einstein's quest

Tom Friedman came to Duke last week and talked about his answer to everything. Essentially, he believes, there are five or six major problems in the world, and energy independence (cheap, renewable, plentiful electrons, he calls them) is the solution that will make them all go away. Some problems that he labeled were petrodictatorship (the idea that oil enhances powerful dictatorships and reduces freedom), climate change (duh), overpopulation, ( see climate change), and biodiversity. He had many problems, and a single solution that would take care of all of them. Killing six birds with one stone, you might say.

Well, it seems to me that that this six birds one stone idea should apply in many different areas. And it seems that there should be an overarching solution to the many problems ... infinite problems, one solution. Free trade purists have latched on to free trade as the solution that will cure all of the worlds evils - unfortunately, they are wrong, as free trade has proven itself over and over again to be a tool for the rich and powerful, exploiting the poor. Religious zealots have proclaimed that if everyone would just recognize jesus/allah/buddha/whatever other deity, as their lord and savior, then we would have heaven on earth. This is probably true. If everyone was just like Jesus, we would live in a pretty sweet (although sometimes very confusing) world. Unfortunately, nobody is just like Jesus, because nobody is God. We're all human, and we're greedy, we have trouble valuing anothers life as much as we value our own, we're xenophobic, we want many things, etc. And, you know, a lot of people don't believe in Jesus. Its illogical, makes no sense, its unanalytical idealism, and its vaguely southern.

Okay, so whats the solution to the problems?

it appears that the biggest problem is the distribution of wealth, and inequality. We have six billion minds on this earth. but only about 20% of them are actively participating in solution finding, because the other 80% of them have crappy educations, are females in an oppressed world, have underdeveloped brains because of severe malnutrition as a child, or have to spend their time working to survive instead of working to help others survive. But redistributing wealth is silly because it would just get unequally distributed again in the future, or it would piss a lot of people off, or it wouldnt work the same way communism didnt work.

So, what if money just didnt exist? What if everything were free? What if...robots did all the labor, and all humans had to do was consume responsibly, be educated, and every once in a while go update the system?

I guess you would have the problem of overconsumption. But we could just discriminate against fat people, and people who had ginormous houses and lavish things -- bc if money didnt exist, it would mean you didn't earn it -- it would mean you'd taken it away from the common good. It would be socially valuable to live responsibly. People could spend most of their time having fun, or working out, or reading, or watching movies, or whatever. They could still produce, for the social value of fame, they just wouldn't get paid to do it.

this all sounds like an economist's worst nightmare, i'm sure, but eventually we'll get to the point where robots do most of the work, and the person who owns those robots reaps most of the benefits while the workers who were replaced by the robots gets nothing. Taxing the shit out of that capital and redistributing it the poor is one way of dealing with the issue, but that makes people feel worthless and pisses off the robot owners. Lets just eliminate money.

Einstein spent his life on a quest to find the answer to everything. Douglas Adams, in a Hitchikers Guide, said the answer to everything was 42. Adams is one of the only people who has proposed a real solution. I say we take 42, we run with it, and we call it the elimination of money (only after, of course, we can automatize everything, and robots could legitimately produce and make everything we needed sustainably).

nappy leon

We're going to go get him tomorrow. isnt he freakin adorable? 

globalization and other worldly matters

I have this awful feeling that i'm going to find the next two years wordier and less number-based than I am accustomed to. I've realized over the last few years that I need data to function. It's like oxygen, or a good plot line. Even though we took a somewhat stupid personality test and it told me I was more convinced with words and verbiage, its totally not true. I am totally down with some good hard number-based facts. I think I'm really going to enjoy econ and stats, and hopefully I'll take a lot more econ as I progress through the years. 

Right now we're reading Stiglitz's Making Globalization Work and Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization in my Globalization and Governance class. It's interesting to read the free trade (bhagwati) debate vs the fair trade (stiglitz) debate. Both authors, in this case, want the same end result -- the elimination of poverty in third world countries, fair arenas in which to perform trade and commerce for all countries, and the proliferation of markets. Both men are economists, and their viewpoints aren't all that mutually exclusive to each other. However, Bhagwati adovcates free trade, and determines that when small farmers can't compete with big multinational farming corporations with their low, subsidized prices, that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank should step in and clean things up. Stiglitz advocates a built in protectionist slant within the trade policy, protecting small, poor countries. He also discusses international trade more from the point of view of the US and discusses very specific trade policy failures and successes, whereas Bhagwati discusses ideas from a much more theoretical, international view. 

The problem with relying on the IMF and the World Bank to clean up inevitable problems has multiple consequences. First off, the asymmetries and financial crises are bound to happen under free trade. Bhagwati denounces shock therapy (sudden market liberalization and opening of trade borders) and describes it as a proven method for failure. However, going completely over to free trade would have the same effects. 

The analogy to US domestic policy would be similar to what we currently have in place. A capitalistic meritocracy, where everyone looks out for themselves and their prodigy, and then when individuals grow up and find themselves down and out, social safety nets like welfare and medicaid/medicare step in and save them. While theres nothing wrong with the social safety nets, I think we all know that those safety nets are overloaded. They were designed for emergency backup use, not for long term dependency. A much better solution to end poverty in the United States would be to make opportunity fair from the beginning -- revamp public school funding, give poor people better teachers, provide poor individuals with the tools to enter into a meritocratic system on a level playing field. Don't simply leave them in the dust, counting on them to grow up and eventually need to rely on social safety nets. 

Stiglitz's advocation to build in protectionist measures to trade agreements in order to allow poor countries to develop slowly and intensively makes much more sense. However, according to Bhagwati, these protectionist measures can not be too pervasive or their economies will fail and they will never be able to reach the exalted capability of trading completely freely.

 

new stuff

school starts tomorrow. I've been vacationing/preparing/moving for the last month or so and so I'm all out of sorts. i also dont have a steady internet access right now so its hard for me to do internet-y things. like, theres two sq feet of space in my house where i have steady internet access, and its on the left side of my bed. And the internet guy isnt coming til friday.

Evan and I have decided to get the most adorable puppy in the world, a tiny little 8 week old yorkshire terrier baby. We debated a lot about adopting vs buying from a breeder, and basically decided we wanted both a puppy and a small dog, and that when we had a real yard and less size constraints that wed adopt. We'll adopt for the rest of our lives, after this little guy. We're naming him Napoleon. =) and we're picking him up Friday.

Its been exactly a year since the first day of JVC last year and I'm embarking on a totally new, different experience. So much happens in one year, yet it feels like such a short amount of time...

I'm not in the mood to wax poetic about anything sooo i'll upload a photo of napoleon as soon as evan sends me one. 

Above the fireplace

Amanda and I have been cruising craigslist for free stuff to furnish our house with. So far, all we've got is a dining table and some lamps.

However, I've got to say that the most impressive addition to our domicile would be authentic Chelsea Boothe paintings. They're even autographed! We have four complete abstracts and will be making a trip to michaels for the framing and matting. Sooo excited.

Anyway, this got Amanda and I thinking about our wall hangings. We have an old school awesome fireplace with a huge mantle, and last night we decided that the most obvious thing to put there is a regal portrait of us in a really thick gold frame. Something similar to below:
Except that we would both be in it, and I'm feeling more of a rectangular frame, and we'll both be holding small froufy dogs. It'll be on a red background, and one of us will be holding a cigarette with the cigarette holder. And we're going to not do the dog-that-just-got-back-from-the-veterinarian look around the neck, but instead we'll opt for frilly white button down shirts and pearls.

I'm so excited!!!

more photos

I don't like it when people tell me i'm doing "good work." I'm kind of tired of hearing it and don't necessarily believe it either.  And also, if you can tell i'm doing good work, why aren't you doing any? because if you were you wouldn't think what i was doing was all that amazing. 

or maybe you would; i don't know, i guess being poor does kind of suck; but just because i'm sacrificing money and living like the american poor doesn't make my work any more special than it is. It just means i was naive about money at the beginning of the year. but millions of people do work that is way more significant and way more important and way more "good" than what i do. 

anyway. happy birthday evan! it is your birthday now in north carolina...1 am. well i'm late by an hour. but thats okay.

isnt my grandpa adorable?

Punishment

Obama supports death penalty for child rapists. This is going a little too far.

He describes child rapists and mass muderers as being deserving of the "ultimate punishment". This phrase bothers me. I dont think the purpose of jails and prisons is to dole out "punishment". Human beings don't have the right to judge, condemn, and punish. I've always thought that the only reason we have the right to construct jails and put people in them is to remove criminals from our society to protect people. Of course going to jail does suck and it has been conflated with and used for punishment, but the whole underlying justification for sending criminals to jail is more as a protective mechanism for society. We certainly have the right to defend ourselves, but we don't have the right to actively punish. At least thats how i see it.

Thats what the argument about the death penalty rests on. Just because someone commits a heinous act does not thereby give us the right to murder them. Eye for an eye was abandoned in the new testament, hellooo people.

Anyway. Just one disappointing statement by Barack Obama. I still love him.

living a life of poverty

What does that even mean, anyway? Living a life of poverty. Does that mean you live so that you don't have enough food to eat? Do you go hungry? do you live without shelter, clean water, access to health care?

Or does it mean you have enough food to not only survive but to gain weight, you live in a sweet house (even if it is in the ghetto), you have plenty of clean water, total access to health care.

I don't feel like we're living in poverty. Its more of an attempt to get a glimpse of how the other half lives, except without any of the worry. Living on $5800 a year is just annoying, mostly because of the cost of education and the inability to save for the future. When I think about it in terms of living right now, I don't even notice it anymore, really. $85/month on personal expenses is simple when you don't have to pay for gas or plane tickets and you're used to leading a non-extravagant lifestyle. Of course, I was used to leading a semi-extravagant life before JVC, so it was difficult for me at the beginning. But after you get used to something, pretty much anything can become bearable. So while i don't feel it now, and am not exactly impressed with myself, perhaps in fifteen years ill look back and be amazed that I thought $85/month was not difficult to live on as a single woman (?) in her early twenties. 

Other than personal money matters, mostly this year has taught me about political bureaucracy, the structural limitations that don't allow people on the ground to really push through change, the importance of big money and funding, and the slowness of political machinations. And the amorality of people in bad situations. 

Pretty much everyone has some good and some bad in them. Most people will react in a way that corresponds with their environment, oppressing others for their own sake, stealing, beating, killing, etc. It was quite disappointing figuring that out.  But it also means that if you create a sustainable, peaceful, encouraging environment, that the people within that environment will react accordingly. Of course you will always have your dissidents but we are talking population as a whole here. So thats the challenge, creating and transforming environments. 

I can't wait to go home next week. My mom's going to cook me kimchi and brisket and rice and its going to be sooo delicious i can't wait! 

No, amanda, No

NO

I KNOW I SAID YES

BUT REALLY I MEANT NO.

ESPECIALLY IF ITS ON CAPITAL BLVD. sorry dude. Okay i'll go if i can drive the benz.

robert mugabe sucks

Hes 82 years old and still grappling for power. what the eff ? arent old people supposed to retire and let their younger counterparts take over? Is he so reproductively unsuccessful that he cant count his his own genetic offspring to continue his legacy of oppression and evil tactics?

Its not that hard. Just beat people up and kill them, coerce them into supporting you by threatening them with their lives; eventually create an image of mobs supporting you because if they don't shout and chant that they support you they will all be killed. genius tactics, except that western journalists are there to interview people who have been under constant threat of death for the last forty years, and are pissed off and telling these western journalists everything. Anonymously, of course. but he gets to hang on to power! for the next 4 years of his life, maybe, when he dies. 

Tsvangirai, had he stayed in, would almost certainly have lost. Or been shot if he had won. Dropping out of the race was really his only viable option, not only to make a point but also to preserve his life. 

Sometimes I understand why people get assassinated. Its so frustrating to think that this man singlehandedly undermines the stability of millions of people living in his country. And why isn't South Africa doing anything? theyre right next door. theyve been forced to deal with immigration consequences as a result of whats been happening in zimbabwe for the last few months -- Johannesburg erupted into a massive battleground of South Africans murdering immigrating Zimbabweans, to the point where the attitude in S Africa was so bad that zimbabweans returned to their home country, actually preferring the zanu-pf's tactics to those of the peoples of south africa. And it never benefits any country to have a poor unstable country next door; pure geography dictates this fact. Unless maybe you build an electric fence. But South Africa has just stood idly by, watching the political upheaval next door, doing nothing but dealing with their lame-in-comparison problems of white landowners being moved off their property. 

Ahhhh effing mugabe, why are there so many terrible people like you in the world? oh, alpha male who refuses to give up power. Its the story of Africa. why cant anyone come up with a solution to this problem that keeps presenting itself? freakin a. 

Maybe if you look at it from a perspective of resources; only those in power have access to money and food and everyone else lives a life of poverty. So unpopular men in power hang on to it for dear life because if they dont have complete control then they will either almost certainly die because they can no longer afford security guards and massive amounts of intelligence, or they have to live like a normal person, eating rice and beans and struggling to survive. 

the economist a few weeks ago mentioned that tsvangirai had offered mugabe the opportunity of perhaps a less prestigious post with cash benefits and a comfortable retirement. This suggests that the alternative paragraph was almost certainly true, or at least that tsvangirais camp believed it to be so. But this was clearly not enough to tempt Mugabe - he knew that he could continue employing tactics that hed learned from the people he overthrew, and from decades in power, that he could continue living the life of luxury in power, second to nobody. Somewhere in his personal, economical judgment, he determined that the chances of staying in power with all that money were greater than the chances that he would lose and still be able to live a comfortable retirement. What conceit and confidence he has in his own powers of totalitarian rule. 

and he must know that the west will do nothing to intevene (because we never do) and that south africa will do nothing, and that no other country in africa has either interest or ability to do anything, and that his people are too poor and disorganized to stage a revolution or a successful coup. Tsvangirai should have offered him something more valuable than the comforts of power in order to entice him to peacefully leave zimbabwe, or made the prospect of staying in power a dismal one. As far as what that may have been, id assume that required a personal knowledge of Mugabe and a deeper understanding of how leaders in zimbabwe make their money, and i am really not in a position to postulate about either of those. 

so there you go. simple behavioral economics. something has got to turn this tide.

Organic

I used to scoff at organics. bah, who needs pesticide free food? psh. mass produced food is good enough for me!

And then when I started working here at the Farmworkers Unit, I started considering what it meant to buy organics out of concern for the workers who pick and spray the foods. There was a big case against AgMart a couple summers ago that one of our colleagues is collaborating on, where they found that a corporate giant (AgMart) was guilty of all these pesticide violations, and three women that summer gave birth to children with extreme birth defects. When they did further investigations into the case, they found more women who'd been forced to abort in the 8th month of pregnancy because their babies were horribly deformed and not viable, they found babies born in Mexico to mothers who had been working in AgMart fields in Florida who had crazy birth defects (like no rectum, no intestines, no genitalia, etc). Most of these babies died. The one that survived was Carlitos, who got away with his torso intact but no arms or legs, who is referenced in the link above.

Anyway, clearly, these women work with way more pesticides than we come into contact with on our fruits and vegetables. But still, the bigger the demand for organics, the more huge farms might try and produce pesticide-free food.

But then Fawn Pattison of Toxic Free NC came and spoke to some interns about pesticides, and I happened to sit in on the conversation. There is no such thing as "safe" pesticide use. Using the term "safe" to describe pesticide use is actually illegal. Nobody actually knows the long term effects of chronic pesticide exposure, whether its on your food or in your work environment. They do know that farmworkers dont live as long and develop cancer at higher rates than their hispanic counterparts. And they do know that massive doses experienced during pregnancy causes birth defects. Well, they sort of know that.

At any rate, they spray those pesticides, which are so dangerous that you can't touch them with your bare hands, you aren't even supposed to wash clothing that has been exposed to pesticides with other clothing, they spray these pesticides all over our fruits and vegetables from the time they are little baby fruits to the time they grow to be ripe. That means the pesticides aren't just chillin on the outside of the fruit. They're all up in it. That means you're eating cancer. When you eat inorganic fruits, and some are worse than others (like celery, peaches, strawberries are all more cancer-retaining than, say, oranges or apples), you are actually eating cancer. And Alzheimers and other neural diseases. All those pesticides are going straight to my brain and binding to some hormonal developing tracts up in there and confusing signals and laying the foundation for alzheimers and parkinsons disease. Before, I had a one pronged approach for fighting alzheimers, and that was doing crosswords every day when I turned sixty. Now I have a two pronged approach, and its called doing crosswords every day when I turn sixty and only eating organic foods for the rest of my life.

The moral of the story is that I couldn't enjoy the most delicious peach of my life today. I kept thinking about how I was eating cancer, and how those stupid pesticides are tasteless, and how I wished that we had made more educated decisions about buying organic fruits at the beginning of the year.


The alternative moral of the story is cotton. At least with fruits and vegetables you can pretend you're washing off the pesticides. With cotton, they spray these intense leaf defoliants all over the entire cotton crop, which destroys the leaves in a matter of seconds. These are intense pesticides. Anyway, then they just go straight to the magical cotton processing place, where they get turned into cotton products -- like tampons. We just put those little cancer sticks up our hoohaws like they're vagina candy and don't even think twice about it. thats cancer-loaded cotton! right next to my future babies! Never again. Organic cotton tampons forever for me.

perhaps i'm being paranoid. but better safe than sorry, i say.

Tidbits of life

be prepared for longest post ever!

So I finally uploaded pictures from my camera from months and months ago, and here are some samplings of my life.

Amanda and I attended a war rally a couple months ago, where they had processions of tanks and military people and other military accoutrement. But we went as protesters, with Patrick O'Neill, the beloved catholic worker we all adore. Heres an example of the signs some of the peeps in our group were carrying:


Quite depressing. That was us, the "war-sucks, dead-people-suck, and we're-mournful" peeps in black clothing. Of course, I opted out of black, since it was a tad hot that day, and chose to go for instead the $3 hanes tshirt with War Sucks in blue sharpie, masterfully done minutes before showing up at the rally.
I got a few comments, like, "YOU suck!" and some people would walk by and mutter "buncha punks." Oh yes, yes, very clever. Keep em comin.

and heres my personal favorite, the highlight of the day, Fupa Lady With Camel Toe !!! Here she is, exhibiting her pride at being FLWCT and yelling at Patrick, calling him an asshole that needed to go home:

Man that lady is so awesome. Shes truly delightful.

Ahhh, one of my first experiences being a hated minority in a large group of white people.

On another note, amanda and i found a place to live next year! wheeeeeee!! The backyard is duke forest, the house is in American Village, and there are a whole bunch of trails and walking paths in the forest. No weight limit on dogs! yay! We each have our own huge walk in closets, our own coat closets, our own bathrooms...so sweet. And it is a sweeeeeeet neighborhood, five minutes to Duke by car, possibly withink biking except I hate biking, maybe i'll rollerblade. =)


(Un?)Fortunately there are so many trees you cant really even see the house. Here are views of the side street


And this adorable boston terrier we met


And a turtle we rescued. =)

Globalrichlist.com

How rich are you?
I have been complaining all year about how poor I am, blah blah blah, but it wasn't until I did this that I realized how very rich I am. Just by virtue of living in the United States, not being hungry, and having shelter, I still qualify as being in the top 14.22 % of richest people in the world. I included my JVC stipend and community money (the checks we get for food, rent, bills, phone, gas, etc), which totals an annual income of $5800/year. At 5800 a year, i still manage to be in that echelon of wealth. At 48,000 /year, you enter the top .1% of wealth in the world, approximately within the top 60 million richest people in the world.

While we're talking about poverty, theres a really fascinating photo series of average weekly food consumption in various countries in the world. This guy does a pretty good job, though it was originally done by Peter Menzel Photography in Time. Below are a few samples.

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina
Food expenditure for one week $341.98

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide
Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07




Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna
Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27


Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo
Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53



Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo
Food expenditure for one week: $31.55

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23




These are such great photos. I saw them in an airport a few weeks ago and it really struck me. I love that the family unit is so prevalent across cultures, that every family has a smile, and that the organization of the photos is so similar: the week of food placed in front of the family, placed in front of or inside the home. Culture is awesome.

I'm also surprised at the amount of food $1.23 buys in Chad. While certainly it points to poverty levels, affordability, simple economics in third world countries, it still makes me wonder: Am I being ripped off?

Okay, logically, it really doesn't. But at the same time, it kind of does.

BJ Honeycutt, Super Star

Two posts in one day! wow! i just got all these pictures and got super excited about posting them, so here's a picture of me and three of my Jesuit Volunteer roomies hanging out with Mike Farrell, aka BJ Honeycutt from M*A*S*H, at his book signing, hosted by PFADP (people of faith against the death penalty) and by the NC Justice Center.


Linnea is missing. Dinner was deeeeeeeelicious.

Party in the Fields!!!!

We did outreach to H2A workers on Monday night. "H2A" is a visa for foreign guest workers in agriculture. Most H2A workers are Mexican, though recently its been used as a vehicle to traffic laborers in from remote parts of the world, like India, Bali, South Africa, Indonesia. An H2A visa is temporary, only lasts 11 months, and workers are guaranteed on average 30 hours of work per week, at $8.53/hour, they get workers comp, inspected housing. At the "good" camps, this is more or less what you see, but at some more exploitative camps you see them not getting paid the correct wage, sitting around for weeks without work, not getting workers comp, not getting enough water in the fields, etc.

The camps we went to on Monday were "good" camps. The guys were all getting paid correctly, didn't have to work when it was too hot, got plenty of water, no pesticide danger, and they were super friendly. Some of them have been coming here for a couple years, and almost all of them have children and wives at home. They were receptive to what we had to say but didn't seem to be having any problems with their work.

I did get invited to a dance on Saturday by one of the workers! But I had to turn it down, alas, as we are having our sweetness party Saturday night. Which everyone is of course welcome to attend, see facebook for details.

That's Peter, our law intern, talking to one of the workers and explaining that our phone number is on the back of the booklets


Thats me and a SAF (student action with farmworkers) intern talking to two of the guys, one of whom has Curly's haircut from the three stooges.

And me again, with my terrible posture, talking to two other dudes. These guys weren't as friendly, though they did teach us how to say "i'm hungry" and "its really hot" in Tarrasco, a native dialect of Michoacan, their home state in Mexico.



yay for my first blog post with pictures!!!! Photos were taken by Omar, our community ed coordinator.

barack obama isnt black

hes half black.

He's just as white as he is black. Helloooooo! I'm HALF asian. People describe me as being 'half asian' and nobody says I belong to the Asians. thats crazy talk. 

Obama is more of a light brown mixture. If one could say that a person of a particular race "belongs" to that race (which is total bs) Obama "belongs" just as much to the whiteys as he does to the blacks. He is quite handsome though, and does, incidentally, "belong" to the pretty people of America.  

I belong just as much to the mexicans as I do to the whites, and just as much to the koreans as to the half mexicans. Theres a math problem for you, if you couldnt figure out the portions of my heritage. =) 

and im so jealous of evan.  his life is crazy. 

crazy awesome

So we all knew this was on its way; it was inevitable and fairly obvious that at some point people would realize that most genetic deficiencies could be supplemented/erased by taking various vitamin cocktails. Most geneticists have been anticipating this for about a decade now.

But the awesome part of this all was that I had a visionary flash of the future: someday, we'll all be able to go to a DNA consultant, have our genomes mapped out for us, and they'll tell us what we need to do to live to be two hundred, avoid cancer, alzheimers, and parkinsons, and then we'll all just take our own personal vitamin cocktail for the rest of our lives. I say DNA consultant instead of doctor, because lets face it, doctors dont really know anything about DNA. And I don't trust doctors; they make too much money even when they don't cure anything. But a true, capitalist based industry such as DNA consulting would actually work. And DNA biologists actually know what they're talking about.

Ten years from now, there will be more online dating sites like eharmony and scientificmatch, a little known site that is locally based because it matches people based on pheromone DNA, ensuring fabulous chemistry. But there will be dating sites that match people based on how awesome their children could be too, ensuring top notch reproductive success.

Why is this a breakthrough? Because up until now pretty much the most effective cure all is daily exercise and not smoking. Thats boring. Taking vitamin supplements to maximize your DNA efficiency is way more awesome. In fact, I want to be a DNA consultant. Nobody steal my idea. If I had no other goals for my life, I'd totally get the capital together to do this and travel the world telling people which vitamins to take.


NOTE: IF YOU ARE A PREGNANT MOTHER:

TAKE LOTS OF CHOLINE. Eat hardboiled eggs and fish, up to the daily threshold limit. You can also buy the vitamin supplement at most drug stores. Your kids will be awesome.

god science is so freaking cool.

Embarassing

so today I made a really embarrassing mistake.

This morning I decided to try out the new lotion that my uncle brought home from the airport one day a few months ago. Its called "NutriMilk" and its in a fancy bottle. Anyway, I ran out of time this morning and so took it with me to work, where I left it in my bag and thought i'd put some on at work. Anyway, as I'm walking up to the building, I start applying some on my face. Its sort of runny but feels nice as I rub it into my skin. When I get to my desk, I start putting it on my legs, but I notice that it doesnt rub in as well as it did on my face. After some extensive rubbing with little to no success at getting it to absorb, I decide to re-read the bottle. Yup, DEFINITELY says jabón liquido para el cuerpo -- liquid soap for the body. Dammit.

So I get up and run to the office bathroom, where I realize that my face is covered in dried liquid soap, and my leg is foaming. And I basically end up taking a shower in the sink, washing off my legs with paper towels and water. When I go to wash my face, my face looked totally normal -- just felt a little weird - but when i splashed water on it, it immediately started foaming.

And I havent been able to get the soap smell off of my body all day; i put so much of it on and rubbed it so thoroughly that its now, like, embedded in my skin. Ahhh. I hate liquid soap. Why'd they put it in a bottle that looks like lotion? ahhhhh. And I smell like an old woman. booo.

Cubetas

i bet theres a spanish word most of you don't know.

It means bucket.
It also means $2.50 to blueberry pickers in NC.

I've decided to finally write about what it is I do, at the work part of the jesuit volunteer corps that i've been deriding lately.

Yesterday we went on blueberry outreach. The migrant farmworkers all came from either Mexico or Guatemala, about 50/50 on the ratios. Most of them got here a week or so ago, coming from Florida on the blueberry circuit. They live in temporary housing, in trailers, and don't really care where they live since the farmers provide it for them. They're also only going to be here for a few more weeks before heading up to New Jersey to pick blueberries there.

They definitely weren't getting minimum wage, since blueberries aren't ripe yet and they're paid by the bucket -- so they'll work all day and maybe earn $15 . They don't understand that even if thats all they earn, they still have to earn at least minimum wage. When you try to explain, they interrupt and say, "pero nos pagan por contrato" -- they pay us per bucket, in other words. Its hard to explain to people who never really learned past basic math and have trouble doing their multiplication tables. Even if they do understand, its hard to calculate.

Theres so many of them. I didn't feel any despair this time, or the need to cry when i went home -- its just a way of life for them. They migrate from camp to camp, state to state, earn enough money to survive and get drunk to help lessen the sharp sting of reality, maybe get a prostitute every now and then, maybe meet another lonely migrant worker, get married, have children.

I have hope for those kids. We met a lot of kids last night, and all of them spoke English. Some of them were trilingual, speaking Spanish, English, and their native Indian dialect. Many of these dialects we had never heard of before, but theres close to a 100 dialects in Mexico alone. If you can speak English, and get a decent education, you might be able to do something for yourself. Run a store, or work inside somewhere, where you don't have to move from place to place constantly looking for backbreaking work.

I need to start taking photos.

The trailers were in terrible condition. Dirty, cramped quarters, 7-15 living in one trailer (i've been to a trailer park where 17 migrant workers lived in one 2 bedroom trailer for three months), and beds that wouldn't pass inspection. But we didn't focus on that, since these workers don't really care about their housing when they only live there for a few weeks -- instead we try to talk to them about pay, since they do care about pay. But it has to be really bad for someone to want to do something about it -- do they demand their rights, or do they count on a job again next year? Retaliation is a big problem.

and its in the middle of NOWHERE. seriously. nowhere. normally outreach takes place within 20 miles of some kind of town, but these fields were seriously in the middle of nowhere.

I only vividly remember one man, because he was frightening and incredibly sad. He was in his forties, maybe older, and he was the drunkest person I've ever met in my entire life (and that is saying a LOT) who was not passed out. I'm surprised I could understand his slurred speech. He was by himself in the trailer, his friends were working the packing house that night, and he was very nice to us. He pulled out a couple of chairs, but we knew that we weren't going to get anywhere talking to him, that he'd just forget the next day, but we spoke to him for a minute to be polite. He had terrible teeth. Most of the front ones were gone, and his gums were bleeding on the other ones -- you could see the tops of the remaining teeth were bloody where they met the gums. And it was clear he hadn't brushed his teeth in a really long time; as soon as he shut the door to the outside, the trailer filled with his breath. it was really awful. at that point ann and I shoved out of that trailer; we couldn't take it anymore. He was sad when we left though, he must be lonely. Later, when we were done with the rest of the trailers in that camp, his friend came out of the trailer and told us that we shouldn't come at night because prostitutes came at night and the grower got mad at them when women visited the camps, and that we should come during the day like respectable people.

It was rainy, and cold, an unbelievably dismal day. But overall I thought it went well; we reached a lot of workers who were fairly receptive to what we had to say, and at least a few who wanted to read the information we passed out.

we'll see how the summer goes.

My Struggle with Caffeine

It started out innocently enough.

I'd occasionally just have it at Evan's house, you know, on the weekends or the occasional weekday. He'd offer it to me, I wouldn't see any harm in taking it with cream and sugar, and I'd drink it. It had this delicious flavor that made me feel so good, so alert and happy, even though the high only lasted thirty minutes or so. But it was okay, because I felt pretty normal the rest of the day. Its not like it was interfering with my life at that point.

A few months went by like that, but as I spent more and more time with Evan, the coffee-mongerer, I started drinking more and more. He kept offering, and I kept accepting. Eventually it got to the point where I was drinking a cup every morning. I even bought my own coffee maker. I knew at this point that it was serious. But it was legal, and I kept reading about how great coffee is for colin cancer, and it was just so delicious.

One day I ran out of coffee. No biggie, I thought. I'll just go without coffee. Little did I anticipate the worlds most intensely frightening headache that slammed me around 1:34 in the afternoon, at which point I was completely blindsided and groped for the nearest coffee machine, chugged down two cups, waited for the headache to subside, and swore off days without coffee for the rest of my life. Here, this, then I KNEW I was an addict. But what could I do? I certainly couldn't quit, couldn't deal with the pain of those caffeine headaches.

And then my tolerance grew, and I started consuming more and more coffee each day, the deliciousness seeping down my throat and reverberating through my body. I had accepted my addiction, learned to love it, love coffee. I promised to only buy fair trade coffee, thus helping out some poor farmer guys in Zimbabwe or Guatemala or wherever. I was doing good deeds. My addiction wasn't hurting anyone. I considered what I'd have to do when I got pregnant, but that was years away, and I knew I could do anything with the motivation of a child inside me. So I just didn't worry about it. I loved my addiction, because I loved coffee.

Then, suddenly, about two years after the initial chronic consumption had started, small pains started growing in my chest. My heart felt constricted, as though a fist was gripping it and squeezing it. Frightened (at the age of 23!) I thought I needed a new heart. (No matter, I'll just get some pixie dust! i thought). Anyway, I went to the doctor, where I found out that I had a major case of acid reflux, and that I'd have to quit drinking and eating acidic and fatty foods for at least a month, and then that I'd have to cut down on them for the rest of my life. I cried. Oh how I cried. All I eat are deliciously fatty foods, and I pour balsamic vinegar over everything! As tears gush down my face, I looked mournfully up at the doctor, and said, "thats it though, right? no fatty foods and nothing super acidic?" and she looked disdainfully at me and said, "right. No alcohol" -- heart stoppage -- "and no coffee. Caffeinated or decaffeinated. That stuff is super acidic." -- I passed out. Right there on the doctors floor. How could I live without the delicious roasted beans of goodness? Without that dark java of love? gods gift to man and my way of supporting farmers in poverty in belize?

Okay I didn't really pass out. But I did get very upset. Trying to quit was even worse. Massive headaches for a week straight, uncontrollable lethargy, hatred at the world, hatred of my coworkers, depression. And then, one day, it went away. But the cravings for coffee did not. It's been six whole weeks. And every morning I still wake up and crave coffee with whole milk and sugar. Once, a couple weeks ago, I decided to say screw it (as I had with the fatty foods and balsamic vinegar -- no heart burn!) and I drank a cup of coffee. Immediately, within thirty minutes of drinking it, I had an incredible sensation of the fist over the heart again. I was so upset. Coffee is the only thing that gives me heartburn. Coffee, the love of my life.

But I wasn't going to quit trying. I had a frappucino, assuming that the massive amounts of milk and cream would offset the acidity of the coffee (and it did!) but I can't drink a frappucino every day. I might as well sell everything I own and move into a cardboard box now. And then I tried drinking a cup of 1/4 coffee and 3/4 whole milk, which also works just fine, except that the cup is cold and disappointingly milky. Its also a tease, since I only get a taste of the cold coffee. And my headaches invariably come back the next day (but they only last a day).

This has been a difficult process for me. I'm still struggling with it. I don't know that I'll ever fully recover. I wish there was some kind of recovering coffee addicts group i could go to, I feel so alone in my post-mortem addiction. Alas, alas. What shall I do?

depression

lately i've been feeling super down, borderline depressed. this has never happened to me before, at least not without a reason. I mean, Evan is gone, and I miss him, but its not, like, thats whats got me down. In fact I've been feeling pretty blue since around February. And I think I know why.

First, my incredibly depressing job has created this whole layer of sadness that I try and cover up by not thinking about it, but of course thats nearly impossible since I work with them every day. I'm constantly on the verge of tears. The news has got me down too, man, freakin news.

This, combined with the lack of nutrients in my body from JVC, has created an emotionally labile female. Lack of nutrients, you say? Why, all the red meat that suddenly disappeared from my diet. I can't even remember the last time I ate cow. Actually I do remember and it was at Fabers house a few weekends ago. And red meat is a supplier of tryptophan, precursor to serotonin, supreme moderator of happiness and depression. Exact mechanism unknown and super complicated.

but so all of these extreme changes make my otherwise indestructive body and spirit feel shitty. Battered women and the lack of red meat has really got me down. I suppose I'll just have to start consciously trying to eat hamburgers and steak once or twice a week, when sully's has their half off bar food.

i effing hate being poor. i hate it.

yesterday I was actually considering quitting JVC and moving home to my parents house for the summer. The only reason I'm in Raleigh was for Evan in the first place, and now hes in Africa. so what am i doing in raleigh? living out my commitment to this indentured servitude position. God I'm bitter. What was I thinking, 85 dollars a month for a whole year? i want to kick myself in the face. i went to college! a ridiculously expensive one! I am worth way more than that measly stipend. argh. and now i am depressed because i cant effing afford to buy food that my o type blood needs.

and now i'm even regretting going to school immediately after JVC. I should have known that being poor three years in a row sucks. I should have gotten some kind of high paying job where I can do math all day and play with excel spreadsheets and make pretty charts. I decided thats what i really like to do anyway. as long as its about something that matters.

garh. argh. my mind is going to mush and my spirit is going to slop, i'm becoming depressed and stupid, i cant wait to get out of this ridiculous program.

ethanol

For some crazy reason, all the ethanol stocks are up, way up, yesterday and today. Why?

The obvious reason is that gas prices are hitting record highs. But gas prices have been hitting record highs for the last four months and ethanol stocks have been hardcore tanking until yesterday, when they immediately all started going up. This is suspicious. First of all, ethanol is only a viable resource when oil is over $100 a barrel. But oil has been over that for months now. Why hasn't stock been going up since oil hit 100 and steadily rose? Second of all, ethanol is incredibly unpopular right now because of the food crisis -- people are starving and we're putting their food into our cars? has anyone noticed that corn oil in the grocery store is up like 150% ???? Everyone is blaming ethanol for the increase in food prices, and collectively have started agreeing that it is NOT a truly sustainable resource.

Despite this, the volume charts are insane for the last two days, with huge investors buying up. they all know something is about to happen, which is good for my tanked ethanol stock, but sucky for the world, since biofuel is just about the worst idea ever. ahh. the stock market makes me crazy. I'm getting out and investing in vietnam.

creative nose dive

if you want to read more awesome blogs than mine,

try www.evanmaclean.blogspot.com, for pictures of chimps, monkeys, and africa, and www.acornlex.blogspot.com, for super duperness and awesome pictures.

JVC, life, and the world in general have sucked my soul out.

i'm not as funny as i used to be, not as carefree, creative, spontaneous, or nearly as awesome. Constantly thinking about the worlds problems is a big downer. I'm gonna have to stop doing that.

So from this point on, I'm going to make a sincere effort to only think about world problems when I am either a) reading about them and/or B) actually solving them. Because someday I will solve all the worlds problems. I just hope I don't have to think about them at all other moments of the day.

on another note, I think I believe in God again. I went on this silent retreat, which was sort of a huge pain and total social disaster, but i got so bored that I actually did what they asked us to do, and prayed. of course, God didn't talk back, I dont think he ever does, when that happens I think people are just connecting with the schizophrenic inside of them (but who knows, maybe schizophrenia is just being in closer touch with some sort of unearthly being and I'm dead wrong), but some interesting stuff happened this week.

First of all, NC state rejected my in state residency claim. I got mad, and wrote them a mean letter. In state class costs 600 bucks, plus or minus some amount, and out of state is 2000, plus or minus any assholes involved. and who would ever spend that much on a class at NC state? i mean, come on, arent you supposed to get what you pay for? So naturally i refuse to pay for something thats not worth it. And then I googled online classes, and the first thing that popped up was MIT courseware, and then I remembered that I read somewhere that MIT was offering almost all of their course materials online, for FREE-- so basically, a complete course, minus the professor. And i decided that an MIT downloaded course with those materials for FREE was a way better deal than even the 600 at NC state...and I remembered God. I was suspicious of his involvement in the rejection claim from NC state.

Okay, and then, exactly two weeks ago, for no reason at all, I sold all of my yahoo stock and decided to invest in a solar company. this was on a friday. I sold yahoo at 28.50, when I had bought it at 23.50, only profiting $30 after commission fees (i know i play tiddlywinks with stocks), and then bought 16 shares of Renesola, (SOL) a chinese solar power company, at 15.80. Then, on Saturday, the VERY NEXT DAY, Microsoft withdrew their bid for yhoo, and the stock dropped. I got out at the PERFECT time. God re-enters my mind.

To top it all of, two weeks later, my solar stock is up to $26 a share!!!! Their earnings report absolutely blew everyone away, and in two weeks time my money has increased by what, 80%?. I just wish I had more money to invest, that I had bought 100 shares instead of my measly 16. But there are some things you can't control. And the projected price on this stock is $40. This, again, made me think of God.

so, lame, i know, that all of my encounters with money recently have been attributed to God. but money has really been a problem lately, and I can't stop thinking about it, and how much its going to interfere with my life. So much so, in fact, that I wish I had taken a few years before grad school to just make a lot of money. The problem is that unless your goal is to make a lot of money, it just wont happen. And unfortunately my goal has nothing to do with money. It has everything to do with solving all the worlds problems. I'm considering having a part-time goal of making a lot of money, and doing it with stocks. after i figured out (sort of) what i was doing, i made some better choices in the market and am actually making money.

Why Hillary would be a disaster

Furthering my idea that uses the campaign as a little sample of what a presidency would be like, lets consider Hillary delegate math in the Florida/Michigan controversy.


Florida and Michigan straight up broke the rules. They knew if they moved the primary up, that they would not be counted. The DNC rules explicitly stated this, and they knew, but they did it anyway. The DNC then told all the candidates to please remove their names from the ballot in Michigan, and so Obama and Edwards both followed suit and did this. But who didnt? Who had a blatant disregard for authority? Who charged ahead according to her own desires, seeing the opportunity to win a state handily? Thats right. Hillary Clinton. Even with Hillary's name being the only one on the ballot, STILL a good 40% voted "uncommitted" in the states primaries. Shocking. Re-do spells disaster for Hillary in Michigan. And now shes demanding that they include Michigan and Florida, which is AGAINST THE DNC RULES, because shes too far behind and has no hope without them.

If we consider the DNC convention rules as perhaps the democratic party's version of the Constitution of the USA, is this behavior what we would see in the White House? Will Hillary Clinton carry on her blatant disregard of the democratic process, of rules set in place before her that don't benefit her own person? Hillary would destroy our country. She can't listen, she can't take advice, she can't see truth or logic. She has no concept of the rules, of strategy, of the people she claims to represent! She would completely ignore the Constitution, altering it and simply pretending it didn't exist to benefit herself. People say McCain would be a third Bush term. I say Hillary would be.

thats all.

the campaign as a window into presidency

If we think about the campaign as a small tiny little example of what the presidency might be like, then it should be haaaaaaands down Obama.

McCain can't get anyone to pay attention to him (perhaps because he reeks of the last vestiges of Bush's presidency), is completely and totally broke, and nobody knows anything else about his campaign because.....oh yeah. thats right. Nobody Cares.

Clinton keeps striking back like an angry cobra, poisoning the entire democratic party and heading the country for disaster, ignoring pleas to stop, common sense, and basic statistics (hmmm, iraq war, anyone?), and continues filling her campaign with negative ads and using words like "Obliterate Iran," alienating voters and the entire black constituency.

Obama, meanwhile, has united masses of people, congratulates his opponent, tells the truth, has not been caught in a single scandal, refuses biased money from PAC's and special interest groups, and actually listens to the American people! wow. Who ever thought a politician like Obama even existed? He even gets people to CHANGE THEIR MINDS! double wow.

Lets consider the 2000 campaign between Bush and McCain.

In 2000, Bush resorted to evil tactics to win the primary nomination over McCain. South Carolina's primary was often referred to as the dirtiest campaign in the history of America. He destroyed McCain using a smear campaign http://www.bartcopnation.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=8&topic_id=522, in short, calling him the Fag Candidate, which was circulated on church fliers, questioned McCain's sanity, suggesting he was nuts from his time in Vietnam (possibly true, but nonetheless), accused McCain of having a black daughter (who is actually a bangaldeshi adoptee), suggesting that he had fathered her with a black prostitute, and made fake phone calls that misrepersented McCain's campaign.

wow. lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.....pretty much exactly like his presidency. awesome.

hillary, go away. you barely won in Indiana, you were completely annihilated in NC, and you're going to destroy your party, your country, and any remaining semblance of pride and self respect if you stay in it. It is clear who the better candidate is, and who Americans prefer as their future president.

all alone

Evan is off fulfilling his fantasies in Africa, playing with baby chimpanzees and calling it research, on his way to becoming an envied researcher in his field...

and what am I doing?

I'm allllllllllllll aaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllloooooooooonnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

actually i'm reading a horribly depressing affidavit written by one of my clients social workers about how her husband sexually molested their daughter. They're both from Africa, and she explains the culture there to be super oppressive towards women, and she had no concept of what a standard boundary between a father and a daughter was supposed to be. And neither did he, obviously, he said he was teaching his daughter how to be a woman. His daughter is 7.

enough of that.

Barack Obama today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know what I'm praying for more, for Evan to arrive safely or for Obama to kick ass in both primaries tonight.

woooeee

So I was reading creative ways to spend the stimulus check, ranging from window blinds to vacays to paying off credit card debt to buying 41 copies of Ron Paul's Revolution (dumb idea), and I think I've come up with the perfect solution.

My check will only be 300 dollars. But I've always wanted to do a few things out and about in Raleigh, NC, and I'll use my stimulus payment to fund these efforts. And I can talk about them because, guess what, NOBODY READS THIS BLOG!!! AHAHAHAHAHA!


First, and Foremost, add the two letters U and N to the front of Planned Parenthood, for a more truthful title of "UnPlanned Parenthood".

Secondly, add the letters "EAK" to the end of all the street signs that say "Salisbury St" in the effort to increase motorists desire for tasty Salisbury Steaks on sale at your local golden corral, thus stimulating the service industry AND ALSO helping out your local friendly illegal immigrant employers.

and last, but not least, print out thousands of flyers that have a picture of said local friendly illegal immigrant giving the thumbs up, with the words "ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT FOR PRESIDENT 2008" scrawled across the top. Hopefully this will take the hispanic vote away from Hillary, boosting Obama to the top.

so really i think the most expensive thing here would be a giant ladder to reach the downtown street signs (those effers are tall), and depending on whether or not I can sweet talk the home depot dudes into lending me a huge ladder, maybe I can save my stimulus check all together.

which brings us back to the dilemma in the first place -- what am i going to spend my 300 dollars on?

Maybe I'll get a goat and ride around town so people like me as much as they like this guy:

sometimes i feel sorry for myself

when i think about how small my social circle is and how pathetic my 5 pm - 12am life is. Yesterday I actually sat through an entire viewing of the movie Enchanted. Is anyone familiar with this horribly awful movie? i'm not even going to describe it. it probably got like 30% on rotten tomatoes.


Anyway, but then, i feel better about myself by thinking about how there have to be people out there who are just way bigger losers than i am. This is horribly disgusting but, well, life is relative, and when your life is better than other peoples lives, your life cant be all that bad.


For instance, theres all those people who live in the Northeast. Their lives automatically suck. No matter what they do during the day or evening, my life has got to be better than their lives in the frigidly cold atmosphere where they bump into other incredibly rude people that wander the tundra that is Boston or Manhattan.



And then there are children. Children are stupid little people. I saw an average child wandering through the airport yesterday tagging along after her F1 generation parents, and her little pink barbie suitcase was see-through. You know, I see children all the time with those cute little suitcases, but I never have seen whats inside of them, because usually the suitcase is covered with a giant picture of Dora the Explorer or Bugs Bunny or Hank the Cowdog or whatever other nonsense kids read these days. If i had to guess, I would have thought little kid pants, little kid shirts, little kid underwear, maybe a teddy bear or two. But I had the opportunity to see through one yesterday, and boy, was it a shocker.

Anything practical? anything useful? Perhaps nice delicious foods to snack on? No way.There were four barbie dolls, one giant doll, and some ridiculous looking toy. Thats it. totally and completely useless, and a huge pain in the ass to deal with once you get to your destination. what a dumb little kid.


my life has got to be way better than the life of the mother of that dumbass little girl. I would cry myself to sleep if I gave birth to an idiot like that. sheesh.

human trafficking

is some fucked up shit.

today was the longest day ever. and i'm exhausted. thats all i can even say about it.

i know why hillary is so annoying

She reminds me of every stubborn teacher I ever had that refused to listen to reason and logic and just wanted authority and power.

http://donklephant.com/2008/03/13/clinton-claims-she-didnt-say-mccain-is-more-qualified-than-obama/

ugh god she makes me mad.

shes not even playing fair. stupid bitch. http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=88165077&m=88176954

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/13/11136/3289/192/475758

its a good thing nobody reads this

they would probably blast me for my lack of capitalization and inability to stay on topic. but ha. its my blog. i can do what i want.

i hate being poor. i hate it hate it hate it.

its not like i want to buy things. I just want to buy food. like the most delicious traditional sub at quiznos that I seriously probably think about every single day. But when a sub is the quivalent of 20% of your monthly income, you just cant do it. Especially when your parents pounded the thought of credit-card-debt = lucifer's infiltration-of-your-soul into your mind as a small child.

So heres an interesting little tidbit. I have never had a balance on my credit card at the end of the month. Ever. in...8 years of credit card owning. I thought only poor people and other debt un-savvy people left balances, but apparently its really weird to actually pay off your credit card bill. So for me, the money I have is actually the money I have. I don't spend it if I dont have it.

and unfortunately for me all my savings are in the stock market. I cant even bring myself to look at my scottrade site for fear that my 2k dollars of investments are now worth less than 1k. Because I am pretty sure that that is what has happened. fucking economy and fucking pieces of shit credit crisis.

i am pissed at JVC. they only give us 70 dollars a month per person for food. Okay, great. So it goes up with inflation, right? No. its been the same since the late 80's. Okay, well, recently, since the price of staples is subject to inflationary pressures, is anyone doing anything about in the JVC office? no! we're suffering right along with the rest of the poor people!

EXCEPT WE'RE NOT!!!! Because poor people have credit cards. Because poor people just spend spend spend and don't have to do anything about it, just paying their minimum balance, until, oh my god, what happened? credit card companies aren't earning the same amount that they're spending because poor people can't actually pay the money they owe, because the money never existed, and oh my god, WHAT? a credit crisis!? SHOCKING!!

so, jvc, give us a fucking credit card, in your name, so that we can spend hundreds of dollars and only pay the ten dollar minimum balance, because i want to live in solidarity with poor people and contribute to the freaking credit crisis like all the other people out there. AND I WANT MY QUIZNOS. AND CHIPOTLE.


*disclaimer*

I know the current crisis has not only been caused by credit card companies. However, the same basic principle applies to the mortgage lenders, preying on poor people.

texans are crazy

i've been engaging in political debate via email with my uncle, and man, it is nuts. I get all these crazy claims out of left field about how liberals are the root of all evil and that they are going to turn america into a degenerate nation full of crazies who want to kill God. its really nuts. I'm like, where does he get this stuff from? i can barely even have a conversation with him, i'm too "liberal". and i'm not even a "liberal" !!

classification of parties is really detrimental. i'd forgotten how conservative texans feel about liberals, it is upsetting. I'm like, didn't you go to college? did you learn nothing?

on the other hand,
this is awesome
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sdo/566171148.html

I've been hearing so much about hillary and barack and politics in general lately that I am just dying for some normal every day hilarity. So the cat thing is hilARIOUS.

I started my second job at Sullivan's yesterday. The other hostess reminds me sooo much of Danielle, its crazy. Skin tone, hair color, hair texture, height, eyes, everything. Facial expressions, manner of speaking, all the same.

this second job stuff is sweet. I dont understand why everyone who doesnt have a family and only has one 9-5 job doesnt get another one. Maybe its because we dont have cable. Or regular TV, at that. So we (I) come hom eat 530, go to the gym, home by 7, and then theres five hours of sitting around, doing nothing, hanging with the roomies. Gets SOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDDDD.

and now, our internet provider is gone! JGOODMAN, who we were "sharing" wireless internet with, has mysteriously disappeared from the list of available network providers. Its been gone for over a week now. Either hes on vacation and his connection got screwed up or he canceled his internet service. I hope hope hope hes on vacay.

And I just finished the last episode of season 4 of entourage (on the hard drive), and those mother effers arent coming out with season five in june like originally planned but instead, in AUGUST because the greedy corporate b-stards took so long to give the writers their money.

so now i have like six episodes of Weeds left to tide me over until....when...august? september? i doubt i'll ever pay for cable, but we'll see. I'm thinking about downloading the entire series of arrested development, maybe seinfeld, to last me through till then.

I'M SO POOR! I NEED TO RAISE A LOT OF MONEY!

If you have money, just sitting around, and want to help a poor graduate student who will likely remain not rich for the rest of her life, i could totally use about 100k. 80k would likely cover it if 100 sounds too ridiculous. even small contributions of $5 are welcome.

white privilege

I just read an awful article on white privilege. I hate it when people conflate race with money. Being white doesn't mean you're automatically rich and educated. It just correlates with a higher likelihood of being rich and educated. The color you are at birth certainly doesn't predispose you to anything, except maybe some last vestiges of racism that exist in forgotten neighborhoods in the south.

It's crazy. Of course they get these statistics that say that black people are more likely to be accused of stealing, are more likely to be thrown in jail, are more likely to get the death penalty, are less likely to succeed, are more likely to drop out of high school. It's a culture that unfortunately is predisposed to failure. White people in the same situations perform the same. As do hispanics. And black people born to wealthy, privileged, or middle class black parents perform almost on par with their white counterparts. Its just that it's less likely to be born into privilege if you're black. And of course it's less likely! Desegregation isn't even 50 years old! Black people haven't had access to quality public education -- really, they still don't. Education levels are more closely correlated with future wealth than race and future wealth, when education is controlled for. People tend to marry within their own classes, to people who speak the same as them, act the same as them, and look the same, which is why black people tend to marry black people and have black children in black ghettos.

The segregation of black people in America created an environment in which they were left to create their own culture. They weren't allowed to interact with upper class whites. So they created their own languages and customs in a closed off environment. And after desegregation, it wasn't as though black parents were going to send their kids off to college. Even white people who haven't had a college education aren't likely to send their white children off to college. So it was more difficult for black people to succeed initially, and this has trickled down over the last 50 years to help create a cyclical culture of not-succeeding. (Our sucky public education system has also added to this)

It has,after all, only been 50 years. It is difficult to completely transform the values and habits of your grandparents over this time period. These kids eschew college, as their gradnparents never went, and nobody at school is telling them to go. So they grow up, surrounded by wealth, have nothing, and steal. Everyone else steals. Its normal. But they are marked, by their manner of speaking, their clothing, their names, their walk. It is so clear who is a black man or woman from the ghetto. And they are discriminated against. I am not contesting this.

But I also say that if you take a white person, and you give them a gold tooth, dredlocks, an ebonic accent, a "black" swagger, and an unusual name, they will be discriminated against in exactly the same way.

It is culture that is discriminated against. Some dumbasses are still afflicted by pure racism, but the majority of America is simply guilty of being distrustful of another culture with a strong history of crime. The color of your skin is a minor player in this discourse. Education levels, culture, and wealth are the true factors, and it is a disappointing, temporary reality that skin color is strongly correlated (though not causal!!!!!!!!) with a lifetime of failure.