are guilt trips the best way to travel?

i don't know if i feel any better for having said what i did tonight. my friends back in new york miss me, but are never around when i visit. and the sad thing is, they're the only people i come back to see. they're the only people from high school that i'm at all inclined to make time for, because they're the only ones who ever really loved me.
the memories aren't all bad, but enough of them are. enough that i feel ridiculously alienated when i visit. so many people are so fake to me. they hug me, they tell me they miss me, they say we should hang out; and yet when i look at them all i see looking back at me is the girl who cried herself to sleep every night for months, the daughter my parents almost lost, the girl who was ever so lonely for ever so long. and i can't quite ever forgive them.
there are a select five people whom i am so blessed to have known, not least because each of them did their part to keep me on this earth a while longer without ever knowing it. i miss my besties so much, and i'm so sorry you feel that i've abandoned you. i don't know when i'll be able to say all this to you in person, but if you find me here know that this is for you.

i feel awkward sometimes

i feel like i'm becoming unbearably awkward and shallow. and i can't do anything about it, because i really want to go buy new makeup and there's nothing i can do to change that.
and to top it off, people keep asking me what i want for my birthday and i have no freaking clue. if i tell you, then you'll go buy what i tell you to get, and that's no fun. i like surprises.

storms

watching a thunderstorm from a park on the river is fucking epic. especially when you know the rain is coming and you just don't want to go inside.

standing by in silence

"in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
~martin luther king, jr

will we watch the fires come closer and closer until they consume us all? the whole world seems to be balanced on the edge of a knife, and as the tensions in iran escalate it looks almost as though the end of the world really is coming.
it is terrifying to watch days like these unfold, but my own inaction is more frustrating than anything else. if we can do nothing more, we can at least pray, regardless of our own personal beliefs.

what it means to be a woman

as women growing up in the US, we often underappreciate the freedoms we are given. we forget what it is to have a real passion for what we believe in, what it means to fight for what we want instead of passively. but if we intend to change the world, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of ambivalence. women the world over are willing to die for what they believe, and even if we have no need to, it is the way we should live our lives. we will one day have daughters. they should not have to die like her, no matter where they are.

what happens when you spend saturday night at an orchestra concert

• you fall in love with saint-saens all over again
• you rediscover an ambivalence towards violin concerti
  
• you decide the second movement of beethoven 5 would make an epic wedding recessional and it distracts you for the rest of the night
• until you listen to ravel's gaspard de la nuit, at which point you wish you actually played piano
• and you regret not having time to play in the symphony orchestra
  
• and then you text all your wind ensemble friends from high school because you miss them a lot
• but you go download recordings of your senior concert and feel a little bit better
• and then you remember that you also have super awesome musician friends up in boston and feel better still
  

an angry rant about beer

beer should be feminized as far as possible. clearly because i have a uterus i am not to drink real beer, but i am also not allowed to drink cocktails if i want them, because they are too stereotypically girly. the only way i am drinking beer from a stemmed glass is if it's meant to be there in the first place, like a belgian. NO FUCKING WAY will i let anyone rape my alcohol by making it girly.
i have guy friends who are girlier than i am when it comes to drinking. somehow we don't judge men who like cosmos, but god forbid a woman drink *gasp* a proper martini and not a floral beer in a stemmed glass! she isn't drinking beer! she must be shown that beer is okay to drink if you're female! let's take away her whiskey and her gin & tonics, because mixed drinks are so feminine!
can you tell that alcohol-related stereotypes make me angry?

feeding the soul

"i have an inward treasure, born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld: or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give."
~jane eyre

we all do. the purpose of the soul is not to go somewhere after we die, but to keep us alive when nothing else will.
feed your soul as you would feed your body; that is to say, do not fill yourself emotionally, mentally, or spiritually with garbage. believe the good that people tell you, not the bad; and love both yourself and others.

dear parents

the right to life

pro-life
the belief in the sanctity of human life
a child should not be brought into the world if it will have no life fit for a human being: a future of abuse, a painful disability that will result in its death anyway, the prospect of being bounced around an abusive system if put up for adoption.
if in giving birth, the mother's own life is endangered, both lives are at stake since the mother may not survive to bring up her child.
honor killings happen even in supposedly "civilized" countries. if an abortion can prevent a family from killing a daughter or a niece, where is the debate? surely it's better to save one life than neither.

pro-choice
the belief in a woman's right to choose what is best for her own life
many women are not ready to have children.
in some cases, they're university or graduate students on their way to a successful career, maybe even a professorship. a pregnancy can ruin those plans in an instant and she may never fulfill her dreams, choosing instead to have a shotgun wedding and become a stay-at-home mom, or to be a single mother who may not be able to continue and finish her education until it's too late. granted, there are some women who would not resent their children for causing this state of affairs, but there are all too many who would. harboring any sort of resentment in the first place can destroy a family: how much more, then, if it's specifically directed at your child?
and on the other side, we have the underprivileged teenage mother, who doesn't necessarily know how to take care of a baby, and her baby daddy, who assuredly does not. maybe one or both of them come from a broken home and have never lived in a functional family. or maybe he leaves her and she has no job, no way of supporting herself or the baby. what then? is that any sort of way for a child to grow up?

the right to life is not the right to a chance at being alive outside the womb. the right to life is the right to grow up healthy and functional; the right to a life that is as good as, if not better than, the way your parents grew up; the right to actually live.

tony awards (somewhat) liveblog

minor alert. i am not blogging the awards themselves, just my reactions to the whole thing. enjoy the madness.
8:03 OMG PURPLE DRESS karen olivo you are ahhhh gorg
8:04ish OH GOD IT IS BRET MICHAELS MY SOUL DIES
8:07 dolly parton should definitely be falling over. physics fail.
8:12 NEIL PATRICK HARRIS TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES your suit: is it leather? it shines much. also, you are hot.
8:15 damn jane fonda looks good. and she's 72. I WANT TO AGE LIKE HER.
8:28 GRATUITIOUS WICKED REFERENCE yeah shrek!
8:29 "and btw" oh neil patrick harris for speaking internet.
8:48 i want that purple dress so much and i must go see west side story
9:06 i suddenly feel the need to go see rock of ages. GRATUITOUS CROTCH SHOT WHAT
9:14 liza minelli is definitely drunk already. what. and you know if they turn the music up on her she will be like DO NOT CUT ME OFF BITCHES
9:18 sound fail. gosh.
9:20 I LOVE HIS VOICE and OMG WHERE DID SHE COME FROM WHAAAT that is not in guys and dolls. my high school is doing guys and dolls this fall.
9:28 WHAT are you wearing? both of you. feathers? a stripey bow? seriously?
9:29 i actually think i might love the bow.
9:32 OMG KAREN OLIVO I LOVE YOU she is bawling and it is adorable
9:51 broadway is dark.
10:03 i want to see god of carnage now.
10:08 good lord. the angry dance out of billy elliot. good lord.
10:16 YEEEE GREEK CHORUS legally blonde looks adorableeeee
10:35 HAIR
10:38 oh cheno =) you are so cute
10:43 this has been such fun, evidently i must do it for every awards show from now on, but i am so done for the night
10:51 OMG THE LITTLE BOYS AHHHH SO CUTE okay i am done for tonight

defcon is destroying my weekend

fuck you, defcon,

• for taking a few awesome people away from me for the entire weekend
• for destroying my chances of going to jp licks with said awesome people tonight
• for making me hella bored whenever it's discussed, because i'm no codemonkey
  
• for making me feel like a needy selfish bitch about it all

what the fuck.

mass media and fear. oh, and stupidity too.

it disturbs me that people can be so credulous of what the media feeds them. that stupid "vaccinations cause autism" scare going around? you'd think teachers would have the sense not to believe everything without checking it first, but that would appear to be the opposite of truth. of course, my high school orchestra director is also apparently a crazy bleeding-heart liberal and only posts media sensationalism on his facebook. he also plays the bagpipes and is an amusing man.
of course, there are other explanations for this too. maybe i'm much more of a skeptic than most people i know: but only the ones from high school. maybe it's the scientific mentality i have. or maybe my standards for the world are also too high. whatever the case may be, there is only one thing i can say that is most definitely truth. the mainstream media (both right and left) needs to have the stupid and the fear-mongering beat out of it. with a big stick.

fear

false
evidence
appearing
real

this is what fear is and i will not live in it.