So I bought, with false hope it seems, some electronic cigarettes that came highly recommended from a good friend. These cigarettes were to help my mother, whom, at this point is such a compulsive smoker that she was picking up cigarette butts and relighting those. She has minor burns on the tip of her nose as well as the space between her index and middle fingers. "Why" might you ask is she such a horrific compulsive smoker? As of now, it's not the nicotine - which helps in a tiny, insignificant way - it's her "boyfriend". Since I refuse to name names in this particular format, I'm going to substitute "@$$" for his name.
After Mom was hospitalize earlier this year, and upon her subsequent release from said hospital, @$$'s drinking habits have become...exorbitant. As of right now, he's dropping money on 3 six-packs a day. That's all he can afford using the meager amount of money left over from his supposed inheritance (which has dwindled from 15K to $400 in just under...what? six months.). If he hasn't already, he's already digging into my mother's money to supply his habit. A few years ago, I would've gladly turned the other cheek - having not cared enough to delve this much into her personal life - but as of her last hospitalization, I've realized how horrible of a daughter I've been and I've fought with myself to make amends and be better to her.
As it turns out, @$$ (caught myself, almost typed his full name), is an angry drunk. Not in the "beat things around to make me feel better" way. In the "I know better than every person in the world and I'm bitter" way. Which leads up to him being emotionally devastating to my mother. Recently, I've been switched to being her payee - I handle her disability checks - which, as you may imagine, pisses him off to no end. To which I get calls every day, EVERY DAY, about him 'giving (her) hell about the payee thing'. Which means that I get to hear the sob in her voice and whatever sounds he attempts to bark through the line. He never fails to lower the volume of his voice just enough that I can't hear any of the angry-sounding things he says to her.
So I'm left with this situation: hearing my mother's shaking voice over the phone, hearing his angry ranting, counting to ten every time I see his face and the way he glares at her, and knowing that because of his fear-inducing, angry ways that my mother smokes herself to burns and is losing hair because of the stress.
But you know what the craziest part in all this is? She won't leave because she's terrified of being alone.
I've thought long and hard about things and if she continues to stay with him, I may very well go to a lawyer and file the proceedings to have her declared incompetent and in need of a guardian. I or the state would be able to get her away from him, get her set up in a decent place to live, even find her a puppy (which I know she's been desperate for). I've yet to say anything to her about this, because I know, on some level, it will devastate her. But when she can barely function and she's terrified of @$$, where does that leave myself and my sister?
On her good days, my mother is vibrant and brilliant. She's astonishing with numbers and can read books faster than anyone I've ever met - and can retain every last line and plot twist. But as of now...I really wish I had words appropriate for describing the way I feel when I look at her.
It's because of these good days that I'm fighting myself:
When is it all right to step in and be the guardian for your own parent, even when they're capable of looking in your face and telling you that what you want for them is not what they want?
Friday, November 4, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Church of Satan and Growing Connections
Lady Gaga's "Judas" is thumping away in my ears as I'm typing this - been a while. Rather ironically, given the music, I wanted to start off on a note about "The Official Church of Satan" founded by Anton LaVey in 1966. I've only mildly dipped into their website - maybe read a dozen articles and 1/10 of their "theory-practice" section - and I'm kind of left with an interesting sense of the whole deal. I've yet to purchase the "Satanic Bible" simply because I don't feel like spending the excess money right now (saving that for certain adventures in and out of state), but I can only assume that the book elaborates on the philosophies and then adds a few hoo-doo-voo-doo rituals to it all.
According to the page, "satan" means "adversary" in Hebrew, but even then that's a bit of a misnomer for what they really stand for. Even saying "they" is a bit of a tough fit. Satan is not some vile, horn-topped beast that God threw down into a burning pit; but rather:
“The adversary of all man-made spiritual religions. To all that we consider the contemptable crutches man has had to invent. We totally reject the concept of there being an antithesis to God. He is God.”
That was using the words from an interview with the founder and he's speaking in metaphor with any mention of "he" with "he" being Satan.
Overall, LaVey promoted the indulgence of humanity's urges. If you're angry, act on it. If you're lusty, act on it. If someone wrongs you, revenge is the key. It's a raging world of tit-for-tat, BUT under the stipulation that you don't overindulge in any one thing. Another general gist I get is along the lines of "find your Zen" (the thing that makes your life awesome, what you love to do) and never let anyone take it from you and use any means to achieve it.
In general, that sounds about like Christianity. With the contrast that moderation isn't key, but full restraint is.
Now, like always, there's WAY more to Satanism than what I can skim off their website; however, I think I'm just going to stop there and just buy their bible later. Maybe I'll be converted some time in the eventual future. And SURPRISE! They don't condone animal sacrifices and never have. Hmm. So much for gutting a sacrificial lamb when I finish reading chapter one.
Perhaps the most interesting contrast between The Church of Satan and Christianity is the opinion of what man is; The Church of Satan believing man is just as much an animal as a dog or a bird (but perhaps more vile and vicious because of his mind) and Christianity believing that man is a more divine creature than an animal (alas, still relatively low on the whole totem pole).
Dropping the whole Church of Satan thing for now, but I've been thinking a lot about transparency. As in personal transparency. Treyarch has announce a new add-on subscription for their Call of Duty games, calling it Call of Duty Elite. Among the various tools that it yields, it can connect all of your CoD data to your smartphone AND to your FB. The internet, for many many years represented the kingdom of annonymity. You could be anyone and say anything to anyone. With things becoming ever-more connected though, that's rapidly becoming hard to do. Annonymity is a shrinking shield.
Imagine your computer giving away every last one of your likes, every conversation you've ever had in dark corners, and all of those pretty little pics you told your friend you deleted? (Purely hypothetical here people, don't get defensive XD) Can any one of us live with that sort of lack of privacy?
I try to live one of the most open-book lives that I can. There are a few things that I like to keep to myself, but I can pretty much count them on my two hands. Not kidding. I'm too lazy and not creative enough to balance more than that. Besides, I feel I owe it to most people. But let's face it, if my world were to 100% connect, could I deal with the transparency?
I'd like to think so, but it's ALMOST akin to a final judgment of sorts.
"With your soul laid bare.." and all that jazz.
The government is doing it all it can to protect our privacy, but how does something that doesn't evolve, deal with something that's growing exponentially - if not WAY faster - and changing DAILY?
Oh well. That's enough for now.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Werewolves, Vampires, Sexuality, and Violence (Oh my!) ((Giggity))
Peronal Crap, feel free to skip past it to the dotted line. lol
So I watched Scream 4 in the theatre last night. Made me insanely happy. I think I love the ending better than anything that I read leaked onto the internet.
I came home, laid down for bed, and in less than an hour I was awake and in pain. It felt like something was tearing across the back of my right forearm. Got up, went downstairs and grabbed my brace, and strapped it on. I really wish I knew what the heck is going on with my arms. (Yep, got pain in the left arm now too -_-) If you could believe it, it's just irritating at this point because I can't ignore it anymore. Oh well.
:
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
I've started research on something that may eventually turn into a book. Or at least I'd like it to.
Werewolves and vampires have always, always held a special place in my heart. I love elves and fae and zombies too, but c'mon. As one might suspect, the whole concept of a werewolf or a vampire is a fairly subjective thing. In the last decade or so, there's been dozens - if not hundreds - of different vampires and werewolves. In the case of werewolves, they can be human shaped with fangs, a serial killer that's particularly brutal, a beast with intellect, a straight-up animal, or the the shirtless object of affection for any girl that has a fetish for well-built native Americans with a thing for clumsy white chicks with no real redeeming qualities. Vampires have always been blood drinkers, but the ferocity of their attacks, the wildness of their nature, the location of their fangs, how strong they are - all of these things are up for debate within the mind of anyone who thinks about them.
I started digging into historical accounts of lycanthropy and vampirism only to find that even the legends themselves - the very things that created what we know now - were even more subjective than what we have now. I need to find it now, but the most extreme version of a vampire I remember finding was nothing more than a spectre of a woman; her head was intact, she had no arms or legs, but all of her innards and her spine hung freely as she floated around wailing and consuming the blood of men. And I read a text the other day, from the 50s, in which an anthropologist suggested that lycanthropy developed as a mythos out of man's desire to take up and wear the skins of other animals - in the hopes of becoming stronger than they were, and even more ferocious. He also attempted to use this as an explanation for man's aggression and omnivorous nature - saying that some varieties of ape are 100% peaceful and that man is the only truly violent ape (give him a break, it was a weird point in history to be making the claims he did).
Mythos, in general, for any given culture, reveals stunning amounts of information about their values and about their fears. Vampires and werewolves, now moreso than in the past, reveal two very specific things about a society: their views on sexuality and their views on violent behaviour.
Vampires and werewolves represent the two subjects in different ways. I would say they're masculine and feminine or light and dark of the same idea, but that doesn't fit. At all.
In a very distinct way, vampires represent a sort of refined violence; the violence and the sexuality that was created by society. Opposing that, werwolves represent wild violence, the violence and sexual nature that exists in man before it's altered by society. I say representative, in that if you examine the amount of comfort and elaboration in the mythos, you get a sense of the people that made it. I'm not copping out just yet, I will explain more at a later time, and after more research, but for now I'm done. Just think on that some.
So I watched Scream 4 in the theatre last night. Made me insanely happy. I think I love the ending better than anything that I read leaked onto the internet.
I came home, laid down for bed, and in less than an hour I was awake and in pain. It felt like something was tearing across the back of my right forearm. Got up, went downstairs and grabbed my brace, and strapped it on. I really wish I knew what the heck is going on with my arms. (Yep, got pain in the left arm now too -_-) If you could believe it, it's just irritating at this point because I can't ignore it anymore. Oh well.
:
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
I've started research on something that may eventually turn into a book. Or at least I'd like it to.
Werewolves and vampires have always, always held a special place in my heart. I love elves and fae and zombies too, but c'mon. As one might suspect, the whole concept of a werewolf or a vampire is a fairly subjective thing. In the last decade or so, there's been dozens - if not hundreds - of different vampires and werewolves. In the case of werewolves, they can be human shaped with fangs, a serial killer that's particularly brutal, a beast with intellect, a straight-up animal, or the the shirtless object of affection for any girl that has a fetish for well-built native Americans with a thing for clumsy white chicks with no real redeeming qualities. Vampires have always been blood drinkers, but the ferocity of their attacks, the wildness of their nature, the location of their fangs, how strong they are - all of these things are up for debate within the mind of anyone who thinks about them.
I started digging into historical accounts of lycanthropy and vampirism only to find that even the legends themselves - the very things that created what we know now - were even more subjective than what we have now. I need to find it now, but the most extreme version of a vampire I remember finding was nothing more than a spectre of a woman; her head was intact, she had no arms or legs, but all of her innards and her spine hung freely as she floated around wailing and consuming the blood of men. And I read a text the other day, from the 50s, in which an anthropologist suggested that lycanthropy developed as a mythos out of man's desire to take up and wear the skins of other animals - in the hopes of becoming stronger than they were, and even more ferocious. He also attempted to use this as an explanation for man's aggression and omnivorous nature - saying that some varieties of ape are 100% peaceful and that man is the only truly violent ape (give him a break, it was a weird point in history to be making the claims he did).
Mythos, in general, for any given culture, reveals stunning amounts of information about their values and about their fears. Vampires and werewolves, now moreso than in the past, reveal two very specific things about a society: their views on sexuality and their views on violent behaviour.
Vampires and werewolves represent the two subjects in different ways. I would say they're masculine and feminine or light and dark of the same idea, but that doesn't fit. At all.
In a very distinct way, vampires represent a sort of refined violence; the violence and the sexuality that was created by society. Opposing that, werwolves represent wild violence, the violence and sexual nature that exists in man before it's altered by society. I say representative, in that if you examine the amount of comfort and elaboration in the mythos, you get a sense of the people that made it. I'm not copping out just yet, I will explain more at a later time, and after more research, but for now I'm done. Just think on that some.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Achievable Dreams
With the lyrical voice of Joss Stone making me smile, I wanted to write about this to center myself. A very good friend of mine has sort of infected me with this thing known of as being a Gleek. The television show on Fox, Glee, has kind of become part of my soul. A tiny portion of my personality, dedicated mostly to the "old" me is kind of vomitting in her mouth at the feel-good and "be happy in your own skin" messages, but the mature individual in me appreciates it and treasures the comfort those words can yield to a drifting soul like mine. I could mourn the loss of some decent chunk of my childhood and notions of 100% support, but there's no real point in that. What's in the past, by way of quantum mechanics, is something that I cannot go back to and would gladly not.
Out of the sixteen episodes I watched yesterday and today (I told you it was an infection) one particular bit of inspiration kind of stuck with me. It was the notion of picking an obtainable dream, picturing it in your mind, and finding a way to make that happen. I'm going to be honest here, no reason to lie really anyways, but my dreams as a child growing up (like all children's dreams generally are) weren't firmly rooted in reality. And they existed in a very screwed up sense. People that know me well - and even I - am aware that my behaviour is extremely masculine. This is part because I'm fairly certain that "tomboy" is encoded somewhere in my DNA about 600,000 times (or is alternatively just in my DNA a handful of times and contains a BEAST of a promoter sequence). And the masculine behaviour - at first - started as the distinct need to violently express myself in relation to the women around me. The old logic was "If you act like a boy, talk like a boy, and walk like a boy you're more likely to attract girls". Hush, growing up, I was the only lesbian I knew. Only when I saw Sailor Uranus and Neptune (circa age 11, for me) did I finally figure out that I wasn't the only one. Like some sort of hypochondriac with WebMD, the internet gave me a word for who I was and other people like me. Anyways, I digressed a little. Nowadays I try as much as I can to just be ME. Not a tomboy (though that is a label that is applicable), not a girly-girl. Not anything really.
What all of this was generally leading to was the assertion that my likes and dreams kind of straddle both worlds, so to speak.
I thought about that whole achieveable dream mess, closed my eyes, and the very first thing I saw was the inside of a rustic log cabin. Stone - if not wooden - floors, a roaring fireplace with herbs drying along the mantle, a wolfdog curled up on an area rug, a beautiful - medievally styled - kitchen, and a garage outside with my motorcycle, civie vehicle, and rat rod all inside. Originally, in my youth, I'd envisioned a home full of children and my significant other declaring that I needed to fix the broken dishwasher again (yeah...I know. It's like some sort of domestic horror movie, isn't it?). I treasured the notion of that. In a way, I still kind of do, but I treasure it in the way that one might look fondly upon an old memory or childhood toy.
As of now, I envision no one with me in this little dream, and I'm perfectly okay with that. I've fought, constantly, with codependency (or at least what I felt it was). I HAD to be wanted. I HAD to be needed. I HAD to be loved. I don't NEED that anymore, though I do WANT it. The paralyzing notion of being completely relationship-less, isn't all that paralyzing anymore.
There are certain people, whose name or names shall not be mentioned, that I love very much. But I will not throw myself head-first into anything anymore. I want to take my time and I want to just be me for the time being.
Though the dream I mentioned above is complex, it is possible; however, there are steps I need to take in order to get there. The first of which being that I need to graduate from college and find a job - relatively simultaneously. There's a sort of ticking clock set for my future, in the form of my sibling's high school graduation. She's got two years, but when she's gone, I have to be gone too. I need a tiny nest egg for that and a standing job.
I guess I've asserted everything that I really wanted to when I started this, but I wanna say this:
I'm a girl that loves cheap beer (especially Mexican) as much as she loves a gourmet cheesecake. My favourite cereal ever is fruity pebbles. Theatre flipped my entire personality inside out and my biology degree has helped me fully realize the rest of myself. Only one person has ever made me cry happily (twice) because they made me feel so treasured. I want to to travel the world. I love romantic comedies and chick flicks as much as I love a good werewolf or vampire movie. I envy the physique of MMA fighter "Mega" Megumi and yearn to look like her. I want at least two motorcycles ( a Triumph and an Indian) but will settle for one if I have to. I'm more at hope out in the woods than I am in a city. I want to learn how to shave with a straight razor, just because they're so awesome and old school. I have my entire back reserved for tattoos. I guess I'll just finish with the wacky notion that I think I'm a Log Cabin Republican.
Out of the sixteen episodes I watched yesterday and today (I told you it was an infection) one particular bit of inspiration kind of stuck with me. It was the notion of picking an obtainable dream, picturing it in your mind, and finding a way to make that happen. I'm going to be honest here, no reason to lie really anyways, but my dreams as a child growing up (like all children's dreams generally are) weren't firmly rooted in reality. And they existed in a very screwed up sense. People that know me well - and even I - am aware that my behaviour is extremely masculine. This is part because I'm fairly certain that "tomboy" is encoded somewhere in my DNA about 600,000 times (or is alternatively just in my DNA a handful of times and contains a BEAST of a promoter sequence). And the masculine behaviour - at first - started as the distinct need to violently express myself in relation to the women around me. The old logic was "If you act like a boy, talk like a boy, and walk like a boy you're more likely to attract girls". Hush, growing up, I was the only lesbian I knew. Only when I saw Sailor Uranus and Neptune (circa age 11, for me) did I finally figure out that I wasn't the only one. Like some sort of hypochondriac with WebMD, the internet gave me a word for who I was and other people like me. Anyways, I digressed a little. Nowadays I try as much as I can to just be ME. Not a tomboy (though that is a label that is applicable), not a girly-girl. Not anything really.
What all of this was generally leading to was the assertion that my likes and dreams kind of straddle both worlds, so to speak.
I thought about that whole achieveable dream mess, closed my eyes, and the very first thing I saw was the inside of a rustic log cabin. Stone - if not wooden - floors, a roaring fireplace with herbs drying along the mantle, a wolfdog curled up on an area rug, a beautiful - medievally styled - kitchen, and a garage outside with my motorcycle, civie vehicle, and rat rod all inside. Originally, in my youth, I'd envisioned a home full of children and my significant other declaring that I needed to fix the broken dishwasher again (yeah...I know. It's like some sort of domestic horror movie, isn't it?). I treasured the notion of that. In a way, I still kind of do, but I treasure it in the way that one might look fondly upon an old memory or childhood toy.
As of now, I envision no one with me in this little dream, and I'm perfectly okay with that. I've fought, constantly, with codependency (or at least what I felt it was). I HAD to be wanted. I HAD to be needed. I HAD to be loved. I don't NEED that anymore, though I do WANT it. The paralyzing notion of being completely relationship-less, isn't all that paralyzing anymore.
There are certain people, whose name or names shall not be mentioned, that I love very much. But I will not throw myself head-first into anything anymore. I want to take my time and I want to just be me for the time being.
Though the dream I mentioned above is complex, it is possible; however, there are steps I need to take in order to get there. The first of which being that I need to graduate from college and find a job - relatively simultaneously. There's a sort of ticking clock set for my future, in the form of my sibling's high school graduation. She's got two years, but when she's gone, I have to be gone too. I need a tiny nest egg for that and a standing job.
I guess I've asserted everything that I really wanted to when I started this, but I wanna say this:
I'm a girl that loves cheap beer (especially Mexican) as much as she loves a gourmet cheesecake. My favourite cereal ever is fruity pebbles. Theatre flipped my entire personality inside out and my biology degree has helped me fully realize the rest of myself. Only one person has ever made me cry happily (twice) because they made me feel so treasured. I want to to travel the world. I love romantic comedies and chick flicks as much as I love a good werewolf or vampire movie. I envy the physique of MMA fighter "Mega" Megumi and yearn to look like her. I want at least two motorcycles ( a Triumph and an Indian) but will settle for one if I have to. I'm more at hope out in the woods than I am in a city. I want to learn how to shave with a straight razor, just because they're so awesome and old school. I have my entire back reserved for tattoos. I guess I'll just finish with the wacky notion that I think I'm a Log Cabin Republican.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Inspired by watching Food Inc.
I have a draft saved up that is about depression and I was going to post that today, but it needs to be tweaked; besides, it's gloriously sunny out and I'm sitting in the sunroom contentedly drinking my earl grey tea sweetened with local honey (picturesque and hippie-rific, isn't it?). I have no reason to truly think about depression right now.
I watched the documentary Food Inc., last night and I have to admit that it was at least a hair eye-opening. I'm not going to blindly follow all of the facts like a lemming and end up aggressively ranting at politicians. Idiots do that. Nothing in this world is as black and white as any of us would ever love it to be.
It's not pleasant for most people to think about - in fact, most people don't nowadays - but we are evolved killers. Somewhere along the lines of our distant past, an ape-like relative of ours looked at another animal and decided that it was fit for consumption. We can still eat vegetables and fruits and grains, but there is a part of us, however small (evident in our canines and sheering teeth) that is dedicated to ripping the flesh off of another animal. Our greatest advantage is not just simply our brains, but that we're also the best long-distance runners in the animal kingdom. That is, when we bother working out any more. We would presumably use this gift of ours to not only know how the animals would run, but we would be able to outrun them, driving them to exhaustion and then taking them down. Almost a case of "slow and steady wins the race".
Meat, at one point in our history, was a treasure. Lots of effort and manpower (hush up, I'm not being sexist) went into tracking deer or elk and then killing one. The easiest thing for our body to burn through is sugars (carbohydrates break down into sugars), shortly followed by proteins, and then the last thing for us to break apart is fat. When you eat vegetables, fruits, or grains your body gets valuable carbohydrates, fibers, sugars, and vitamins out of them. Only a fair amount of protein is avaiable in nuts and beans. Fat is an extremely minor portion of this part of our diet. ENTER meat. Though most of our four-legged and finned meals were lean in the past (fish are still lean, in case you're wondering XD) , they still had higher percentages of fat and protein than anything we encountered growing off of bushes and out of the ground. If you stockpiled meat or consumed lots of it, your body... for lack of anything better to say, ate it up. There are studies of nutrition that have revealed that our bodies LOVE fat when given the opportunity to consume it. Think french fries or burgers or even a steak. The amount of fat and protein in that food is what makes it a delicious thing to eat. You're thinking "hey, french fries aren't meat!". Good job on you for paying attention, this is where frying food in fats and then serving them helps make them delicious.
I give our distant relatives a real thumbs up for figuring out domestication of livestock. I do. It's a tribute to our ingenuinty to be able to take a critter and over time, turn it into a readily available food source. Who wants to run for days and risk substantial injury to kill anything if they don't have to? (If you're a freak like me - and a few other actual athletes out there - you want to take the risk) Domesication was the very first step, but now, we're adding a whole new layer to this supposed foundation.
In the last several decades, we've genetically-modified, vaccinated, antibiotic-ed, and all around altered our animals to suit us. I understand it, I totally do. Or at least, I understand the drive to do this. If you could have a chicken that was fast, hard to catch and small....or one that was HUGE and easy to catch...which would you prefer?
To view laziness as a horrible and nasty thing is to be a little harsh on ourselves.
99.9% of all life on this planet, from bacteria to plants to animals (yes, that includes us), do everything possible to make life easy on themselves and hell on everything else that tries to get in their way. Opportunistic infections take place when it is "comfortable" for the bacteria and hell on your body, likewise your body in tip-top shape, makes it virtually impossible for anything to set up anywhere unless it benefits you (e.g, our relationship with benign E. coli). To look at the production of food and see "they are just abusing the animals to get better profit" and nothing else, is to do the whole system an injustice. You can very, very easily take that stance and stand with it, but one must also think about what has been done for centuries and centuries before us. Even before people truly understood Mendellian inheritance, they knew that if you bred a muscular bull with a beefy cow, you'd get potentially more meat in that next generation. Repeat this process over and over and you can modify the animal to suit what is needed. This very same process was used to create high-yielding and bug-resistant crops. What has happened now, is the very same thing that is happening with communications and medicine...exponential leaps in what could be called developement.
I say "exponential leaps in development" and mean it in a purely technical sense, not to create some sort of illusion as to how amazing we are as a species. I like to think of us as a very clever way to answer the problems that all other species face. In cellular technology, it's easy to not get upset so long as the batteries last and none of the parts of the cell phone can somehow cause cancer. With computers it's very easy to do the exact same thing. Medicine... "hey, it may be expensive, but it saves your life". I have my own particular loathing for the medical system, but I'll leave that for another day. With animals, the biggest difference is that it is another organism that we can see moving and we can hear its cries when distressed. The microorganisms we carefully alter in labs can't squeal like a pig can. Nor can the computer's whirring hard drive really bother us. In certain parts of the world, chickens retain their sleek physique and ability to fly. Yes, chickens used to fly. But the ones that exist in farms have been bred and altered so that they can barely walk under the weight of their own developing flesh. We sympathize with this because we have an imagination that allows us to "feel" the amount of pain that they're in.
So stepping back from that and trying to avoid emotional language, as any species, we do what we can to avoid expending a lot of effort for a little bit of product.
Not one thing in this world is good or evil - in a theological sense. Good and Evil do not exist and no act on this world is inherently composed of either.
There is "what feels good" and "what feels bad". It may be preprogrammed into our genetics (I know, cop out) to have some sort of varying moral code. BUT I used the term "moral code" in reference to a program that lets us know "what feels good" and "what feels bad". We aren't the only creatures in this world that can feel pain, nor are we the only ones that mourn the loss of a relative or pack/pride/troup member.
When we lose a vital bond or a connection to another, we not only lose a source of emotional support, but we lose a very valuable resource.
We aren't even the only critters capable of sympathy. You know of at least one person that has had a pet (cat, dog, or otherwise) that was able to sense when their owner was down and did what they could in their own way, to fix it. This sounds like an idealistic sort of animal-lover thought. For some of you it could be, but for me, it's paying attention to the abilities of another species in comparison to us. We may have answered our problems with a developed brain and walking upright, but big cats answered the same problem with fangs and group hunting. We aren't that different.
I've kind of meandered a little, but what I was attempting to get it at is that the only reason why mass animal slaughter and modification bothers any of us, is 100% pure sympathy. Sympathy that may very well be programmed into us at a genetic level, but ignored or programmed out with societal demands.
I have considered, in the last several weeks, becoming a vegetarian. With consideration and some thoughtfulness, I've come to the decision that I could never fully embrace that lifestyle. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but for me, it is something that just won't work with that I know about myself and what I know about biology. I'd say that I believe I am intended to be an omnivore, but that would infer some sort of lack of knowledge and to simply base my dietary concerns on faith.
Despite not transitioning completely over to vegetarianism, I am going to put forth genuine effort into consuming more fruits and vegetables and consume less meat, though when I do, I'll attempt to purchase organic meat. I'm not naive when it comes to even "organic" meat though, I know better than to assume a picturesque farm with animals roaming freely - though I'd love to hope for that.
Hmmm... anything else?
Nah, I'm going to just call it done. I have to brew some more tea anyways.
I watched the documentary Food Inc., last night and I have to admit that it was at least a hair eye-opening. I'm not going to blindly follow all of the facts like a lemming and end up aggressively ranting at politicians. Idiots do that. Nothing in this world is as black and white as any of us would ever love it to be.
It's not pleasant for most people to think about - in fact, most people don't nowadays - but we are evolved killers. Somewhere along the lines of our distant past, an ape-like relative of ours looked at another animal and decided that it was fit for consumption. We can still eat vegetables and fruits and grains, but there is a part of us, however small (evident in our canines and sheering teeth) that is dedicated to ripping the flesh off of another animal. Our greatest advantage is not just simply our brains, but that we're also the best long-distance runners in the animal kingdom. That is, when we bother working out any more. We would presumably use this gift of ours to not only know how the animals would run, but we would be able to outrun them, driving them to exhaustion and then taking them down. Almost a case of "slow and steady wins the race".
Meat, at one point in our history, was a treasure. Lots of effort and manpower (hush up, I'm not being sexist) went into tracking deer or elk and then killing one. The easiest thing for our body to burn through is sugars (carbohydrates break down into sugars), shortly followed by proteins, and then the last thing for us to break apart is fat. When you eat vegetables, fruits, or grains your body gets valuable carbohydrates, fibers, sugars, and vitamins out of them. Only a fair amount of protein is avaiable in nuts and beans. Fat is an extremely minor portion of this part of our diet. ENTER meat. Though most of our four-legged and finned meals were lean in the past (fish are still lean, in case you're wondering XD) , they still had higher percentages of fat and protein than anything we encountered growing off of bushes and out of the ground. If you stockpiled meat or consumed lots of it, your body... for lack of anything better to say, ate it up. There are studies of nutrition that have revealed that our bodies LOVE fat when given the opportunity to consume it. Think french fries or burgers or even a steak. The amount of fat and protein in that food is what makes it a delicious thing to eat. You're thinking "hey, french fries aren't meat!". Good job on you for paying attention, this is where frying food in fats and then serving them helps make them delicious.
I give our distant relatives a real thumbs up for figuring out domestication of livestock. I do. It's a tribute to our ingenuinty to be able to take a critter and over time, turn it into a readily available food source. Who wants to run for days and risk substantial injury to kill anything if they don't have to? (If you're a freak like me - and a few other actual athletes out there - you want to take the risk) Domesication was the very first step, but now, we're adding a whole new layer to this supposed foundation.
In the last several decades, we've genetically-modified, vaccinated, antibiotic-ed, and all around altered our animals to suit us. I understand it, I totally do. Or at least, I understand the drive to do this. If you could have a chicken that was fast, hard to catch and small....or one that was HUGE and easy to catch...which would you prefer?
To view laziness as a horrible and nasty thing is to be a little harsh on ourselves.
99.9% of all life on this planet, from bacteria to plants to animals (yes, that includes us), do everything possible to make life easy on themselves and hell on everything else that tries to get in their way. Opportunistic infections take place when it is "comfortable" for the bacteria and hell on your body, likewise your body in tip-top shape, makes it virtually impossible for anything to set up anywhere unless it benefits you (e.g, our relationship with benign E. coli). To look at the production of food and see "they are just abusing the animals to get better profit" and nothing else, is to do the whole system an injustice. You can very, very easily take that stance and stand with it, but one must also think about what has been done for centuries and centuries before us. Even before people truly understood Mendellian inheritance, they knew that if you bred a muscular bull with a beefy cow, you'd get potentially more meat in that next generation. Repeat this process over and over and you can modify the animal to suit what is needed. This very same process was used to create high-yielding and bug-resistant crops. What has happened now, is the very same thing that is happening with communications and medicine...exponential leaps in what could be called developement.
I say "exponential leaps in development" and mean it in a purely technical sense, not to create some sort of illusion as to how amazing we are as a species. I like to think of us as a very clever way to answer the problems that all other species face. In cellular technology, it's easy to not get upset so long as the batteries last and none of the parts of the cell phone can somehow cause cancer. With computers it's very easy to do the exact same thing. Medicine... "hey, it may be expensive, but it saves your life". I have my own particular loathing for the medical system, but I'll leave that for another day. With animals, the biggest difference is that it is another organism that we can see moving and we can hear its cries when distressed. The microorganisms we carefully alter in labs can't squeal like a pig can. Nor can the computer's whirring hard drive really bother us. In certain parts of the world, chickens retain their sleek physique and ability to fly. Yes, chickens used to fly. But the ones that exist in farms have been bred and altered so that they can barely walk under the weight of their own developing flesh. We sympathize with this because we have an imagination that allows us to "feel" the amount of pain that they're in.
So stepping back from that and trying to avoid emotional language, as any species, we do what we can to avoid expending a lot of effort for a little bit of product.
Not one thing in this world is good or evil - in a theological sense. Good and Evil do not exist and no act on this world is inherently composed of either.
There is "what feels good" and "what feels bad". It may be preprogrammed into our genetics (I know, cop out) to have some sort of varying moral code. BUT I used the term "moral code" in reference to a program that lets us know "what feels good" and "what feels bad". We aren't the only creatures in this world that can feel pain, nor are we the only ones that mourn the loss of a relative or pack/pride/troup member.
When we lose a vital bond or a connection to another, we not only lose a source of emotional support, but we lose a very valuable resource.
We aren't even the only critters capable of sympathy. You know of at least one person that has had a pet (cat, dog, or otherwise) that was able to sense when their owner was down and did what they could in their own way, to fix it. This sounds like an idealistic sort of animal-lover thought. For some of you it could be, but for me, it's paying attention to the abilities of another species in comparison to us. We may have answered our problems with a developed brain and walking upright, but big cats answered the same problem with fangs and group hunting. We aren't that different.
I've kind of meandered a little, but what I was attempting to get it at is that the only reason why mass animal slaughter and modification bothers any of us, is 100% pure sympathy. Sympathy that may very well be programmed into us at a genetic level, but ignored or programmed out with societal demands.
I have considered, in the last several weeks, becoming a vegetarian. With consideration and some thoughtfulness, I've come to the decision that I could never fully embrace that lifestyle. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but for me, it is something that just won't work with that I know about myself and what I know about biology. I'd say that I believe I am intended to be an omnivore, but that would infer some sort of lack of knowledge and to simply base my dietary concerns on faith.
Despite not transitioning completely over to vegetarianism, I am going to put forth genuine effort into consuming more fruits and vegetables and consume less meat, though when I do, I'll attempt to purchase organic meat. I'm not naive when it comes to even "organic" meat though, I know better than to assume a picturesque farm with animals roaming freely - though I'd love to hope for that.
Hmmm... anything else?
Nah, I'm going to just call it done. I have to brew some more tea anyways.
Friday, March 11, 2011
"Think Before You Speak"
I was going to wait until Monday - turn this blog into a "bloggy Monday" sort of thing - but a couple of things have been said to me tonight that have kind of spurred on a writing frenzy.
A lot of different names could be used to describe who I am and what I am. Female. Woman. Blonde. Short. Stocky. Tiny. Muscular. Tomboy. Biology Major. Daughter. Sister. Best friend. Adventurous. Loud. Crude.
There are a few more that I'm omitting that just seem to bother me nowadays:
Lesbian. Dyke. Carpetmuncher. Butch. Boi.
A few of those terms were used when I was a little bit younger and I even used to joke about them.
The thing is, I'm fed up with the undercurrent that runs in those words. Not once have I ever felt any sort of security or love in the term "lesbian". Even less (even hateful) with the word "dyke". I can call myself a woman and be happy - even proud. I can call myself "loud" and laugh about it. I can even rock "tomboy".
"Lesbian" may indeed be what I am, but most of the time, some part of me cringes when I call myself that (or others for that matter).
It doesn't feel like a nice word anymore.
A word is an utterance, containing one or more syllables of sound, and is produced by a mixture of the vibration of the vocal cords and a specific position of the lips, cheeks, and tongue to form these sounds.
"Lesbian" is created by scooping the tongue in a near-clicking motion, a brief moment of your lips coming together in a movement similar to a pucker, and a brief pressure of the tongue on the roof of the mouth. (In some parts of the country you may form the word in a different portion of your mouth, but for my southern American English, this is a close approximation).
How is it then, that a series of muscle movements and air, has so much impact?
I have ALWAYS believed firmly that words have no meaning without intent. And the intent of the words describing people like me - possible biological hiccups - isn't all that great.
So where then, does this rambling discussion leave me?
I have no pride in my sexuality. It exists and it is a desire and a bodily function.
Does it change the way I interact with people?
More or less. But I delineate myself in a way that is entirely unnecessary when I identify myself as "lesbian". Logically-speaking, it's a necessary distinction. Mother Nature/a fluke of development has left me with something stuck halfway between male and female. I think, for the most part, like a tomboyish woman. But when it comes to what I find attractive, I suppose it could be said that that part of me is male in orientation.
But does my sexuality have to change the way I completely socialize with people?
It shouldn't have to. My own insecurities about my interactions with people are what divide me from them.
My sexuality doesn't change the fact that I really wanna play rugby because it looks like it'd be a whole lot of (possibly bloody) fun. Being a "lesbian" does nothing to the facts that I grew up surrounded by amazing family and I have astonishing people in my life on a daily basis.
Science is still trying to fully define - to figure out exactly - what being homosexual is. Homosexuality exists in other members of the animal kingdom and has existed throughout history in our own species. In some cases, it's as easy as claiming that a primitive part of the brain responsible for sexual development has been flip-flopped. In other cases, it's the choice of the person to walk a path they feel pushed onto, or even curious about.
Our higher thinking, as humans, gives us way too much depth to truly sort out a simple "yes or no" or "black or white" answer. I tend to eat my own foot when I say "never" but, I think that sexuality - and the words we use to describe it - are in the eye of the beholder. Life is an individual journey and we all take things different ways.
Maybe I'll get over it, but my feelings about being called "lesbian" or "dyke" or anything else, may just evolve with time.
Do I believe that there is love out there, so astoundingly perfect that gender or sex doesn't matter? Yes.
Do I believe that a vast majority of love is a breathtakingly beautiful set of complex chemical reactions and risk analysis designed on designating a perfect or near-perfect mate? Yes.
I think I may be done now. There's a point in here somewhere.....I think.
A lot of different names could be used to describe who I am and what I am. Female. Woman. Blonde. Short. Stocky. Tiny. Muscular. Tomboy. Biology Major. Daughter. Sister. Best friend. Adventurous. Loud. Crude.
There are a few more that I'm omitting that just seem to bother me nowadays:
Lesbian. Dyke. Carpetmuncher. Butch. Boi.
A few of those terms were used when I was a little bit younger and I even used to joke about them.
The thing is, I'm fed up with the undercurrent that runs in those words. Not once have I ever felt any sort of security or love in the term "lesbian". Even less (even hateful) with the word "dyke". I can call myself a woman and be happy - even proud. I can call myself "loud" and laugh about it. I can even rock "tomboy".
"Lesbian" may indeed be what I am, but most of the time, some part of me cringes when I call myself that (or others for that matter).
It doesn't feel like a nice word anymore.
A word is an utterance, containing one or more syllables of sound, and is produced by a mixture of the vibration of the vocal cords and a specific position of the lips, cheeks, and tongue to form these sounds.
"Lesbian" is created by scooping the tongue in a near-clicking motion, a brief moment of your lips coming together in a movement similar to a pucker, and a brief pressure of the tongue on the roof of the mouth. (In some parts of the country you may form the word in a different portion of your mouth, but for my southern American English, this is a close approximation).
How is it then, that a series of muscle movements and air, has so much impact?
I have ALWAYS believed firmly that words have no meaning without intent. And the intent of the words describing people like me - possible biological hiccups - isn't all that great.
So where then, does this rambling discussion leave me?
I have no pride in my sexuality. It exists and it is a desire and a bodily function.
Does it change the way I interact with people?
More or less. But I delineate myself in a way that is entirely unnecessary when I identify myself as "lesbian". Logically-speaking, it's a necessary distinction. Mother Nature/a fluke of development has left me with something stuck halfway between male and female. I think, for the most part, like a tomboyish woman. But when it comes to what I find attractive, I suppose it could be said that that part of me is male in orientation.
But does my sexuality have to change the way I completely socialize with people?
It shouldn't have to. My own insecurities about my interactions with people are what divide me from them.
My sexuality doesn't change the fact that I really wanna play rugby because it looks like it'd be a whole lot of (possibly bloody) fun. Being a "lesbian" does nothing to the facts that I grew up surrounded by amazing family and I have astonishing people in my life on a daily basis.
Science is still trying to fully define - to figure out exactly - what being homosexual is. Homosexuality exists in other members of the animal kingdom and has existed throughout history in our own species. In some cases, it's as easy as claiming that a primitive part of the brain responsible for sexual development has been flip-flopped. In other cases, it's the choice of the person to walk a path they feel pushed onto, or even curious about.
Our higher thinking, as humans, gives us way too much depth to truly sort out a simple "yes or no" or "black or white" answer. I tend to eat my own foot when I say "never" but, I think that sexuality - and the words we use to describe it - are in the eye of the beholder. Life is an individual journey and we all take things different ways.
Maybe I'll get over it, but my feelings about being called "lesbian" or "dyke" or anything else, may just evolve with time.
Do I believe that there is love out there, so astoundingly perfect that gender or sex doesn't matter? Yes.
Do I believe that a vast majority of love is a breathtakingly beautiful set of complex chemical reactions and risk analysis designed on designating a perfect or near-perfect mate? Yes.
I think I may be done now. There's a point in here somewhere.....I think.
Monday, March 7, 2011
A start
Let me start this whole deal with one of those awesome, "fuck you" disclaimers:
This blog will contain my thoughts and my opinions on all kinds of topics and almost all portions of daily life. If anything I EVER say in this blog offends you and you feel like saying something in irritation, do me and yourself a solid favour, and click that little "exit" button on your browser or tab. This blog is for me to discuss certain aspects of my life, but the names of people will never be mentioned in this. Nor will I ever attack them. There is nothing more irritating to me than being defamed on internet behind my back - or people that do it to others.
If I've experienced anything in my life, it's the familiar taste of my own foot. I'm young (only 23 for those of you that care), but already I've experienced a virtual 180 degree turn-around with half of the things that came flying out of my mouth in high school and my first couple years of college. Ignorant things.
Little more than eight years ago, I would've laughed in somebody's face had they walked up to me and said I was to become a gym-addicted, almost-vegetarian(let's face it, like all Southern Americans, I have a love-hate relationship with bacon), biology major - with the hopes of eventually getting a Masters and then a Doctorate in something medically related.
But then again, lots of things can happen in eight years.
In that time:
I've found out that my mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia; my parents - who had been married 23 years - divorced; I came out; I have fallen in love - a handful of times; I graduated from high school; I got into college; I've had five jobs; I've seen my mother bottom-out twice; a dear friend died; my father found love again; my dog died --
You know what? That started meandering towards a 'pity party'. I don't do 'pity parties'. Congratulations, life hasn't gone perfect, stand up and keep going.
"stand up and keep going"
I don't honestly remember who it was and I don't feel like Googling or Youtubing it at the moment, but there was a gentleman I remembered from a Parkour/Freerunning video; he said something about Parkour and/or Freerunning was about taking what obstacles were infront of you and continuously moving forward. If you fall, get up and keep moving, but never stop.
That kind of thinking has been what has been urging me to continue at the gym, to work harder in my classes, and to fight to get what I want and need out of life.
I have ALWAYS struggled with depression. It looms behind my shoulder like some sort of irritating shadow. To say that I'm continously moving forward, does not mean that I'm running from my depression or from my past. My past was the reason why I grew up (hell, I'm still growing up). My depression was how I learned how to treasure my life and all it had to offer.
I've suddenly skidded to a mental halt. Crap.
That's what I get for listening to fairly addictive pop music while trying to type anything.
Well.....hm. Let's try getting back on track with theatre. Not many of the people in my life, I've known long enough for them to know what I was like before technical theatre in high school. I truly owe theatre, as a subject and as an experience, virtually everything in my personality right now. When I was younger, I was a nervous and quiet young girl. It didn't take much for me to suck myself into my little turtle shell and hide from the world. To this day, I remember the instant that a playbook was dropped into my hands and I was told to "run the show". Scared the ever-living out of me at first. I have no idea how, or when exactly, that I changed, but I call it my "personality inversion". I refuse to hide anymore and if some of you haven't noticed, I tend to be the loudest and crudest person in public. I love being loud and I love the attention.
Now why is someone, who was so dedicated to theatre, a biology major at an engineering school? As superficial or shallow as some of you may think it to be, it all boils down to money. Or at least it did initially. I couldn't afford to go anywhere else and after attempting to major in computer science and graphic design (One of these two topics I did HORRIBLE in. I'll give yout wo guesses and the first one doesn't count), biology was the next best thing for me. It filled in all of the missing gaps in my personality and allowed me to use the "other side" of my brain.
I had, probably the best introduction biology professor I could've ever hoped for, and science - for the first time - was a magickal and amazing thing. I don't know as much as a doctor does and my education is ongoing, but I know enough to appreciate that I am LITERALLY a new person on a cellular level every 120 days (give or take) and that a cell, smaller than the head of a pin, contains just about three meters of DNA. Beautiful stuff. Biology captivates me probably about as much as Romeo and Juliet or Lysistrata.
Life is an ongoing process. For every last one of us. This blog will be an ongoing process (hopefully one that I'll keep up with) just like my training at the gym is. I'm nowhere near where I need to be to start doing tricks for freerunning or parkour, but I'm working towards it - steadily.
I'm going to cut myself off right now, if I don't stop right now, I'll keep going.
This blog will contain my thoughts and my opinions on all kinds of topics and almost all portions of daily life. If anything I EVER say in this blog offends you and you feel like saying something in irritation, do me and yourself a solid favour, and click that little "exit" button on your browser or tab. This blog is for me to discuss certain aspects of my life, but the names of people will never be mentioned in this. Nor will I ever attack them. There is nothing more irritating to me than being defamed on internet behind my back - or people that do it to others.
If I've experienced anything in my life, it's the familiar taste of my own foot. I'm young (only 23 for those of you that care), but already I've experienced a virtual 180 degree turn-around with half of the things that came flying out of my mouth in high school and my first couple years of college. Ignorant things.
Little more than eight years ago, I would've laughed in somebody's face had they walked up to me and said I was to become a gym-addicted, almost-vegetarian(let's face it, like all Southern Americans, I have a love-hate relationship with bacon), biology major - with the hopes of eventually getting a Masters and then a Doctorate in something medically related.
But then again, lots of things can happen in eight years.
In that time:
I've found out that my mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia; my parents - who had been married 23 years - divorced; I came out; I have fallen in love - a handful of times; I graduated from high school; I got into college; I've had five jobs; I've seen my mother bottom-out twice; a dear friend died; my father found love again; my dog died --
You know what? That started meandering towards a 'pity party'. I don't do 'pity parties'. Congratulations, life hasn't gone perfect, stand up and keep going.
"stand up and keep going"
I don't honestly remember who it was and I don't feel like Googling or Youtubing it at the moment, but there was a gentleman I remembered from a Parkour/Freerunning video; he said something about Parkour and/or Freerunning was about taking what obstacles were infront of you and continuously moving forward. If you fall, get up and keep moving, but never stop.
That kind of thinking has been what has been urging me to continue at the gym, to work harder in my classes, and to fight to get what I want and need out of life.
I have ALWAYS struggled with depression. It looms behind my shoulder like some sort of irritating shadow. To say that I'm continously moving forward, does not mean that I'm running from my depression or from my past. My past was the reason why I grew up (hell, I'm still growing up). My depression was how I learned how to treasure my life and all it had to offer.
I've suddenly skidded to a mental halt. Crap.
That's what I get for listening to fairly addictive pop music while trying to type anything.
Well.....hm. Let's try getting back on track with theatre. Not many of the people in my life, I've known long enough for them to know what I was like before technical theatre in high school. I truly owe theatre, as a subject and as an experience, virtually everything in my personality right now. When I was younger, I was a nervous and quiet young girl. It didn't take much for me to suck myself into my little turtle shell and hide from the world. To this day, I remember the instant that a playbook was dropped into my hands and I was told to "run the show". Scared the ever-living out of me at first. I have no idea how, or when exactly, that I changed, but I call it my "personality inversion". I refuse to hide anymore and if some of you haven't noticed, I tend to be the loudest and crudest person in public. I love being loud and I love the attention.
Now why is someone, who was so dedicated to theatre, a biology major at an engineering school? As superficial or shallow as some of you may think it to be, it all boils down to money. Or at least it did initially. I couldn't afford to go anywhere else and after attempting to major in computer science and graphic design (One of these two topics I did HORRIBLE in. I'll give yout wo guesses and the first one doesn't count), biology was the next best thing for me. It filled in all of the missing gaps in my personality and allowed me to use the "other side" of my brain.
I had, probably the best introduction biology professor I could've ever hoped for, and science - for the first time - was a magickal and amazing thing. I don't know as much as a doctor does and my education is ongoing, but I know enough to appreciate that I am LITERALLY a new person on a cellular level every 120 days (give or take) and that a cell, smaller than the head of a pin, contains just about three meters of DNA. Beautiful stuff. Biology captivates me probably about as much as Romeo and Juliet or Lysistrata.
Life is an ongoing process. For every last one of us. This blog will be an ongoing process (hopefully one that I'll keep up with) just like my training at the gym is. I'm nowhere near where I need to be to start doing tricks for freerunning or parkour, but I'm working towards it - steadily.
I'm going to cut myself off right now, if I don't stop right now, I'll keep going.
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