Postcards from Nowhere

Ah, I forgot to bitch

Cell phone companies suck. They are trying to charge me $200 for junk. It really should only be costing me about 70 bucks, but they are adding things such as an activation fee that my contract says is free. I am definaly going to protest this. I have a friend that says she was screwed out of over 500 bucks, so I'm going to have her help me fight the war. Advice: don't buy a cell phone.

This is just getting weird

Kevin Elliott: A-Life Weblogging Experiment is an entry that reflects a few things that I have rambled about a bit before. I wonder if there are more people that are thinking like this...

New York here I don't come!

Why? Why??? WHY???? My aunt (who I could call rich) is going to New York and offered the trip to my mom if she could come up with an airline ticket. They were going to go stay in the Rockafeller center and eat at all these fancy restrurants and all my mom was going to do was have to pay for the ticket. What a deal, huh? Anyway, mom knows she doesn't have the money, BUT I do. BUT I'm not giving it to her. I would but I've already decided that I rather give her the kitchen floor she's been asking for for the past three years than a trip to place she's already been. So... I asked her if I could go in her place. She said why not. I beged her to ask my aunt (she is her sister afterall) it didn't sound like she was going to, but this afternoon she called and said that she had asked her. Nope, I can't go. Why? No reason. She couldn't even come up with a lousy excuse. Grr..... I wasn't going to pay fo my ticket, I'm that stingy, but I was going to give up my christmas presents for it. I am the hardest person to shop for. This would have been the easiest present she could have ever given me. It would have been the best one (except maybe paying for my college education). Plus I'm 18, I can go off and be by myself if they wanted to do something without me. It is not fair. My mom said that it sounded as if my aunt had come up with the idea she would have let me go, but because she hadn't, she's not going to. Grrrr...... Is that crazy or what? She's taking my other aunt too. My dad says that she didn't really expect my mom to go when she asked, but when we came up with a good alternative it caught her off-guard and got her into a corner. Grr.... I am so ticked off. She's always going places and taking other family members, but she never asks me. Just because I didn't turn out to be the beauty-princess brat she wanted me to be doesn't mean she has to punish me!! Her "friends" certainly would like me better than any of my cousins or aunt. I hate it. I'm a good, intelligent, enjoyable, normal (well, not INSANE) person with many interests. It's just that I'm what she wants me to be; I'm better. She would not even be going if it was not for my mother. My mom introduced my aunt to the world of theater and art. She had never been interested in it before, and now she is a chairperson for the marketing board at the university theater center. She's going to New York because they are having a New York themed night there and she's the decoration head. She wants to "soak up the atmosphere" while there so she knows what she's doing. I don't think you could find a btter guide than me!!! Sure, I don't know all the names of the Burrows, but I would find out. I would take the time to plan a wonderful time. It would be great!!! My dad says that she's definatly going to bring back a guilt present for me. You know what I got from France? A tee shirt. A tee shirt that is too big for me. Yep. She just does not have the guts.

Anyway, I'm pissed off, my moms going to be home soon with the pizza, and I have other things to do than brood on here longer. So...

and talk to you soon.

XXX and no 'O's

Why is it that we (as a western society) are making such a great deal about this kiss performed by Madonna and Brittney Spears? Is it because they are both women? celebrities? because they didn't used to show that sort of thing on television? If it was two women that were not two suposed good-looking celebrities, we would be grossed out. It is that simple. I guess guys get turned on by two women kissing, but I bet it isn't any two women is it, guys? In most of Europe, women kissing eachother does not even turn heads, niether does two men. Americans have it screwed up in thier minds that sex is a taboo. In England, they are way more relaxed about this sort of things. All the while Americans think that it is the English that are stuck-up and prudish. Americans, we need to pull our heads out of our asses and look around once in a while. Life is life, live it.

why should your color make a difference?

I greatly suggest that you all read this entry.

I have experienced this first hand. I was up for a trip to Washington D.C. I had a really good chance at going, but instead of me, the really qualified, experienced, white girl, they chose the under-qualified black guy because they wanted more "minorities". That made me so angry! Plus I know that when I apply for college, my race will be a factor. It is rediculous.

Okay, I'm stepping down from the soapbox for now...

You should be ashamed

Tonight I watched a Frontline special on PBS. It was about foundry workers and how they are abused. It was terrible. People are dying because Congress will not get off their butts and change the OSHA rules. McHane Inc. keeps on killing their workers and getting away with it. It is terrible. My old neighbor worked in a foundry. I went there once. The working conditions were much better than they are at the McHane plants. There they are terrible. I wish there was someway they would be shut down!!!

Jumping off the cliff into conclusions

When I say that I am taking a year off before going to college people think that I secretly mean that I do not think that I am emotionally ready. They are wrong. I was mature enough to move out and live on my own about three years ago, and my mother agrees. My childhood ended when I was ten. I became mature and was like an adult. I look back and wish that I had had more of a childhood, but I couldn't have. When I was thirteen people thought I was twenty-one. I still am not that age. Now people often think that I am younger than I am. Not because of how I act, but because of how I look. I guess I have this innocent look about me.

I smile a lot. Some days I smile so much that my cheeks hurt by the end of the day. I do not like my smile. My lips are small, and my teeth are small, so you see a lot of my gums. Even though I do not like how I look, it does not ever keep me from smiling. The world in the greater part is good. We are all still living. I do not have enough time to wear what I know on my sleeve or in this case on my face.

I'm going to continue on, but you may not care to read it, for it will be graphic about life and humans.

Two summers ago, I think it was two, I have grown so much in the past few months... I worked in a small herb shop in a small tourist town. I was just kind of the odd job worker. I cleaned, I stacked... I did what ever the witchy woman told me to. One afternoon she brought in a box of junk she had picked up. Among the things were many souvieners from World War I. Much of it from India. Some of these things were tiny little 2x3 photographs. Some were of beautiful scenery, some of the people, some of the Taj Maihal that looked just like they were out of magazines. Then I stumbled upon photographs of the most astoundishing sight. An Indian man had come to the conclusion that his life was worthless and that he should end it. He had placed his head on the tracks of the train and had watched his doom come to him. It severed it completly off. His hands came off too. The pictures showed his body at one place, his severed hands close by. His head was several feet away, completely intact. You could see his scared eyes.

My boss told me about how that many Indians did this in that time. Life was so bad that they saw no other alternative. It is just so sad that it seems that society has not improved.

Kids take their lives everyday. In our own country. In the past forty years it has gone up 200 percent. That is 5,000 teenage lives lost. This is not including kids under 13. Often people think that the world will not hit Iowa. A few months ago two young youth in Cedar Rapids, at my mother's old middle school for a fact, took their lives. They felt that they were being tortured there.

Violence also hit my middle school when I was there. One of my friends was punched repeatily in the face and eye because another girl had thought that she had called her a bitch. I witnessed this act. I wrote my testamony for the Police officer. My friend may have sneared at the girl, but never did she utter a word in her direction. I was thirteen.

Sixty percent of teenagers have thought about commiting suicide. Nine percent have tried. Ninty percent of those who go through it never ask for help before the event.

Help for teenagers who are thinking about suicide.

MACBETH!

Okay, you guys can come out from under your desks. Nothing happened. The curse hasn't hit here.

Lately I've been obsessed with Macbeth. I've never seen or read the whole thing, but I LOVE it.

Here are some of my favorite lines:
LADY MACBETH. I have given suck and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me- I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums And dash'd the brains out had I so sworn as you Have done to this.
MACBETH. If we should fail?
LADY MACBETH. We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking-place
And we'll not fail. When Duncan is asleep- Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey Soundly invite him- his two chamberlains Will I with wine and wassail so convince That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume and the receipt of reason A limbeck only. When in swinish sleep
Their drenched natures lie as in a death, What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan? What not put upon His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt

It just shows how powerful words really can be. I also like the scene when Lady Macbeth trys to wash the blood off her hands, but it appears that it will not come off. She wanders the halls at night muttering to herself. Oh, it just gives me chills!

I particularly enjoy Dame Judy Dench's version. Is Ian McKellien in that one too?

Here's a good website about Macbeth.

Anon,
Katherine