Damn it damn it damn it! I'm actually on the recently published blogs list on blogger.com for once, and I don't have my counter thing running! I asked the site that does my counter to change my username, and I changed it on my template but they didn't change it, so I can't see my counter. This is just the wrong time for this to happen. A lot of people are going to be visiting now, and I can't bask in the glorious feeling of seeing a large number of visitors on my stats. Damn it!
Everyone I've talked to about the movie Vanilla Sky says that it's complicated, one of those movies that you have to really think about and that is hard to understand. Since I never understand those kind of movies, I expected not to get this one at all. But come on! There's nothing hard to get about the movie at all. I thought it was good, entertaining, and kind of thought-provoking, but it certainly wasn't difficult to understand!
So how about that seven-year old girl who was kidnapped and escaped? I only heard about it on AM radio (which I've been listening to whenever I'm in my car recently, for some strange reason), not on TV, I wonder why? Apparently, she was tied to a bed with duct tape, and she chewed through it, broke a window, climbed out, and got the attention of some kids, who got the police. Amazing.
I'm looking forward to going back to school in the fall. I've always had that feeling around late July, early August, even during high school, the four worst years of my life. I just like classrooms, and taking notes, and underlining and highlighting and organizing. Of course, about three weeks into the school year, I get sick of it all and I slack off...
I read that $200 to a charity called OxFest or OmFood or something of the sort, I can't remember, is enough to give a child in a poor African country clean, drinkable water for their entire childhood. It makes me sort of sick that I spent about that much at the Gap last week. I need to start giving away part of each of my paychecks to charities. Whenever I start to think about these things too much, I get very uncomfortable. It seems sick and disgusting that I have clothes from the Gap and that I buy swiss chocolate with almonds in it and that there are kids out there who don't have anything to eat. I'm going to have to do a lot of reading about this, because I don't want my money going to pay the salaries of people running the charities, I want it to go to the people who need it. It's just so frustrating because even if I give enough money to save the lives of 10 kids, I'm not really doing much in the long run. I need to get drug companies to give away their AIDS medicine, and I need to get Pakistan and India to stop fighting, and I need to redistribute wealth and blah blah blah.
I'm thinking of applying to med school. I'll have all the undergrad courses they want except for the year of physics. If I became a doctor, I'd apply to that thing where they pay for your med school tuition if you agree to work for 4 years for a small salary in an understaffed area of the U.S. after completing your residency. Then I'd travel around with the Doctors Without Borders. But then I wouldn't have time to have kids ever...speaking of kids, it seems kind of wrong to have your own kids when there are so many kids already in the world who need parents. I really should adopt.
My college hires one or two students every semester to read three major newspapers in thier entirety, every day. These students, who are paid $7.00/hr., report any mention of the college in any section of these newspapers to their supervisors. What a strange, strange job.
The other night, I had a dream about the Elizabeth Smart case. My mom had invited the family over for dinner, and her little sister kept looking around in our kitchen for Elizabeth. She opened the silverware drawer and the cupboards and stuff. Everyone was commenting on how well she (the little sister) was taking all the stress of the situation. They say that if the police don't find a missing kid within 5 hours, the kid has little chance of being found alive, and after three days, there's practically no chance. This thing with Elizabeth Smart reminds me of what happened a few years ago in Belgium. Two pretty eight-year old girls, Julie and Melissa, were missing. Their photos were everywhere all over that part of Europe. They finally found the guy who had abducted and killed them. He had kept them in a cage in his basement while taking pornographic videos of them, then he killed them and buried them in his back yard. Get this - his neighbors had seen him digging up the yard and burying things, but they had assumed that their nice neighbor was gardening!
Favorite breakfasts include toasted onion bagel with baba ganoush, buttermilk pancakes with raspberries, veggie burger with melted cheddar cheese on top, fruit salad with overcooked apple cinnamon flavored oatmeal.
It seems the only reason people on the news are able to give in favor of keeping the words "under god" in the pledge is that it is in keeping with the tradition of the country. The cite the beliefs of the founding fathers and references to God in the Declaration of Independence. That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard. Just because something is traditional, it doesn't mean it should be kept that way. They'd laugh in my face if I said, "Well, Afghanistan's tradition is one of hating America, so we should encourage them to still hate America. If there are a couple people over there who don't hate America, okay, that's their choice."
The U.S. wants immunity from the international warcrimes court that has just been established, and hardly anybody even knows about it, much less cares. The U.S. wants immunity from a court that prosecutes war crimes!! Yesterday, this news was on page 6 of my hometown's 7-page newspaper! Unbelievable. The U.S. thinks it should have the right to do whatever it wants.
When I was little, I'd do this thing where I'd narrate stuff in my head as it happened. The weird thing is that I'd do it in the third person. As in, "She walked up the stairs, then paused to look out the window." I did it for years and years, not all the time, but quite a bit. It was subconscious; I often didn't know I was doing it. Sometime around the begining of high school, this girl I knew said that she used to narrate stuff in her head as it happened. I was flabbergasted. Other people do it too?! She did it in the first person, though.
I've always liked writing, too, and I started writing in a journal in fourth grade. I kept it up till senior year of high shcool, when I threw all the old journals out. I used to write short stories, too. I never let anyone read them; it would have been almost as bad as someone reading my journals. I only ever finished a story once, though (and that was for school), besides the silly ones I wrote in elementary school. Actually, those stories from elementary school were probably some of the best ones. I should find them and polish up the writing. I bet kids would read them. I wrote about a half-dozen about this little boy who had a very annoying older sister, and all the things he did in revenge, like cut her hair while she was sleeping. I had quite an imagination! After those, most of the time I spent writing the stories, I spent on thinking of the perfect names for the characters, and coming up with killer first lines.
I love the actual process of writing, like with a pen or pencil on paper. I love looking at stationary and fancy pens and pencils in stores. My doodles on my notes in class are mostly experiments with different handwritings. I copy stuff from handouts on the handout, like if it says, "Functions of the Hypothamlus," I'll write "Functions" underneath a bunch of times, sometimes in cursive, sometimes in print, etc. That's why this weblog thing might not work out. Not only have I not written a journal-type thing (or anything besides school papers, really) in years, but I have to type it. I do type faster than I hand write, though. I remember in sixth grade, my teacher said she would allow us to use the computer in the back of the room for our assignments sometimes because she knew some of us type faster than we write. I was like, what?! I couldn't imagine anyone being able to type anywhere near as fast as they could write!
