No Such Thing As Moderation!

Ah coffee. Many a blogger has, I'm sure, expressed his or her love of this luscious drink. The way it pulls one from the dead of sleep to the light of day so easily. Drink it black, milky, or sweet, it still works.

Except it no longer works on me. About the only thing coffee does to me anymore is keep me from being caffeine deprived. No bueno. Not at all. The last time I went a whole morning without coffee, though I had had a good night's sleep, I felt like a zombie. My whole body sagged towards the floor as my head pounded and my jaw slackened. The peeps I was with sat chatting away cheerily, for they are not slaves to caffeine addiction. Eventually one of them noticed and mentioned that we ought to get moving, and I got what I needed.

These days drinking a cup of coffee does not wake me up. It's more like it used to be, before I ever started drinking it. You know, you wake up, you're tired, you go to work or school or whatever. I may as well not even be drinking it, as it does nothing. It just perpetuates the need.

And yet...how wonderful that first cup, how refreshing the second. How nice it is, if someone asks you, "Would you like to get a cup of coffee with me?" to say yes (unless you find that person utterly repulsive). How adventuresome one feels to try a new flavor for the first time and find that it exceeds all flavors before it. The variations of caffeinated beverages rise high above me in the grocery store: coffee, espresso, black tea, chai tea...

And how delightful it is to have a cup of milky, unsweetened coffee with sugary cereal, or a pastry, or waffles, in the morning. How satisfying. So much so that I'm tempted to go right back to bed.

I am so. fucking. tired. Hook me up an IV of pure caffeine, please, kthxbi.

Essay Burn Out, ese

Somehow it completely went past me that Monday was 4/20. And now it's Wednesday. Fuck! Well, next year, I suppose.

Essay's come along a bit. Almost at the required amount of pages. Once I get to that point, I don't know if I'll have the energy or the motivation to revise and edit. Fuuuuck, man. I don't want to be severely ridiculed by a crazy power-trippin hippie! C'est la vie, je pense. Je vais trouver mes yeux, monsieur!

I am le tired.

Where is that nice pretty girl with the flowers now?

Why They Hate Bikers

I finally got ahold of a good bike a few days ago. She's a blue beaut! I got the trappings today, and I'm starting to get my balance. My roommate took me to a bike shop near our house. I ended up getting in front of her, which, in retrospect, was a terrible idea, because I was thinking of a completely different bike shop. Imagine my state of mind as I came to the fateful and frightfully busy intersection after a long, hot day serving ice cream and fucking sandwiches. Intersections with stoplights are awful when one is still figuring out how to stop without falling over. I had to make a giant left turn from the far right side of the road through late afternoon traffic. The light said go, but by going I cut a swathe bigger than a biker should, and according to my roommate, cars had to swerve out of my way. Once committing this obnoxious act, I continued to pedal hard down the block, until I slowed enough at the next light to see if she was behind me. Of course she was nowhere in sight, so I hauled my dumb ass up onto the sidewalk to get my phone and regain contact with her. After that, I had to walk my blue beauty bike back up the block to the place I had just blazed through where she was waiting at the bike shop itself. The guy behind the counter had seen the whole thing, so I felt like a total ass. But he seemed to think I was pretty groovy, which was all right, I guess. I felt like even more of an ass when my roomie's friend (who is an avid biker) emailed me wondering why I tried to kill myself.

If you see a biker do something stupid, he or she might either simply be an asshole and/or a total fucking n00b. Have a heart, though. I am pretty sorry to all those drivers I probably pissed off, and I hope they don't beat the shit out of me if ever we cross paths again.

Chill Out, Man, Like, Just Chill.

Mother of GOOODDDD. I absolutely hate stressing about school. Unfortunately, I've got an extremely tempermental teacher to please with a bangin' essay that I haven't even finished researching. It'll be shit. Citations, fuck the lot of them! Citing actual page numbers is the fucking worst! It's like I'm supposed to prove I actually read my sources or something. Honestly, as long as I'm not plagiarizing and the teacher knows what sources I used, what does it matter which sentence of which paragraph of which page of which chapter of which book by which author published by which company in what city in what year in the history of the goddamn universe I am getting it from?? It only gives me more cause to stress the fuck out. When I have to write an essay that's actually good, I usually fail. And an annotated bibliography! This man is mad, and determined to drive ME to madness! It's like he expects me to work hard for a degree, or something.

This is giving me a brain-bleedy bit in the cortex that is cerebral and located in the northern hemiphere of my body. Fuck. And they wonder why us young'uns are driven to drugs.

Damn This Bike Town

Apparently that Amazon thing I was talking about is getting resolved, so that's cool.

In more personal news, I am trying to get a decent bike. To do this, I might have to travel far away, but the deals are better out of town, apparently. I shall wish myself luck.

Boycott Amazon!

It looks like the Internet is being held on tighter and tighter reins these days. Amazon.com has "removed the sales ranks of any books deemed too 'adult' for general audiences. This includes anything with LGBTQ content." I found this out on this webcomic artist's livejournal: http://rosalarian.livejournal.com/253096.html

What this means is that "adult" books won't show up in searches. There are plenty of odd things about all this, things that just don't add up, but I'd only be repeating the aforementioned artist's words when you could easily check out her entry on this subject. Amazon.com appears to be showing very homophobic tendencies with this new rule, especially since plenty of books with erotic hetero content are still easily found through the search engine.

What a bunch of bullshit!

"Oh darling...please believe me, I'll never make it alone.."

This person I served today irritated me so much that I forgot to make sure she left before I started bitching about her to one of my coworkers. Unfortunately, she was still there. She was sitting far enough away that she possibly might not have heard me, though I was speaking just loudly enough. Plus when I glanced at her a few times after realizing my mistake, I'm pretty sure she was glaring at me. Ai me. Thank god she left shortly after finishing her food, though I wished she would've left sooner. I'm not sorry for getting irritated, but I felt pretty bad that she probably heard what I said.

My floor is currently strewn with books on feminism. I decided to focus on aspects of feminism beyond the white middle-class bra-burning Amazons. I also have to finish my notans for art class.

I have to wonder if I'll ever catch up on sleep. Signs seem to be saying no.

Writing a Paper is HARD wtf

WHAT THE CHRIST.

I'm trying to do research on American feminism and various feminist theories, but I can't even get through the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article.

Here's the basics:
-Feminists in general are not just white, hairy, bra-burning Amazons who eat men for breakfast.
-Feminism = supporting equality. As in, everyone included. Feminists who focus only on raising women above men are on their own path that basically means to put men in women's traditional role, rather than raise women to men's status. (Does that make sense?)
-It's not only white middle-class women who are feminists. It's just that women of other races and social classes have their own type of feminism that includes racial and social equality more prominantly.
-Roughly three waves of feminism: The suffragettes; the radicalists(?); the moderns ('90s to now) Each wave came out of different events going on (Civil War [racial equality], Vietnam War [civil rights movement, etc.], something else)
-Women spend so much time in the ranks of other movements toward equality that they started to wonder when their turn would come.
-Radical feminists have been mocked repeatedly for their neverending attempts to gain equality, attempts which have often been viewed as crazy (inability of men to understand?) or too out there. These are the ones who give feminism a bad name and make even modern women protest loudly at the accusation of being a feminist. (Note to self: Find out what those crazy bitches did)

I need like eight to ten pages of this stuff, except padded with facts and you know, all that legit stuff. Like citations. My roommate actually does have a fuckton of these books though. Awesome. I feel like I have a little more guidance now. I guess the thing about a research paper is figuring out what one needs to find out. I need to find accounts of feminists who did crazy shit that was actually fucking righteous and see if I can figure out why everyone thinks it was just crazy shit.

Oh my god I'm going to die. D:

Ten Kinds of Apeshit

I don't know about anybody else, but I hate getting friend requests on Facebook from people I barely know. Or people I'm not even friends with. Or people I met once, while drunk. It's not like I use it to actually keep in touch with them. They just sit there on my friends' list, updating their statuses with things I don't care about, or uploading more photos I'm never going to look at. Should I be flattered that I made enough of an impression that they are willing to call me their friend? Even if it's only online? Shit no. One time this girl I glimpsed occasionally back in the days of high school tried to friend me, and I was like, WTF, bitch, please. I didn't even know she knew my name. I know I didn't know her name until I saw her photo. That's a lot of know's. Shit. It's not Myspace, people. I have one of those too, but I'm not motivated enough to comb through the masses of tiny pictures to find strangers to friend. I don't care that I look like a loser with only 11 friends, 3 of whom are bands. At least I know all the ones personally who aren't bands.

The Facebook thing bugs me in particular because I use fb like an extended version of email. Seriously, the only people who email me anymore are my mom and my school. Fb's got funny pictures to look at, and it's relatively easy to find people (it's not stalking if it's easy). Plus, goshdarnit, those little status updates are just so informative! Anyway, I don't use fb to make friends, just keep in touch with them. I mean the friends I like. Not the friends who think we're friends because we know the same people or spoke for a few minutes at some party.

I went grocery shopping last night for the first time in months. It was quite an experience. Of course, I also discovered that the place on the corner has some of the same stuff for a lot cheaper. But I only found that out today. At any rate, there's something really gratifying about knowing that I already have food I can eat, and I don't have to go a whole two blocks to buy a burrito or something. Saves money, I've heard. Mostly I got breakfast stuff, even though I get breakfast at work like four or five days a week. Well... whatever.

Oh, and, holy balls, they sell like ten kinds of cookies at the corner store! I'm'a go apeshit all over that shit.

Summary of Thoughts in the Last Three Minutes

This crazy woman came in today. I can never understand what she says, and I don't think she can either. She was looking over the counter trying to ask me and my coworker what we were making and completely misunderstanding.

Spring break is this week. What the fuck am I supposed to do with two days of neither work nor school? I guess I could do homework. Or dick around on the Internet. Or sleep. Or eat. Totally procrastinate, like everyone else. Who wants to do research for a paper on a day off? Luckily one of my roommates has a bunch of books relating to the subject I'm doing, so I probably won't have to go to the library. Hopefully.

We were coming home on the bus tonight and these guys all got on together. Holy god, they must have bathed repeatedly in some ritual convoluted cleansing to reek that much of cologne. Perfume is one thing, in moderate doses, but cologne is very easily taken advantage of. I don't know why, either. I always prefer my men to smell like men, not poncey assholes. I admit, there are men who can pull off a bit of manufactured scent, but the rest who attempt it fail.

So why can't Chuck Palahniuk write anything as good as Fight Club? I've read all his other fiction (except Survivor, for some reason) and it always falls short, like he's using the exact same formula, but really reaching when it comes to subject matter. Haunted came close, but none really made my little wheels turn. Many would disagree with me on this issue, but c'moooon. Fight Club just has that something that hits you and makes you see things and feel things and taste the blood from the hole in your cheek.

Flower Children

There are times when I genuinely love this city and it almost seems to love me back. You know, like it was sentient or something.

This morning I was walking through the park and this girl came up to me and presented me with a bouquet of flowers the color of a sunset. My eyes were burning from exhaustion and pollen, my body was weighted down by ten kinds of fatigue, but I hope somehow I conveyed to her my appreciation. I felt somewhat renewed. By the time I got to work I felt like I just come out of a dream and wanted to crawl back into bed.

For people with more cynicism this all sounds like a bunch of hippie-ass shit, but sometimes I feel too optimistic to be cynical. So nyah.

The real point of this post is this: Thank you, mysterious pretty girl; I hope life doesn't beat you down.

Better Than Livejournal

When I was younger, I though LJ was the shit. I had friends online who were my actual friends in real life who would read my whiny bullshit and comment occasionally. People I didn't see everyday kept in touch like that. It was pretty cool for a while, but eventually I just deleted it, because I realized I wasn't going anywhere with it and only using it as an excuse to revel in my self-pity.

Now I've got a blog. That's got to be better.

Well, I work at this cafe. It's pretty awesome, except when you get dumb people who ask which is small, medium, and large when the cup sizes are right in front of them. Still, I can live with those type of folk as long as the cool type come in too. I never thought I'd enjoy making food for people, even if sometimes I fuck up and they write a nasty review on yelp.com. Yeah, free speech and all that, but these people just don't know the whole story! They come in once, get crappy service and swear never to come back, and tell other people never to come in at all. There aren't a lot of those, but damn, they're harsh. Seriously. Someone once wrote a really long-ass review bitching about how slow and stupid I was, how much the food sucked, etc, etc. My bad, people. People like that make me especially grateful for the nice ones who come in. There's this one guy (actually there's several) who's always really cheerful and tips us a lot. He's like an uncle, a really benevolent one.

School sucks a lot for me right now. I'd rather be making money. But I know people who would kick ten kinds of shit out of me if I up and quit. Plus there's that vague hope that it will benefit me somehow in like twenty years. Because I can actually wait that long. But, jesus christ, teachers are some of the greatest windbags ever born! One of my teachers in particular never stops talking from the time he comes in (late) until the time he is forced to let us go. Even when we're actually supposed to have a class discussion, you know, in which the class dicusses the subject matter, he'll still take the whole thing and run away with it! Holy moly, I thought I was supposed to be expanding my brain and developing my thought processes and shit. What else am I paying for? Oh yeah, a fuckton of books that seem to cost more than tuition itself.

Naturally this sort of thing gives me ample cause to ponder my future. Where am I going? How will my past be instrumental to me later? Am I going to have a houseful of kids? Am I going to become a cultural icon? Which will it be, photography, writing, painting, drawing, or design? Or will it be something else entirely? Will I work in a cafe-type setting for the rest of my life and do freelance work on the side? Is this all there is, and, if so, do I really appreciate it? Probably not, but I guess complete appreciation of one's circumstances comes later, if it ever comes at all.

Things to buy:
-Soap
-Apples
-Rug
-Detergent
-Shoes
-Toothpaste

Not necessarily in that order.