Idiot Parade

J and I love Golden Retrievers. He’s wanted one for a while, and we both know that I’m going to need a companion when he is in basic and when he deploys.

A lovely family had to part with one of their puppies and put an ad in the church classifieds for a six month old, AKC, golden.

Internet, meet Molly Malone O’Connor!

She’s very well behaved, very hyper, but expectedly so. She knows to sit and give a paw, but there’s still a little housebreaking that needs to be done.

She is just what our family needed. Stay tuned for the amazing adventures of the Molly dog!

I’ve been waiting to write about this, both because it falls right next to the line of Stuff I Will Not Publish Online, and because the subject makes me incredibly nervous. However, I am choosing to embrace the recent changes I am going through and hope that I don’t lose people because of it.

Anyone who has known me for a while knows that the subject of religion gets me heated. I grew up in a very conservative area, and the majortity of the Christians I knew were not nice people. I found the churches out there to be extremely focused on monetary gain. Most of the humiliation I suffered in school was from kids my age who considered themselves to be very close to God. I was raised in an agnostic household. Needless to say, my viewpoint was a litte influenced. Many of my past blog posts have been quite adament about the stupidity of religion, and at times, I still feel that way. I still hold close to my heart something that my dad would quote: religion is a defense against a religious experience. However, over the last several months, my attitude towards religion has changed drastically.

I have been going to church every Sunday. I love it. I look forward to it. I have met Christians that actually believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ and live with their hearts and minds open. That kind of spirituality is something I have wanted for a very long time. Right now, I consider myself to be a Christian, with a little bit of Wicca thrown in.

I’m not going to go into detail about what exactly I am putting my faith in, because that is between myself and God. But, yes, I believe Jesus. And I won’t say anything else about it unless someone decides to ask.

Because the question has been asked so many times, no, J did not make me do this, nor has he ever asked or pressured me to. Of course he had some influence; we are all influenced by people in our lives. My family influenced me with their ideas too. But I didn’t do anything for them in an effort to make them like or love me more. The same goes for this situation. This is a choice I’ve wanted to make for a while, long before I met J; I just needed the right environment. I didn’t feel safe making the decision on my own. J has given me more love and support in this than he knows, and he understands that I struggle because of my past dealings with “Christians”. But, in the end, we both know that I have chosen this path. When I go to church or when I pray, it is because I want to. When I feel that I am ready to be baptized, that will be entirely my choice as well.

I am not crazy. I’m not going to start speaking in tongues, and I’m not going to start proclaiming the End of Days or say that homosexuality is wrong. I have the same moral code and love for logic and science that I’ve always had. It’s just in a different context now…and I like who I am because of it. I like me more than I ever have.

If this completely freaks you out, fine. If you’re disappointed in me or you’re proud of me, that’s fine as well. I’ve been anticipating some fallout, some of which I’ve already dealt with, and I think I’m prepared. It just didn’t seem fair to hide this vital part of myself when I make a habit out of being personal via the internet.

I started this post when I was bawling my eyes out, completely incoherent. Not the best way to approach an entry.

It’s a fairly short story. The new Fame soundtrack has been playing a lot and it made me nostalgic for my TADW days, when we were performing our own Fame medley. I looked for some videos on YouTube…the only ones on there were recorded after I left the program (no surprise), but I happily recognized a few faces. That’s when I started looking for pictures of Sam. I have two, but the memories are slipping against my will, and I thought that maybe one of our friends or his sister may have uploaded something. My Google image search gave me a hit called Zombie Sam Loeb. There’s a site (I will not list it because I have no wish to ever see it again; if you really want to see what I’m referring to, I’m sure you can find it on your own) that flames movies, television shows, and graphic novel. Jeph Loeb comics take quite a beating, and you know what, that’s fine. I love Jeph as a person, always have, and I love his writing, but I don’t expect everyone to agree. These guys hate his work with a fiery passion, whatever. But at the end of a couple critiques….a picture of Sam is featured. One drawn over in MS Paint to resemble a crappy zombie, and a paragraph is offered in what is supposed to be Sam’s voice.

It’s….it’s awful.

I saw it. Blinked in disbelief. Cried till I nearly vomited. Sat down and wrote the site managers a very polite email explaining why I feel that feature is wrong. Repeated step three until a friend talked me down. Thank you, Kim.

The idea is moronic. The execution of the idea is even more so. It should be laughable, it’s so bad. I might laugh…if I hadn’t been through it all. That I loved him and that he died was bad enough, and it has taken years for me to cope with that. That a group of critics who didn’t even know him would so carelessly desecrate his memory without any pause or hesitation from the fleeting thought of common decency……that hurt me in a way I didn’t know existed. And maybe it shouldn’t have. I don’t know them. They can’t take anything away from me or cheapen my experiences.

Bullshit. They mock my pain. They mock his family’s pain. It is mean and it is cruel, and…and. And I have nothing else to say. That’s it, really. Some bullies on the internet made me cry. Damn them.

Putting on another movie. Sleep is not happening tonight.

I was informed that I am required to pimp the following website:

WALE: What A Lame Excuse

A friend of mine (actually an ex, but we won’t hold that against him) came up with this idea to post all of the lame crap people come up with when they don’t want to be held accountable. He works as a video slave, so he gets some gems, let me tell you. I think it’s funny as hell, in a headdesk-facepalm sort of way. If you need a chuckle, go ahead and check it out!

I know how desperate things are out there right now. As a teaching student, I constantly get to hear about and witness job shortages. Talented professors are getting laid off and it sucks. Badly. But the magnitude of this recession didn’t really hit me until yesterday.

I received an email conformation from In-n-Out in August, informing me that my interview would be on September 14. I could arrive anywhere between 9 am and 4 pm, and that people would be seen on a first-come, first serve basis. I planned to get there about quarter to 9. I mean, it’s a fast food place; how many people could possibly show up especially that early?

J tried to tell me how massive this thing was. He says he did, anyway. I drove to that interview knowing that interviews are going on all week, and therefore expecting the lobby (we were told to come to the Ambassador Hotel) to be filled with thirty to fifty people, tops.

When I saw my interviewer, after almost three hours of standing in the line that wrapped around the entire hotel and then some, he informed me that four thousand applications had been submitted for forty available positions, and that every applicant would be interviewed, in the interest of fairness. We’ll skip the part where I feel that’s incredibly unfair, because I’m sure there are people out of those four thousand that are either under or over-qualified…such as the man behind me in line who graduated from the International Culinary School at the Art Institutes. Actually, no, let’s stay on that for a second. There were probably a thousand people waiting in line with me yesterday morning, and people like that showed up. Forty-year-old women. Men with briefcases. I don’t begrudge them anything; we all need to make a living. But that is just so sad. That people like that have to try for a one-in-a-hundred shot at a burger joint job because there is nothing else.

So, essentially, I waited until almost noon and got a sunburn for a three minute conversation where some guy asked me about myself. That was the whole interview. Nothing about the job. Just ‘oh, you’re from SCV? Cool, I’m from Granada Hills’. That kind of crap. I know I won’t get the job, and maybe that’s okay. I need something soon, but there are obviously people way more desperate than I am. I wasn’t laid off, I don’t have a mortgage or kids to feed. Hollywood Video is hiring next month, Bath and Body Works is hiring now, I have an application for Starbucks and an Asian restaurant down the street.

I just can’t believe how insane this whole thing is.

My finals are over and I am finally allowed to be sick .

I’ll probably still be an idiot and go to the gym tonight, because a sore throat has nothing to do with weight lifting, but we’ll see.

I have planned and mickey-moused and wormed my way through every last inch of the Cal State LA schedule of classes, and I have finally found a sure-fire way to get my last eight classes in so I can graduate at the end of Spring Quarter (for anyone who remembers that I have a list of 43 things on the right side bar, that means #4 could be checked off the list). This seems reasonable. Two years in a junior college, two at a university, exactly how I wanted it to be.

Until, of course, they decide to change everything.

They might not. And unicorns that poop glitter might live in the clouds, too.

I wouldn’t be so concerned about it, except now, CSULA has this amazing thing going on called furloughs (all the flyers on campus spell it ‘furlows’. Remove head from sphincter, then type.) Six days of unpaid leave for all faculty members. Most of my classes are two days a week. That equals seven weeks of instruction instead of the standard ten. For the couple classes I need that are once a week? Who knows if anyone will even bother teaching them.

So, we, as students, are losing (presumably) valuable weeks of instruction, which means we’re literally paying more for a hell of a lot less. Student fees went up yet again, 25%, I believe.

Santa, I’ve been very good this year. For Christmas, please bring California a halfway decent education budget?

Anyway. J has been taking very good care of me while I’ve been sick and gross. He makes me tea and doesn’t take my kills on Gears of War 2. Who could ask for anything more?

Oh, if anyone else is sick and gross too, I swear by the night-time Tylenol cold multi-symptom, the new-ish one that has the little honey stick and says ‘warming’. I couldn’t sleep last night, so I watched 10 Things I Hate About You, wrote a couple songs, and then remembered that I have some of that wonderful concoction in our medicine cabinet. Four tablespoons of that (yes, that is two too many) and I was out like a very warm and happy light. Fair warning for those crawling over significant others to get back to your designated sleeping place: you might get elbowed/kneed in the face. Just sayin.

Total left turn. On a more somber note, a boy I knew passed away this week. The details on the how are still fuzzy. I can’t really call him a boy, he was 30 when I met him, but he never really struck me as an adult. We met last year when I was in Massachusetts for my eldest niece’s high school graduation. We went out a couple times around Boston and had a little fling…it was fairly innocent and very sweet. When he took my to the train station the last time, he asked me to call when I got back to the west coast. I said I would. I never intended to. I liked what we had that one week, and it would have never been anything more than that. I feared that if we had tried to maintain a friendship, it would become awkward and strained. I do no regret that decision at all. It ensured that all of my memories of Lucas would be very fond ones. I only hope that he didn’t feel slighted by my decision, because that certainly wasn’t my intention….though considering he never called me either, I think it might be safe to assume that we had the same mind about the situation.

Don’t want to end on that note. One facebook click led to another, and Sins o’ the Flesh, the Los Angeles Rocky Horror cast, has a new Trixie. (Aside, a couple things about SotF. Good cast. Awesome cast, in fact, these people are frigging accurate and, more importantly, funny. The security team rocks my socks, too. I’ll never go back there [except maybe for Clue, because I've still never seen that with a shadow-cast] but if you’ve never been to a live Rocky Horror Picture Show, SotF is the cast to see. Just don’t date them. The single ones are single for very good reasons. Except maybe for Wynn. He’s pretty cool. End of aside.) I mention this only because back in the day, when I was a regular attendee, the role of Trixie was still open, and I was seriously considering auditioning. There are brief moments where I wish I had gone through with it, because I think it would have gone a long way towards improving how I perceive my body. But then I remember that stripping in front of people who have already seen me somewhat naked (I was a ’sheet slut’ one night, no I didn’t sleep with the whole freaking cast. Geez.) is much different than stripping every other weekend for Rocky-obsessed tards, which includes subgroups such as: pre-pubescent tards, over-30 tards, and female tards that are into other female tards only when intoxicated. I remember this, and the world makes sense once again.

I mentioned my 43 list earlier, and I’m on my way to accomplishing one more thing: #5–lose ten pounds. Last Monday, I was 135. Yesterday morning, I weighed in at 132. At that rate, provided I get better by tomorrow (I will, I will!), I’ll make 125 in a little over three weeks. I don’t intend to lose any more after that; I could and still be healthy, but then I would have to say goodbye to certain girl-parts that I’m very fond of. Yay for reaching goals! As of today, I’m also starting on #35–meditate daily. I think this will be very good for me. I’m hoping to get J in on it as well.

That’s all for now. I’d like to go work out (carefully) tonight or tomorrow morning, so I’m going to take a much needed nap.