However, thankfully, the particular issue that has forced me to utter this haunting phrase, is just that I can hit my snooze button for hours.

My mom and I used to mock my dad because his alarm will start going off at 5AM and he would still be laying in bed at 9AM! Worst part: He doesn’t even hit the snooze. He will just let his alarm clock go off for four goddamn hours.

I UNDERSTAND NOW, DAD. I apologize.

At the beginning of this quarter, I was waking up around 7AM every day, no problems, and getting extra work done in the morning. I thought not having class until 11AM (although that means I have to catch my bus at 9:45AM because I live so far from school) meant I’d have more time to be productive in the morning!

Yeah, no. I apparently don’t know myself at all. Alarm starts going off at 7AM. I set three separate alarms¹ on my phone and it generally goes off every 3-5 minutes. By the time 9AM, I’ve probably hit snooze about 30-40 times. Perhaps choosing the Firefly theme song, “Piazza, New York Catcher” by Belle & Sebastian, and “Willkommen” from Cabaret as my alarm clock tones wasn’t the wisest idea I’ve ever had.

So I just purchased the world’s most annoying alarm clock, except I purchased it from Amazon despite my love for ThinkGeek. Saving $15USD, plus free shipping demolishes all brand loyalty.

Am I the only one who cannot force themselves to get up? Also, for those of you who can’t get your asses out of bed, are you also severe procrastinators like I am? I think there’s a correlation there. ;)

1. Mostly because I can do that weird iPhone swipey motion in my sleep and turn off my alarm entirely without actually opening my eyes. *facepalm*

Yesterday I went to the mall with my friend, Kari, to have conveyor belt sushi (at a restaurant next to the mall) and go to a movie. I’d never had sushi before and I loved it. :D I’m excited to go again!

After we left the sushi restaurant and actually entered the mall, we still had a couple hours to kill before our movie started so we headed for the Apple Store so I could check out the new 27″ iMac¹.

On our way, a crazy kiosk man comes at us from the side, shoves dixie cups containing a mysterious melon-colored liquid into our hands, and commands us to drink. He kept promising there wasn’t tequila in it².

And you know what we did?

WE DRANK IT. Our only excuse was that we were frightened of the crazy kiosk man who kept talking about tequila and how he bites his nails. He also demanded we come over to his kiosk (no idea which one it was!) and let him perform an unnamed “procedure” which would only take 50 seconds. At this point, I inch around and hide behind Kari. We decline his offer about 8 times and declare we have a movie to catch and then make a break for it.

The fact that the movie didn’t start for over two hours? Minor detail.

The first thing we both do, as soon as we reach our Apple Store refuge, is pull out our phones and tweet that shit so fast. You know you’re a little addicted when… </nerds>

We’ve decided that side of the mall is dead to us now. We can never return.

Then we saw Cirque du Freak which wasn’t as bad as I was expecting! Despite its flaws, I actually enjoyed it–it was funny. However, I have never seen a movie filled with so many damn creepers in it. And everybody just went along with the creepers, without mentioning the fact that they were clearly the creepiest creepers who ever creeped!

And on the way home, Kari and I were convinced the bus driver was going to kill us all. The PA system crackled and in a super-creepy and wheezy voice, informed us that the bus was past Tukwila Boulevard or something. Then he kept randomly stopping the bus on the side of the road for a few moments in random, completely dark areas and we kept having these “Oh my God, where the hell are we? Are we going to die?!!” moments every time it happened. I kept seeing a stereotypical horror movie play out in my head. The driver would slowly get up from his seat and turn to face the passengers. Perhaps a large scar would grace his face. And then we’d all effing die and that would be the beginning of the horror film. We’d be dead before the title even showed.

He also blew right past a group of teenage girls standing at the bus stop despite the fact that bus is the only bus that stops at that stop. It may have been the luckiest thing that ever happened to him because I’m surprised I made it out of there alive.

1. I’m trying to decide between a brand new 27″ iMac (the one with the 2.8GHz i7 processor) and a refurbished MacBook Pro (17″, antiglare, 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo) and wasn’t sure if a 27″ screen is too huge for the space I have. Another post is in the works about this.
2. Klaus (aka Ambs) says: ………….. if someone’s like “THERE IS NO TEQUILA,” that means there is rum.

1. My fellow Seattle people will not be shocked to hear it was The Stranger, a free weekly paper with copious amounts of picture-ridden escort ads.

I love books more than anything else in the world, pretty much. I have an addiction, to be honest. I haven’t read most of the books I have and yet I keep acquiring more and get lots of books at the library now that I’ve actually run out of space for new books.

Yeah, you read that right. I have no space for new books. Why? Because I have three large bookcases full of books in a bedroom the size of a prison cell. This might be taking things a little too far.

I mostly buy books used for pretty cheap (many good books in good condition for $0.50USD to $1USD at Half-Price Books, my favorite store in the whole entire world. Yeah, I’m even applying for a job there. It will be the death of me.

I also get some books bargain-priced on Amazon, on the occasion I’m lucky enough to catch the sale. I do preorder some books by authors I love and have no problem with that. I’m going to continue doing that because there are some authors that I like to support and some books I absolutely cannot wait for, such as anything related to The Hunger Games.

Many people, mostly people who hate rewatching movies or TV shows or rereading books, ask me why I buy books and if I’m ever going to reread them. And the answer is yes, I reread books a lot! Often, I reread the entire books, but more often than that, I just several specific parts of books that I loved.

I think, for books I’ve previously read, I’m going to ask myself if I’m going to reread it and if so, how often? Maybe once? Is it worth keeping it or should I just go to the library if I want to reread it?

For many, many, MANY books there is no question: Yes, I love that book to death, keep it.

For others, the answer is: Eh, I might. For the books I haven’t read, I do plan on keeping them until I’ve read or attempted to read them at least once. After that, I’ll decide how to categorize them. I read about 40-80 books each year so this won’t be a HUGE problem if I focus on reading books I actually own instead of ones from the library. ;)

What am I going to do with these books? I may take them to Half-Price Books to sell them, I may send them to friends who I think would like them, I may even give some away here! Who knows!

So far in the past 21 hours I’ve been awake I have managed to do these things instead of my homework:

1. Talk on the phone with one of my best friends for four hours. Yeah, really. She lives in Alaska right now, unfortunately, whereas I still live in Seattle, so we don’t get to talk as often as we’d like, but when we do? We talk forever. It’s pretty much ridiculous.
2. Squealed at the ridiculous amount of adorable at Cute Overload with aforementioned friend.
3. Read 85% of Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazarus Dole which I really, really like. Reading it makes me hungry! So much talk of Cuban food, so little time! If it wasn’t for the fact that my bus for school leaves in four hours and I haven’t finished my paper yet, I would be finishing it right now!
4. Watched Trembling Before G-d, a documentary about gay and lesbian orthodox Jews. Heartbreaking, but fantastic at the same time.
5. Written an infinite amount of lists about what I should be doing.
6. Began NaBloPoMo at my LiveJournal.
7. Wrote about 400 words for NaNoWriMo–though I intend on writing about 3,000-4,000 words today after the long-ass nap I plan on taking when I get home from classes. Add me as a writing buddy! I’m pumpkincarriage.
8. A million other things I probably didn’t need to do, but did anyway.
9. Wrote this post.

Yeah, seriously, I am the world’s biggest procrastinator. The other day I was procrastinating by reading articles on how to quit procrastinating. Of course, I mostly opened a billion articles in a billion tabs, then just scanned a few and closed the rest and went to do something more fun instead.

Considering the amount I procrastinate, it’s a wonder I actually manage to keep good grades.

How bad do you guys procrastinate? Or how do you avoid it?

Second, I revamped the site entirely and it feels a lot better, more me. More at home. I feel more comfortable posting here now, which I definitely like.

When I’m not posting here, I’m usually posting at my LiveJournal¹ or Twitter, though some stories that get posted at Twitter get expanded upon here. Some stories that are posted at LiveJournal are posted here as well.

In other news, I am still alive and chainsaw man did not kill me, though he nearly did my sanity in, I swear.

Additionally, the best thing that has ever happened to me in my whole entire life happened today. In that I found out that If You Give a Mouse a Cookie is playing at the Seattle Children’s Theatre for the next month. The only way I could possibly be more excited is if instead of a mouse, the main character was a moose. And if instead of a cookie, they gave him a muffin.

1. Username available upon request.

While she’s in labor, her husband is running about like his hair is on fire, completely flipping out.

And then goes and gets himself some leftover apple cobbler, surveying the debacle from the kitchen table.

All the while his wife is still dropping babies all over the g-ddamn place.

And then, after the whole ordeal is over, he has the nerve to complain that HE is tired.

So I killed him.

She continues, suggesting that if kids just get jobs at McDonald’s then they will receive free food on their break.

I pretty much hope that the 20% of children considered hungry in Missouri go and eat her.

Ms. Davis neglected to mention when her hunger strike will begin so she can get motivated to resolve the hunger issue in her state. She also avoided the question of how she manages to sleep at night.

Colbert is amazing, as per usual:

After taking nearly two years off, I decided one day to go back to school starting almost immediately afterwards. The professor that was rumored to bring cookies every Friday? He did. He was also the best English teacher I’ve ever had.

In early or mid-June I decided to move away from home (and Seattle) for the first time to Bellingham, Washington…two weeks later. Where I knew no one. On June 22nd I made that move. I’m going to Western Washington University for summer quarter. I intend on fully transferring for winter quarter. The elementary education program here is awesome.

It’s been a little scary, but awesome. Sometimes you just have to do something crazy to get your life in order, I think.

I hope to be posting here more–for real this time.

Stuff I need to do:

• Redesign donut.nu
• Update WordPress
• Find and install a good plugin for comment threads
• Update my ‘about me’ pages–much as changed

But I took the first step today! I’m finally going back to school. I just finished registering. Big step number one! Yay!

I’ve been avoiding taking English 101 for a very, very long time because, despite the fact I read about 200 books in 2007 and 150 books in 2008, I’ve always loathed English classes. They suck all the joy out of the subject for me.

And now I’m taking two English classes. Lord help me.

Granted, one is English 101. I’ve registered for it twice previously and dropped it both times. I know, terrible, but I’ve resolved to finish it, finally. Particularly since, you know, it’s a degree requirement. I decided on my new English 101 instructor purely because word around RateMyProfessors.com is that he brings cookies on Fridays and I think that says a lot about the sort of teacher he’ll end up being.

My first English 101 professor was always completely stoned and talked about Shrek in class a lot and how ogres are like onions, but he didn’t bring cookies so that was a deal-breaker. What self-respecting stoner doesn’t bring cookies?

Seriously. This college has the strangest people teaching English classes, I swear to you. It feels a little like elementary school with more homework. Then you go take any other classes (besides astronomy) and you’re in for a rude awakening when the professors kick your ass and laugh whilst doing it. But I like it, I do. I respond to ass-kicking as motivation. As much as I love it, I don’t respond to Shrek.

And yet I still signed up for World Literature III with the Shrek-referencing stoner teacher. Who, incidentally, came through my line at my job the other day with his child. Still as baked as he ever was.

Then I’m also taking math because, well, I need to improve my math skills as I haven’t taken a class since the 10th grade. I don’t want to know how long ago that was. It’ll just depress me.

All in all, I’m excited, but scared that I’ll screw it up like I have in the past.

Anybody else sort of fell off the wagon and taken ages to actually get their life back on track? I’m having a time of it, let me tell you, but I’m sick of waiting so I’m just going to hop right in rather than wait another three months or two years or whatever.

I know, this is an enthralling tale already. You can hardly contain yourself, you know it. Just wait, it gets even more action-packed.

I roll out of bed and nearly kill myself with all the crap that’s on my floor that’s left over from that time I started cleaning and then stopped, thus leaving it messier than it had been before I tried to tidy.

Anyway, after finally locating my bag of clean clothes, I try to get dressed. This includes putting on my bra, right?

NO.

I go to grab my bra and there’s an effing ladybug crawling over it.

What the hell? It’s nearly February in Seattle and it’s cold.

Oh, and the other day I hopped out of the shower¹ and went to put on my jeans and there was a ladybug clinging to those too. What the hell is going on with the ladybugs?

Now I’m afraid of clothing and I don’t particularly want to be a nudist. Ladybugs were cool when I was eight, but I don’t want them crawling over my boobs, quite frankly.

1. Not literally because I would die. I’m too uncoordinated.

Three site-related things I’ve been considering:

1. Starting a book blog.

I’ve been pondering reviewing all the books I’ve read as well as posting about all the books I’m excited about, my library loot, my 2009 reading projects, and other book-related things.

My problem: The amount of books I read in addition to the amount of time I spend thinking about books would take over my entire blog and thus might push away people that have no interest in reading about my reading habits.

My other problem: Reading is the hobby that says more about me than all of my other hobbies combined. Pushing it out of this blog entirely is sort of like separating it from myself.

Possible solution: I could post a weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly wrap-up of everything important going on at the book blog as well as link reviews in my book log and project pages, etc. It’s easier for readers to skip over one to four posts per month than 66.7% of a blog.

2. Redesigning and recoding all of my fanlistings as well as my fanlisting collective.

This desperately needs to get done. It’s been on my to-do list for about two years, perhaps longer.

Plus I’ve recently been approved for the Ron Perlman, David the Gnome, and The Boondocks fanlistings so I need to create those as well.

3. Adding a new layout here!

I’ve designed a layout for my fanlisting collective that, honestly, I want to put up here instead because I really like it. It’s rainbow though. Not rainbow all over the damn place. Just…rainbow. I like rainbows.

I still really like the current layout, but it’s really old. I could always consider adding a theme switcher, though.

Guess what type of phone I got?

Yep, I’ve hopped on the iPhone bandwagon. I know, I know. I was never planning on getting one because of the price, because I was too cheap to pay US$24 per month for the data plan, I didn’t think I needed all that on my phone, 16 GB wasn’t enough space, etc. Plus I had never really used one despite my many visits to the Apple Store.

Then my brother got one the day before yesterday. And I stole it last night for half an hour and was instantly addicted.

That’s how they get you. Bastards.

If I has has to pay for it myself upfront I would have never got it. Instead it was a combination of a huge discount (new phone credit plus my dad’s 40% UPS employee discount) and it being my belated Christmas pressie that made it happen.

Now I’m wondering how I ever lived without the ability to look up bus and movie schedules on my phone. Do you know how fun it is to wait at a timetable-less stop for an hour and realizing it’s never going to show up? In the rain? At the only bus stop without a shelter? And nobody is answering their phone to give you new bus info.

Yeah. I love it. I’m one of THOSE people.

I also just realized my last post, a particularly ranty rant, didn’t post for whatever reason. Meh. I still have a copy on my hard drive so I’ll likely post it tomorrow.

We were going to have a huge party today, but due to Snowpocalypse ‘08, nobody from out of state can get here and most people in-state (including my family!) are stranded as well. Plus she (the birthday girl!) has a terribly unfortunate cold.

My aunt doesn’t want to deal with weather issues again so she wants to postpone until February.

Now, my great-grandma might be healthier than the rest of my family combined…but 100 is really effing old. You cannot postpone someone’s birthday party for two months–especially if they are into the triple digits.

My uncle is going off about how he’s never planning a birthday in December ever again. Because we get actual snow every five years or so? Seriously?

He’s even angry that she “decided” to get sick. Really? She decided to get sick? That’s a new one.

I love my uncle, but needless to say, he can be a bit of a self-centered bastard. My mom showed great restraint in not strangling him over the phone when she heard that.

I’ll moving to a new site within the next few days and will be posting much more often.

Despite the bad, a few good things have happened since my last entry:

1) I went to see The Phantom of the Opera when the tour came to Seattle. It was a-effing-mazing and worth every penny of the exorbinant amount I spent on my four row-center tickets. Despite the fact I totally couldn’t afford them.

2) I took a day trip to Bellingham with my friend who was catching the ferry to Alaska.

I loved it, particularly Fairhaven. It was pouring down rain when we arrived by train and the first thing we see is a fish and chip shop being run out of a double-decker bus with a gazebo on the side for indoor dining. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen at that point. We were there for over half an hour and yet our food managed to be burn-your-mouth hot the entire time.

Click on image to go to source.

It’s particularly good that I loved it because I’ll be moving up there when I transfer to Western Washington University for their elementary education program.

I want to get my master’s degree in Library and Information Science (an MLIS) so I want to get my teaching qualifications as an undergraduate while still being able to double major. The education program before the double major is a five and a half year program. Adding in another concentration to that might add a considerable amount of time, but I’m hoping to plan it well.

3) My friend and I have resolved to travel through Europe for three months in 2009, unless one of us wins the lottery in which case we’re replacing the words ‘Europe’ and ‘three months’ with ‘the world’ and ‘forever’. Likely from September to December. I’ve done the math on what I need to save (plus what I was saving for my formal education, but am now deciding to blow on travel–a different sort of education, but arguably of equal importance) so I’m in the process of trying to find an additional job or two that pays the same or better than my current job.

Sometimes, I’ll end up reading up on all the really grisly things that scare the hell out of me. Such as plane crashes. I’ve figured out a way I could manage to visit every single country on the planet, should I want (and be able to afford) to, without ever having to step foot on a plane.

You have no idea how happy this makes me. I like my forms of transportation firmly attached to Earth in one way or another.

Sure, sure, I’ve heard all the arguments. The number one most quoted is you’re more likely to die in a traffic accident than in an plane crash. That means nothing to me because 1) I never learned to drive, 2) I’m not particularly fond of cars anyway, 3) I’m betting a lot more people drive every day than get on a plane, and 4) it happens to somebody–so why not me?

Then sometimes I end up reading about the most prolific serial killers in history.

And other times I’ll just end up reading about The Ring. The American version¹ scared me. It probably didn’t help that I first heard about it because they filmed some it at a (Christian!) summer camp I used to go to as a kid in a cabin that already had various murderous stories associated with it. Plus, that child frightens me. Once, several years ago on my ancient Dell laptop², everything I was typing into my computer was appearing backwards (siht ekil tsuj) and I was convinced Samara was going to pop out of my screen and kill me.

My fears are completely irrational, I know.

I really know how to induce nightmares in myself which is why it’s good I’ve recently learned that I Can Has Cheezburger is a cure for nightmares. True facts.

Now if only I knew how to tear myself away from Wikipedia.

1. Actually, I find Sadako in Ringu to be more terrifying than Samara. The look in her eyes is particularly terrifying.
2. This was pre-OS X conversion, clearly–though I was lusting after PowerBooks at the time, but when you have a crap Dell laptop with broken hinges and a 400 MHz processor, anything above 1.0 GHz looks so sexy it becomes difficult to breathe.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to condense the multitude of reasons I hate MySpace so much (and yet use it anyway) and managed to limit it to four. This is amazing since I generally lack the ability to condense anything into under a 200 item list.

1. The shit that people do to their pages. If you think hot pink text on a sparkling green background is readable, you should be sent to aesthetics hell.

2. A lot of my offline friends are idiots on the internet. My friends can’t type, don’t understand about spam, and are emo on the internet. It’s embarrassing to be associated with these people.

Why do you care if you’re not in my Top 4?

Oh, yes. I do not have a Top 8. I don’t like my friends enough when they’re online to keep most of them on there. In fact, I have Barack Obama and Dexter Morgan in my Top 4 because MySpace wouldn’t allow me to have a Top 2.

3. MySpace is now a verb. The first time a friend said “I’ll MySpace you later”, I nearly wept. It sounds dirty, but not in a happy way. :(

4. Now I use MySpace as a verb with certain friends who need to contact me. It’s terrible, really.

And yet I have a MySpace purely to keep up with people I might not have otherwise. I’ve found people I’ve not talked to for five to twelve years. I’ve found a girl I went to high school with only to find out he’s not a girl anymore which was handy to know up front the next time I saw him.

Months ago I had a dream about a girl I knew in primary school. She was a cool kid so I figured she may have grown up to be awesome. And, as a sidenote, I was sure she was gay.

Oh, how gaydar and cool-kid-detector failed me.

I decided to look her up on MySpace only to find out she’s now stupid, skanky, greasy, blonde¹, alcoholic, and the kind of straight girl that makes out with other girls just so she can post pictures on the internet.

What are other problems with MySpace? And are any other social networking sites necessarily better? Or are there other aspects that make them just as annoying?

1. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. ;)

Part I: Seven Five Things You [Probably] Didn’t [Want] Know About Me

Chanel tagged me for this a while back, but it took me a while to think of seven things.

Actually, it took me so long to think of seven things that there are only five things.

1. I have a lip piercing (more specifically, a ‘Monroe’ piercing). I got it in August. To clear things up: I’m too old to rebel against my parents, society doesn’t really care if I pierce my face. It’s cute. My mom hates looking at my face now, but that might stem from the fact that I just turned up with a shiny new piercing on the same day my brother got his eyebrow done; now he’s addicted. No, we didn’t plan it. Just a coincidence.
2. I was once voted Least Likely to Be Murdered by a group of friends. Perhaps this will help in my Zombie Survival Guide (see Part II).
3. I’ve recently been informed by someone who has much more money than I do, that it’s sad that the only designer item I’ve ever owned are glasses² Who has money for designer clothes? Optical insurance covered all but US$20 of my glasses. Is there someone who will pay for 90% of my clothes³ too?
4. I love listening to languages being spoken, even if I have no idea what’s being said. I find languages fascinating which is another reason why I love to study them.
5. I once seriously considered going to culinary school to become a pastry chef.

Part II: The Zombie Survival Guide

Part one of my zombie survival guide, which will focus on necessary skills for surviving zombie attacks–mainly skills you should work on acquiring now before the event of a zombie attack, robot uprising, and/or civilian revolution against a corrupt government, will be posted as soon as I type it. It’s written in my head, I swear. And it’s also made me realize how many of these skills I lack. I’ve never fired a gun and I can’t drive. I also need to start working out pronto. At least I can run fast, even in my current state.

Part III: Wisdom Teeth

I was supposed to have my wisdom teeth out ages ago because they are were impacted, but I only get a certain amount of money for my dental insurance annually. In years previous, I’ve needed cavities filled and root canals…canalled. And I simply did not want to have all four impacted wisdom teeth forcibly extracted from my face.

I finally got it done on the last day of November and ended up spending the next week in hell. Projectile vomiting isn’t as fun as it looks in The Exorcist. Dry socket wasn’t fun either. Boo crap dental insurance and wisdom teeth. Who decided those were a good idea?

Part IV: Erectile Disfunction

I keep getting spam on one specific entry about erectile disfunction except it’s in Italian so it’s really about disfunzione erettile.

Part V: MySpace Rants

I also have a post written up about my love/hate relationship with MySpace (in which I don’t love it at all, but grudgingly use it anyway). To post or not to post?

I can’t be the only one who has to use MySpace in order to find and keep up with old friends and hates every moment of it. MySpace makes my normally intelligent friends look like idiots who have no concept of aesthetics!

1. And thus begins a post with too many strikethroughs and footnotes.
2. I just got reading glasses on top of my usual glasses. I forget to put them on and when I finally do put them on, I forget to take them off and don’t understand why I can’t see anything. They’re by Coach and that apparently means something. They’re also adorable.
3. Except there’s no way I can afford to pay for 10% of a designer outfit.

It’s probably sad how much I wish I was joking.

Someone should remind me to stop talking on my mobile about how much I want to 1) take over the government, 2) offer Bush a peanut just to see if the Secret Service will shoot me for attempted assassination³, and/or 3) steal Ned from Pushing Daisies and have him a) make me some pie, and b) reawaken the founding fathers so they can smack about idiots in the government. Because witnessing Bush getting taught a lesson in civil liberties by really, really dead guys is the kind of hilarious you can’t buy on television.

On an ‘eat your brain’ note, I’m definitely going to write that how-to guide to zombie survival. It’ll probably be a series of posts, actually. I’ve been watching loads of zombie movies to get ready and hone my zombie fighting skills.

Any particular aspect of zombie survival you’d like to see first? And should I tell everyone else in my house that their conversations are no longer private?

1. And by ‘fantastic’, I mean ‘completely against everything on which the US was founded’.
2. Do they allow pedestrian swimmers through the Panama Canal?
3. Chewing, among many other things, is an apparent mystery to George W. Bush.

Number one is I need to get another job. Preferably two more.

In early October I decided to drop my classes at Seattle Central–where I was attending until I transfer to an in-state university due to money–to take care of my mother and earn money for tuition.

Right now I’m just delivering newspapers which, quite frankly, pays shit. I have limited work experience because I was focusing on school and my family before, but now I need a few part-time jobs. The next couple weeks will consist of me applying everywhere that happens to be hiring.

I’m hoping to get one with medical, dental, and optical insurance because I definitely need all three. The fact that I could get really sick at any moment and be totally screwed without insurance scares the hell out of me. Who thought universal health care was a bad idea again?

I’ve also been thinking about zombie attacks and how to escape when one inevitably happens. I have a mental list of things to keep in mind when zombies attack (though a lot of points could go for Maoist rebels or something as well as zombies). Perhaps I’ll make how to guide out of it soon.

Now, this would have been posted on real Blog Action Day had it not been for my server switching issues and the fact that I lost power due to a wind storm, hence my lack of posts as well as the lateness of my replies and returned comments.

I’m an avid lurker at Hugg, the environmental version of Digg, and EcoGeek¹ because 1) I’m really big on the environment because hey, it keeps us alive and 2) I’m a geek who loves technology.

I’m sort of obsessed with turning lights off and electronic things I’m not using and it drives my family mad. My family is fairly ignorant when it comes to the environment, no matter how much I babble. My dad, as usual, sort of makes stuff up if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’d be amusing if it weren’t infuriating half the time.

I’ve learned to tune him out unless he says something extremely stupid. Like people driving cars (and you know, breathing too much) doesn’t matter because Mammoth Mountain and other mountains release more carbon dioxide per day than cars.

Yep. He wasn’t particularly happy with me when I told him that the “Well, this mountain is killing trees so therefore it’s okay for humans to kill the entire planet” was possibly the worst argument I’d ever heard…and I’ve been involved in big e-drama. E-drama is notorious for it’s idiotic arguments.

My brother (age 15) says I wouldn’t be against gas-guzzling vehicles if I drove². I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

Right. If I drove I’d cease to care about the environment. Because nobody who drives cares about the planet, clearly. I never said the men of my family had good logic skills (because they don’t and generally lack common sense as well).

If the entire world owned cars at the rate USians³ do, we’d likely all be dead.

What You Can Do

Last week was No Trash Week. I didn’t participate, but I’m definitely going to try in the future. It’s a really interesting site as they have tips to help you reduce the amount of crap you throw in the bin, a FAQ, a few projects you can undertake, as well as a forum.

The Compact is a project in which you do not buy new items for an entire year. This means you don’t buy new products of any kind from stores, web sites, etc. You buy used, borrow, barter, etc. I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions because I know I’ll never stick to it, but I think I’m going to seriously try this in 2008. It’ll definitely be difficult because I have an addiction to buying books. It seems the Amazon Marketplace, eBay, second-hand shops, as well as Freecycle.org will be my friend in 2008. I also need a new computer since I fucked up my beloved MacBook Pro a few weeks ago with evil milk. I’m still crying about that, by the way.

10 of the More Obvious Things

1. drive less
2. take public transportation
3. walk to your destination
4. ride your bicycle to work
5. recycle
6. don’t let water run unneeded
7. use rechargeable items instead of disposables
8. don’t litter
9. turn off lights and other things when you’re not using them
10. donate even $/£/€1 to an organisation listed at Blog Action Day’s website or one of the top 12 environmental organisations who use their donations well.

17 of the Perhaps Less Obvious Things

1. eat less meat
2. use your own bags at shops
3. download music from iTunes and other online music stores instead of buying physical CDs, cassettes, and/or records
4. use a laptop instead of a desktop computer
5. buy local produce rather than imported produce
6. buy water-efficient showerheads
7. pay attention to packaging
8. use fluorescent light bulbs
9. quit smoking
10. start a vegetable garden
11. bring your own cup or ‘travel mug’ to your coffee shop
12. volunteer
13. join Greenpeace
14. reduce or offset your carbon footprint
15. offset your blog’s carbon footprint!
16. educate yourself on green issues–it’s a fantastic way to start
17. do something

For Teens

Many teenagers feel as if they don’t get a say and that’s often true. Your parents may not care about green issues, but talking to them (and not just once) is a great first step. There are things just you can do without involving your parents as well.

• Eight Ways to Go Green at Red is an article geared towards teens.
• Forum Thread: Looking for Suggestions for Teens to Go Green at the TreeHugger Forums
• Green Teens Hug the Web at News.com is an article about a study that says more environmentally-oriented teens flock to the internet.

A Few of Random Earth-Related Links

1. Ten First Steps from Lighter Footstep has ten ways for you to get started towards a more sustainable green lifestyle.
2. 13 Easy, Inexpensive Ways to Go Green from MSN Money is a great article for those of us for whom money is an issue.
3. Yahoo! Green is Yahoo!’s contribution to the fight against global warming. Hank Green of EcoGeek (and Brotherhood 2.0) was involved in the project. One thing you should never say to Yahoo! is “I’ll google it” because people at Yahoo! do not google things.⁴
4. 10 Amazing Sea Creatures You Didn’t Know About at Green Expander reminds me why box jellyfish scare the shit out of me. That plus sharks and the brain-eating bacteria that live in lakes remind me why I like pools. As long as the filters don’t suck out my innards.
5. Daughter’s Efforts to Save Planet ‘Really Annoying’ from the Nashville Scene includes a cute kid and irritating parents who whine about their daughter’s interest in saving the planet and her stuffed polar bear, Blanco.
6. The 10 Rarest Animals in the World and 10 of the Most Endangered Animals at Green Expander are both prime examples of how much humans have harmed the earth in the past 100+ years. Many of these species were thriving 100-150 years ago, but some are now down to as low one individual animal of the species left. Some of them are an example of how much humans harmed the environment long before cars were invented as well.
7. 10 Amazing Animals Saved from Extinction at Green Expander has some of the success stories–many of which would be far more fantastic if global warming wasn’t such an issue today.
8. Extinct in the 20th Century at Green Expander shows that while there is still a chance to save many of the species listed as endangered now, for others it’s too late.

Pictures of Seals

If you hate seals, you’re probably evil.

All images contained within this post are royalty-free and come from stock.xchng.

1. Which I found via my favourite vlog, Brotherhood 2.0–go nerdfighters!
2. That’s right, I don’t drive. I drove around a local church’s parking lot a couple of times when I was 17, but never even tested for a learner’s permit. Not only am I afraid of driving, but as it says on my about me page, I’m an avid pedestrian and I’m actually fond of taking public transportation.
3. A term I’ve nicked from others to refer to Americans from the US. I quite like it, but I may be alone.
4. Secretly, they probably do. We all know which is the superior search engine here.

Below are examples of idiotic things said to me on a weekly basis as well as either the response I give or the response I wish I could give depending on who is doing the commenting.

“Oh. A useless degree.”

First of all, kindly fuck off.

Is there such thing as a useless degree, honestly? I don’t believe so. Least of all a degree in languages. Many people in English-speaking countries are monolingual; being multilingual is a sought-after skill in today’s job market. There are tons of things you can do with a BA in Spanish and French. Many people are unwilling to learn a second language. For some reason, this seems to be more rampant in countries where the predominant language is English.

Mostly, I’m getting a BA because I love languages and I like to learn, not because of the job I’m seeking.

“Nobody speaks French.”

I think the people of the 29 countries of which French is an official language would disagree with you. About 300 million people on the planet speak French. There is a French speaking country on every continent aside from Antarctica–as far as I know, emperor penguins don’t speak French. Or at least they didn’t in March of the Penguins which is clearly a vital source of penguin language information. It’s also an official language of both the United Nations and the European Union.

“French is useless.”

See above.

“Can you get a job with that? What are you going to do with that degree?”

I’m not getting a BA in Spanish and French to get a job; I’m getting a BA to learn more about something I love. I love to learn. I’ve always been that girl who’s constantly reading up about random things. When I was a kid, sometimes it was animals or dinosaurs or space or Sweden. Sometimes it’s still animals or dinosaurs or space or Sweden. I’m filled with tons of random bits of information about everything.

And, as I said earlier, multilingualism is a sought after skill even in non-interpretation or translation fields.

Now, this woman has been banned from every board ever created. She even got AOL for the dynamic IP addresses so she could no longer be permanently banned by IP. She posts with a million different usernames, but apparently you can always tell it’s her because of her writing style. Clearly, since she’s been banned hundreds of times from other boards, this one ban shouldn’t have been any big thing, right?

No. She went insane. For some reason, she targeted my mom and blamed her for the ban; perhaps because my mom has been the only one to stand up to her in the past. My mom and the moderators eventually just closed the board because they were sick of putting up with her friends as well.

Now when my mom posts at other boards about random completely unrelated topics this lady starts attacking her, accusing my mom of being obsessed with her¹, makes extremely rude comments, spreads my mom’s personal information, etc.

Yesterday my mom posted about something–perhaps French toast², I’ve no idea–and this lady started her attacks again except this time she’s gathered about fifteen minions and they’ve started mocking my mom for having cancer³.

You know what? Fuck. You.

These women are over 40 and they’ve spent the better part of 24 hours relentlessly spamming my mother and now two other people and acting as if my mom has no life. If you’re over 40 and you still gather your friends to gang up on one person and flame them, I almost pity you because you’re pathetic.

Oddly enough, my mom finds this all hilarious.

Ahem. And this is why the internet is like high school.

1. Who’s obsessed with whom here? I mean, my mom never mentions this lady anywhere, but she goes about looking for my mom so she can attack her! Somebody’s brain is in off-mode.
2. Example of this lady’s madness: My mom will post about French toast. This lady will come along and go “G-D, WHY ARE YOU SO OBSESSED WITH ME?!” and then proceed to spend the next few days flaming my mom.
3. My mom had surgery two days ago because she has breast cancer. She’s doing fine right now and will likely be completely cleared after she undergoes radiation therapy.

Said beverage turned out to me milk.

Milk that turned out to be very bad for my computer. Particularly when I didn’t turn it off right away because my cold-medicine-induced stupor made me, well, rather effing stupid. I’m not even computer illiterate. I just wasn’t thinking.

Very, very, very expensive mistake. Expensive mistake that made me cry. Very expensive mistake that made my keyboard act as if it was possessed by Samara¹.

My dad fixes computers for a living. Spilling milk on it voided my warranty anyway (any problems it has can be blamed on aforementioned evil milk) so he popped it open, cleaned it out, cleaned under the trackpad, tried everything.

Keyboard is fried, trackpad is done for, has massive start-up issues (hit the button, wait for a minute before it makes any indication it’s going to start up at all — and sometimes it doesn’t start up at all) and won’t stay in sleep mode properly.

So today I go to the Apple Store at the mall because 1) I need an external keyboard² for now and 2) I’m applying for a job at another store in the mall. I asked for a quote on what a repair would cost.

Turns out said repair would cost about $1,200 USD. When I could just get a brand new iMac or MacBook with 2 GB of RAM, 2.16 GHz processor, and 160 GB of space (as opposed to my current 1 GB of RAM, 2.0 GHz processor, and 100 GB of space) with about the same amount of money with my student discount.

The thought of spending that much money on an item after only a year and a half of having my MacBook Pro makes me want to cry even more. I was planning on having this computer for several more years. I love this computer–I don’t want a new one! This one is the perfect size, sleek, sexy, and exactly what I need. But I’m definitely not putting up the cash for a brand new one either. I’ll live with a new MacBook despite my dislike of glossy screens, assuming I get this job. I’m probably going to wait until Leopard comes out to buy it to save myself US$119 (again, with student discount).

Hey, whatever computer I get it will always be better than what I had before my current love–a third-hand 400 MHz Dell laptop with broken hinges, 256 MB of RAM, and a 20 GB hard drive that only ran when I got it into the mood.

1. Well, perhaps not as much as that one time on a very, very old Dell laptop I had where I was typing and then everything was inserted backwards (siht ekil tsuj) and my then-girlfriend did not help with my fear that I was going to die in seven days. Have I ever mentioned that I went to a Christian summer camp where part of The Ring was filmed? And I’ve been in the cabin?
2. Turns out it’s very difficult to do anything on your computer when 1) you cannot type and 2) it’s in various naked pieces.