yippieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee i got a phone call from rachael garrison, the coordinator for AustraLearn, saying i was accepted to study abroad at the university of otago this spring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
holy fuck excited! i started bouncing up and down in the car when i heard the message :D
now to sign up for classes and apply for housing shit and buy plane tickets and prepare to move across the fucking world... oh god
Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the following about Sarah Palin:
Drill, Drill, Drill
I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears. I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists. But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war. I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownis h, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity. Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God." Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes. Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth. Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air. Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be. I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression. If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain. Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
so far this summer/end of last school year i think i've read more books than i ever have in this amount of time. this may not sound like a lot to someone who usually reads a lot, but i never used to, and now i love it. here's my list, for my own personal satisfaction:
what i've read since about.. march or april?: the lovely bones by alice sebold twilight by stephanie meyer the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime by mark haddon maus I by art spiegelman maus II by art spiegelman dress your family in corduroy and denim by david sedaris magical thinking by augusten burroughs a long way down by nick hornby
started reading but never finished: the almost moon by alice sebold new moon by stephanie meyer welcome to the monkey house by kurt vonnegut
currently reading: holidays on ice by david sedaris
recently bought or have on hand to read afterwards: the known world by edward p. jones possible side effects by augusten burroughs fluke by christopher moore island of the sequined love nun by christopher moore you suck by christopher moore
so far, of all of these books, my favorite has been magical thinking. augusten burroughs is such a fucking funny person and like i told someone else, he's a no-shit kind of guy. i really enjoy his writing style. actually, all of the books i've read have been fantastic. i really really really love both maus books, but i don't think that after those i could read any other kind of graphic novel. i don't know.
1. this is OUTFUCKINGRAGEOUS!. this is the Oklahoma State Rep from Oklahoma City, Sally Kern making a complete ASS out of herself. apparently she also refused to apologize, surprise surprise. sometimes i wonder....
2. if you live in oregon NEVER GO TO ZOOMCARE. or at least don't go to the doctor i went to. he was a CREEP and a half, and didn't tell me shit. waste of time and money. he creepy shook my hand and told me to check back with him, as well as sounded like he didn't know what the fuck was going on. he also had to go back and print my record again cause "my brain doesnt work and i dont remember if i printed it or not so im gonna do it again". yeah, makes me feel real good. fuckin' OHSU here i come.
holy SHIT i woke up and it was snowing buckets and it hasn't stopped since. and its STICKING. wow this is amazing.
hello view from my room. trees are covered, blackberry bushes are covered, grass is covered, streets are covered. and theres no signs of it stopping any time soon. :D :D :D :D :D i don't even care that its christmas (well, a little) but its motherfucking SNOWING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
so i just went and talked with brian about being my advisor. we talked for a while about how i want to do research, and he said sooner rather than later i should define what i mean by 'wanting to do research'. he also told me about some program called REU, which is research experience for undergraduates. it's a program that combines with NSF, the national science foundation, and could provide me with an opportunity to do psychology research during the summer at a research university. the best part is you get a stipend (one in colorado gives $3600 for 9 weeks of work), paid travel expenses, paid room and board on campus, and some amount of funding to be used towards the research. HOLY SHIT I WANT. so once the programs for next summer are up, around the beginning of next semester, i'm going to go back and meet with brian to talk about the things i could do. or even see if there are research/internship opportunities here at lc, however it's all fucked cause 2 profs left this year, one is on maternity leave, and one is on sabbatical, so it's probably more likely that i'll do something at another university. STILL! that might fuck with my plans to be in portland this summer, but how amazing would it be to get my hands dirty doing something i potentially want to do as my career? i mean, really. such good things have happened in the last few days, despite strep. fuck you strep! yay research and yay amazing advisor!
