makes him so out of touch with reality that I want to chuck him out a window.  Obviously he has never gone to a school where there are 30 books for History class, which have to be shared among 120 students throughout the day.  He's never been in a school where there aren't enough teachers to adequately teach students due to funding cuts, so they chuck 40 kids into a classroom and grades suffer.  He has never tried to teach in a school, or heard that you have to provide special education for every student who needs it but you get no additional funding to do it.  He repeatedly said that they need to stop trying to throw money at a problem.  The problem is the lack of money fucktard!  He then started praising the voucher system, which means that you can choose what school your kid goes to and there's a voucher system to fund that.  The problem is that you have people fleeing schools instead of fixing the problem.

And then his argument that we should create a "troops to teachers" program that allows people who have served in the military go straight into the classroom without having to take classes to be certified as a teacher.  Are you fucking kidding me right now?  No offense to the many great people who have served in the military, but in case John hasn't been paying attention, the vast majority of those people have barely graduated high school, if they graduated at all, and we're going to put them in a classroom and assume that because they were trained to follow military procedures and to perform a defensive skill they are now qualified to teach children?  You have to be out of your batshit crazy old mind.  I am so angry I could spit fire right now.  I have to go through 5 years of school to be able to teach someone's children.  I have to study child development, different ways of learning, classroom management, writing curriculums, ways to assess students fairly and how to create an environment that produces thinking, productive, conscientious young adults.  You don't learn those things through military service.  You learn those through study, practice, and understanding.  Just because you can shoot a gun does not mean you can teach a child.  They're two very different things.  Military teachers produce students who can do little more than follow procedures, and life is about much more than just following directions.  So what makes these people qualified to teach?  

Obviously John doesn't know anything about education in America these days, which is understandable since he was probably educated in a one room schoolhouse, and while slates and chalk are cheap, computers and projectors cost money.  Fuck him.

Some Days It's Just Not Worth It

So I have about 9 weeks left in my semester, which means I'm hitting the burnout point. Most people don't hit this until later in the year, but most people also aren't taking 5 classes and working 40 hours a week and volunteering at a school for 3 or 4 hours a week. I don't think anyone realizes just how challenging it is to schedule your life like this, and how hard it is to convince yourself to study on Saturday when all you want to do is lay around and watch movies so that your brain can have a rest, or clean your house because you haven't been able to do that for an entire week and everything is covered in pet fur. And this leads to me getting irrationally angry at people who don't have to work full time complaining about having to study or do homework. I just want to be like "Seriously? Bite me" even though I'm sure those people do have a lot of homework and studying to do and it probably is stressful, but my brain can't compute that it's worse than what I'm doing. I'm seriously starting to get exhausted, I've been living off of cereal for over a month and I can't force myself to study because most of the time I just don't care anymore. This does nothing to help my goal of graduating with honors, but I'm just too freaking tired some days.

And it doesn't help that I've got another semester of this in front of me. Another 5 or 6 classes next semester just so I can graduate in the winter. That doesn't really boost my motivation all that much. It just leaves me feeling dejected and angry. Angry at myself for taking so long to get my shit together and decide what I wanted to do with my life, and angry at life circumstances that have made this so hard. I complain about people who bitch that they have to get up at 11:00 to make it to a 12:30 class, but truthfully, at this point in time, I'd kill to be one of those people. Sometimes I wish I had the ability to just focus on school and nothing else. But, that's not going to happen, and I'm going to be left with a mountain of student loan debt to pay off because no one has ever helped me pay for any of my schooling. Not one dime. Everyone keeps telling me that it'll be more rewarding in the end to have done it myself, but I'm tired of hearing that. I'd be happy with less rewarding. I'd be happy with it being the same amount of reward that other people feel when finishing. I don't need it to be more rewarding, I need it to be a little easier. I need it to be less frustrating, and I need it to be done. My entire life is on hold until I'm finished with this stupid process, and I'm tired of waiting to be able to do things. At this rate, we'll probably never have kids, because I'll be 27 on my next birthday, and time is kind of running out for that. But, I'm not even finished with school, so kids are not an option right now. I also can't have kids while living with my mother-in-law, because I would kill her, and that's not ending any time soon either. It's just one thing after another that puts everything on hold. And, from what all of my classes keep saying, I'm going into a profession that basically has become horrible and not worth doing and your job isn't to teach but to make sure kids pass their friggin' standardized tests and nothing else, so it makes me wonder if this is even worth it.

I also wonder why there are urinal covers in the women's rest room at work, but that's another story entirely.

When Norbert Gets Angry, People DIE!

My friend Jef-f-f-f sent me a link this morning that cracked me up.  The headline read:

Hurricane Norbert grows, heads for Mexico coast

It's not the fact that death and destruction could possibly be making its way to Mexico, but the fact that my angry little cat is named Norbert.  She's an angry little bitch of a thing and they named a hurricane after her.  Apparently Mexico  pissed her off a lot.

My cat totally hurricanes better than yours.

Don't fuck with me Mexico. Do NOT fuck with me....

Why I'm Annoyed With John Mayer

And no, it's not because he dumped Jennifer Aniston or the fact that he has days where he looks kind of like Edward Scissorhands. It's because of these song lyrics:

Me and all my friends
We're all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There's no way we ever could
Now we see everything that's going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don't have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

It's hard to beat the system
When we're standing at a distance
So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change

Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war
They would have never missed a Christmas
No more ribbons on their door
And when you trust your television
What you get is what you got
Cause when they own the information, oh
They can bend it all they want

That's why we're waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

It's not that we don't care,
We just know that the fight ain't fair
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

And we're still waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting waiting on the world to change

One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

I know this isn't a new song, but it's bugged me from the very first time I heard it. At first I was like "Hey, not a mad message" and then I started actually listening to the lyrics and I realized it was like the lazy person's anthem. Apparently John has never heard Ghandi's quote that you need to "Be the change you wish to see in the world" so he wrote an apathy anthem. This sort of makes my blood boil, because I can't stand apathy. I hate people who just don't care enough to get off their asses and do something about the problems that the world faces, or the problems in their own lives. So basically this song talks about how people are waiting for the world to change but doing absolutely nothing to influence that change. Ok sure, the system is pretty sucky and it feels like one voice can't be heard, but if there are enough voices then they become impossible to ignore. The line "It's hard to beat the system when you're standing at a distance" pisses me off, because in most cases it's a self imposed distance. People my age, and those younger than me, seem to have forgotten that it's actually their duty to not be distant. It's their job to stay connected and work to have their voices heard. Sure, it's discouraging at times, but if the Civil Rights movement had just stopped because they got discouraged, we'd still be eating in segregated restaurants. I'm so incredibly tired of people around me saying "What difference does it make?" because every change starts with one person who makes one small step. It's like saying that we'd save X amount of carbon emissions if everyone would switch to energy efficient bulbs in their houses. So, maybe 10 people do but the rest don't, and they're the ones who say "Well it won't make any difference". You're right, it won't if it's only 10 people. Everyone has to be on board.

And maybe your voice isn't heard on every single issue, or there are bigger things going on that cause what you want to happen to be prevented. Maybe we can't force the war to end, but we can vote out the people who voted for it in the first place. But people don't even vote anymore, because they spout off some bullshit like "They don't represent MY views". Ok well no one person represents my identical views on everything either, not even Jason, but there's someone out there who represents a good portion of them and maybe the most important ones. Or else it's something like "I don't like either candidate". No, you are too lazy to learn anything about either one and you would rather sit on your ass and eat cheetos or pine over your boyfriend than go out and learn something.

So to you John Mayer, I say that all of your waiting is getting us nowhere. Maybe if you'd stop waiting and start trying to be the change you wish to see in the world, we wouldn't have to listen to whiny emo songs about how you're so powerless. People are not powerless unless they choose to be. If you're not happy, rise up and fight the system. So you know what John? It is that you don't care. So what if the world isn't fair? It never has been and yet time and time again people have risen above that and made change happen where it needed to. Stop whining about things not being fair and do something about it. Stop waiting and make it happen.

Me: As a Movie

So, I totally ripped this idea off from Bobby G, but it looked like fun. If I were going to cast the movie of my life, who would I cast? Hmmm....

Sarah Silverman would play me. She doesn't look like me, and she's a lot funnier than I am, but I needed someone who could embrace my inner goofball, match my love of sarcasm and swear as well as I can. Also, we're f*cking Matt Damon.
Jason would be played by Ron Livingston. I have no idea if Ron's personality would match Jason's personality, but every time we go out to dinner someone always says "Did anyone ever tell you that you look like the office space guy?" so Ron wins by default.
Emily, my best friend since kindergarten would be played by Keri Russell. First, because Keri has crazy curly hair like Em does, second because Emily loves her and you should be played by someone you love, and third because Keri is really good at portraying very down to earth characters who come off as being completely real, and Emily is the most down to earth completely real person I know!

Jeff-f-f-f-f would be played by Paul Reiser. Not old Paul Reiser from now, but like if I could get a time machine and get younger Paul Reiser then that would be Jeff. They kind of look alike, a little, but every time I would watch Mad About You I would think that their joke delivery and sense of humor were eerily similar.
Sara would probably be played by Kate Beckinsale, because Kate is short, has dark hair and is cute. But, to play Sara she'd have to drop the accent.

Scott would be played by Neil Patrick Harris. Ok sure, Neil is way older than Scott, but he's got amazing comedic timing and could easily pull off Scott's deadpan humor. Plus, he's got just enough geek in him to be a good version of Scott.

Momwich would have to be played by Sally Field I think. I'm pretty sure that Sally is older than Momwich, but she's super classy and versitile enough to show the transition from shy homebody Momwich to the squeeing fangirl Claymate Momwich. Plus, Momwich should TOTALLY be played by someone who's won an Oscar.

I know this next guy isn't an actor, but I think Doug would have to be played by Steve Jobs. This is mostly because Doug is a walking encyclopedia, and Steve is kind of an uber-geek. I think that's pretty much everyone I have for right now. If I come up with any more later, I'll add them.

Dear Liam Neeson...

Why do you keep dying in your movies?  I noticed this a while back, and Jason and I have discussed it a couple of times, but it came up again tonight in conversation with someone other than the two of us.  So my question is, what gives?  Is this some sort of ploy to get as much money as possible for doing as little work as possible?  If it is, I'm all for it!  I mean, you get paid equity scale rate for the film as a whole, not the number of scenes you perform in the film or how many lines you have, so if you're taking these death roles as a way to make a bunch of money for doing nothing, kudos to you my friend!  Here's my running tally of what you've done in your more popular movies for the past 10 or so years.

1. Les Miserables - Died, but not until the last scene.

2. Star Wars - Died, but again, near the end, so apparently your strategy wasn't well formulated yet.

3. Gangs of New York - Checked out in the opening scene.  Wise my friend, very wise.

4. Love Actually - Did not die, but your fictitious wife did, but we'll give you a pass on this one because I love that movie and the little kid following you around in it was friggin' adorable.

5. Kingdom of Heaven - Died about 1/4 of the way through.  Still collected a paycheck.

6. Star Wars III - Were dead the entire movie but made a ghostly uncredited cameo at the end.  Way to get money for not working at all.  Epic win for you.

7. Batman Begins - Should have died at the beginning, but that was just a fake out.  You died at the end instead.

8. Chronicles of Narnia - Died 3/4 of the way through but came back to life.  LAME!  You are not Jesus, Liam Neeson, although I'm not convinced that Jesus came back from the dead either.  Either way, you gain zombie status and I hear the dudes from Sean of the Dead are after your ass.

9. Chronicles of Narnia again - Did not die, let other people die.  Probably so you could eat their brains.  Zombie.

And what is in store for you next Mr. Neeson?  Oh, you're playing Abraham Lincoln in a biopic about the 16th president.  I don't want to spoil the ending but uhh.....you're gonna die.  So, my question is, are you a genius for always playing the guy who dies, or do you just have a secret death wish and this is your call for help?  Oh Liam Neeson, try living once in a while.  You might like it.

Bobbie said to do this, and you do what Bobbie says or people DIE!

I'm doing this because Bobbie tagged me and said I had to.
Instructions:
1. Link the person that tagged you.
2. List 7 random/weird things about you.
3. Tag 7 people.
4. Inform them they've been tagged

Seven weird things about me:
1. My arms are double jointed at the elbow. This means that I can roate my arm a full 360 degrees. It tends to gross people out.

2. I like to dip my french fries into frosties from Wendy's. My cousin Tracie taught me to do this when I was around three years old, and I never grew out of it. My parents and Jason think it's really disgusting.

3. I can't sleep in a house if there are lights on. I don't mean lights on in the room that I'm sleeping in, I mean lights on anywhere in the house. I'm not joking. I have woken up in the middle of the night because there was a light on upstairs in the kitchen. I have no idea how I know there's a light on, but it wakes me up and makes me insane. It makes it very difficult to stay at other people's houses if they leave hallway lights on, or if they have clocks with really bright digital numbers. I'm like friggin' Rainman or something.

4. I learned how to do plumbing when renovating our two bathrooms in the house. I could TOTALLY hook up your sink for you, as long as it was with PVC pipe. I rule!

5. Sometimes I am essentially the world's biggest 5 year old. I love cartoons, cookies and nap time. I get excited about the stupidest crap. I sometimes wonder if people look at Jason when we're out together and think "That poor guy, he has to take his mentally challenged sister around..."

6. I can probably spit out quotes from more movies than most people have watched in their lifetime. I have an addiction, and a really good memory.

7. I don't walk around barefoot. Ever. I used to be a ballerina and my feet were always really gross looking so I always wear socks, even to bed. I hate having bare feet.

I don't have many people to tag for this. Since Bobbie already tagged Jason, I guess I'm going to have to put this on the shoulders of Bobby G and Amy, because they're the only two bloggers who read this.