What's for Dinner?

Today I was at Target doing some shopping (face wash, shampoo and the like) and overheard an interesting conversation taking place in the aisle next to me. Later, I would conspicuously walk past to discover a mother her elementary-aged son. Here is their conversation:

Mom: So, what do you think we should have for dinner tonight?
Boy: Uh, I don't care. But, whatever we have, can we put head cheese on it?!?
Mom: What?
Boy: That's gross isn't it. Do you know what head cheese is? It has brains and animal faces in it!


This was pretty much the cutest conversation I had heard all day. It's nice to see the young kids developing a sense of sarcasm.

Harking back to more carefree days

On enjoying water sports:
There are so many great things to do in the water at devil's lake. The first, quite obviously, is swimming at the beach. This is a good time to play some sort of made-up game involving standard beach activities such as splashing, swimming and the like. Secondly, and thus more dangerous, comes the 20 minute hike out to what our annual camping group has fondly named "the jumping rock." There's nothing quite like blindly jumping off a rock that is 25 feet high into waters of unknown depths. Points are awarded for style and precision. The winner is generally whoever can do at least two flips before hitting the water (since we are obviously an amateur cliff-diving team). Lastly, there is the annually occurring "great idea" to swim across the lake. Keeping in mind that we've been drunk for about 6 hours by the time we make it out to the jumping rock and that we did not hike out to that rock without a backpack full of beers and a few gallon jugs of wop, this always ends up being a poor choice on the part of all participants. Fortunately, someone has inevitably swam out towards victory assisted by a beach ball or other flotation device and upon reaching the halfway point (as indicated when one's shoulder is in line with the canoe rack on the north shore), becomes the best friend of all other swimmers. The drunken group desperately clings to the beach ball, inflatable alligator, etc. and slowly drifts back to shore.

If this sounds like a "sad choice" or better still, an "unsafe choice," it's because it is. But really, is there any other way to become a shining example for the reason they tell you to stay away from water when drinking?? I think not. Wouldn't it be wonderful to go down in infamy (forever mentioned as "that guy who drowned at the lake" in the behavioral-consequence stories we tell our teenagers)?
Someday, one of us will drown and the rest of us will be chastised as idiots who thought it was a good idea to swim across a lake after drinking.

Life should be fun while it lasts.

I need to get out more

More often than one might think, I find myself in an interesting emotional exchange with someone else characterized by one or more of the following:

a. codependence
b. drunken and dramatic conversations
c. consistently inconsistent communication initiated almost exclusively when some problem has arisen
d. renounciations of friendship followed quickly by pleas to reengage
e. awkward confessions (of any sort)
f. complete and utter failure surrounding the concept of reciprocity

All of these particular friends have one thing in common - the fact that at some point, some version of the following statement has been uttered...
"You understand me like no one else can. I feel like I can talk to you. You're great."

That's nice. That's wonderful, I imagine. Here is where my problem with this series of men surfaces::

If I am so great and/or important to these people, why don't/can't/won't they act like it?

Are we friends because I genuinely understand these people or just because I'll sit down and listen? Do I need someone to need me so much that I will put up with this? Again and again? Is this phenomenon, for the most part, my own doing? Are all of these men really my friends, or am I just a glorified counselor? Am I destined to relive this somewhat pathetic codependent exchange with every interesting guy I meet?

I have been perplexed for years.
Feel free to submit answers.

Think About It

I think my new life philosophy will involve expecting disappointment (mostly from people like Tim) instead of being surprised when it crawls out of the woodwork. Who needs optimism when I can save my sanity instead?

Didn't you see my blinker?

This post is well overdue but I've been busy sleeping all day and critiquing whiskey all night.

Last Wednesday, Kyle and I were involved in a car accident while attempting to get to Atwater Beach at 1:30am. It was absolutely not our fault and Kyle was certainly not drunk driving. In fact, the young lady at fault (and drunk driving) was trying to make a left turn across three lanes of traffic, turning right into the side of our vehicle in the intersection at Water and Wells.

This woman did not apologize, but instead insisted that this accident was somehow our fault, beginning an ordeal that would involve four cop cars and two separate calls to 911.

#1 - "My blinker was on....Until I flicked it off" - said because it was our fault for not seeing that her blinker was on (or had she flicked it off?). It certainly was not her fault for failing to notice an ENTIRE car.
#2 - "I will punch you in the face!" - said to me after I started waving my finger, asking this girl to give ANY scenario in which this accident was not her fault. The other passengers in the vehicle asserted her right to punch me in the face at which point Kyle calmed the situation. Later, this young lady would tell the police that I threatened her and she passively and politely stepped to the side
#3 - "Aw, naw. That was there already" - said to the police about the impacted passenger side of our car immediately after said police found the missing pieces of the aforementioned car in the middle of the intersection. In response to this statement the cop wondered how someone driving so attentively as to notice damage to the car next to them, might, then forget that car existed seconds later until colliding with it.

there were others, too. But I am tired.

goodnight.

KITTY PORN ROCKS.

the visible spectrum

Today marked an intriguing point in my research-based Internet romance with Indiana-Man. In some sort of relational milestone, Indiana-Man called me for the first time since our online correspondence began.

I was certain that by actually talking to this man I might prove myself wrong. I would conclude that you could not just judge someone by grammar alone. Perhaps underneath all those misplaced and misspelled words there was a charming and engaging personality.

Then I remembered why optimism is just not for me.

You would think (at least I would think) that it is not that hard to maintain a certain level of intelligence over the phone, but that is, apparently, not the case. During the course of our conversation, this man proved what his poor grammar already had me suspecting. He was the owner of an extremely average mind.

In my 15-minute dialogue with Indiana-man, he managed to first spend ten minutes telling me about the weather in Indiana and inquiring as to the weather in Wisconsin. My first real indicator that something might be awry came when, in the midst of this weather related banter, he became unsure as to the location of Wisconsin. Keeping in mind that he has lived in Indiana all his life, this seemed like a red flag.

Attempting to move the conversation away from whether or not it might rain tomorrow, I told him that I was teaching my kids about light and colors. Anyone who has ever seen The Magic School Bus (or taken some sort of science class, ever) knows why we see blue or green when we look at the sky or grass. However, even after explaining the idea of a visible spectrum of light and then further complicating things with pesky concepts like reflection, he still couldn't get it. This could just be me being pretentious again, but I feel this is the sort of knowledge even the average person has.

Welcome to my case study into the sub-average mind. It begins immediately after Indiana-man poses this challenging series of questions:

"What colors make green? Isn't it blue and purple? Is it blue and purple? Blue and red? Or doesn't something make orange too?"

In the morning, before work

There are a lot of days during which I find waking up to be overrated.

Listen to me bitch, bitch

So I've been thinking about some things lately. I'm in this addiction seminar where I feel like the people around me are just idiots. I mean, there are certain things that I think people should know. Now I feel like I'm generally justified in pointing out their stupidity. Like the girl who didn't know what an abstract at the beginning of an article was. Or the stupid kid who thought Mother Theresa was addicted to charity.

However, there are quite a few things that I'm assuming not everyone in the world knows. I guess I just expect people to know a lot about the things I'm interested in and expect them not to make stupid comments that upset me about these topics. Then I got to thinking and realized that maybe I'm just that weird girl. You know the one, the kid in your class that knows a lot about seemingly random things such as the rave culture or the intricate details of pretty much every theory ever written on sexual offenders. I mean, aren't these important things that people should know about? Everyone should have a working knowledge of these issues, and if you don't then you better get to reading so we can talk intelligently. Maybe I'm just a bitch. Okay, perhaps that's overkill, but this is something that has made me completely frustrated this week. I mean, I'm just sayin' is all....

Field Research?

I have come to the realization that my "internet romance" is only a case study of the average mind. After some soul-searching, I have realized that I cannot possibly date the vast majority of people I see on the street (or e-mail in Indiana). I can only connect with an extraordinary mind. This realization led me to ponder my pursuit of my previously assigned match-made-in-heaven.

The community college-educated* 25 year old man from Indiana, as you can tell from my previous posts, is far from extraordinary. After reading some of our correspondences aloud to Mike (emphasizing the misuse of they're/their, etc.), the two of us decided that Indiana-man was anything but my match made in heaven.

But we all knew this from the start.

There is only one reason for sustaining my dialogue with this man. Indiana-man is a case study of the type of man I would never date ... Could never date. I'm simply exploring his mind. Our (hour?/are?) romance is just an experiment.

Does he know this? Of course not. He thinks I'm that girl who's trying to be smart by using big words. Well, you know what, "incarceration" isn't that big of a word. And while he does know who Kant was**, his community college philosophy class just can't stack up to my quality Jesuit education.


*"Remember, Kant was a philosopher" began one reply, but apparently Kant's problem is that he couldn't decide if he was a libertarian or a determinist

**really, just see the previous footnote

Sign Language

I've been sick for what seems like forever and today could barely talk. This initially seemed like it could pose problems when trying to work with all the kindergartners at my school. However, I found myself with a certain respect for the institution as I was allowed to hang out with all the kids who sign instead of "using their words." I've been picking up on the signing for the past year and it was a blast to hang out without talking. I think drunk people should be forced to use this skill, even if their motor skills are for shit.

Later, I came home to my roommate, Mikey P, attempting to do some sign language of his own. Here is our conversation - I'm sure someone can identify with this:

Mike: So what? You and him are like (insert subtle and nondescript movement of right hand)?
Me: Are we what?
Mike: You know - (hand movements)
Me: What are you even talking about? What is this (hand movement) supposed to mean?
Mike: I don't know, I thought maybe you knew. But, seriously, how are things between you two?

My blog has become somewhat mundane. I guess I'll wait for something interesting / funny / disgusting to occur and then it will be the most fascinating and widely read account of a boring college student's life EVER.

My Mental Health Soapbox

As a preface to this post, I would like to position myself as the kind of person that gets in arguments with her professors on a relatively frequent basis. For instance, recently I found myself in a steamed debate in which I started citing current research on sex offender typology after somone made a comment assuming that homosexuals are a threat to our children and that any young boys who are molested are the victims of homosexuals. Now that's just crazy. I mean, consider Groth's research on the fixated or regressed molester. Or even look at the general typology of pedophilia vs situational abuse.

Maybe the fact is I'm just creepy because I feel like this is something everyone should know. As if a working knowledge of sexual abuse should be common sense.

ANYWAY
Today, in my criminal violence in America class, Dr. K was discussing the nature of "the offender." Now, keeping in mind that offender refers to many people from many walks of life, I found it quite fascinating when he pulled this explanation for criminality out of all possible others:

"You see, these people are fine one minute and the next minute they snap. I mean, there's a new word out there - bipolar. We just see these criminals and they're bipolar. Bipolar people have a tendency to fly off the handle and when they do, they commit these violent crimes"

And the only thing I could think about while raising my hand, completely aware that the other 60 people in the class have diligently written down that bipolar people commit crimes, was Excuse me, What? Which is what I said when called upon, leading to a five minute rant by myself fondly known as my mental health soap box.

Is this so wrong?