Danielle's blog

Junk Day

Are you ever struck by the idea that you have nothing whatsoever to contribute to society?

That there is no spark in your mind nor fire in your soul, nothing your hands can do that a million other hands cannot, that your very chromosomes are so bland and generic as to be not worth passing on?

Oh. Well I do.

I mean look at me. I'm 21. In human years, that's prime life right there. That's living time. People my age are supposed to be grabbing the torch, by force if necessary, from the previous generation, dreaming up big beautiful dreams and planting them in fertile American soil and climbing up to the top of their big beautiful dream tree so that everyone will see and hear and  the world will be changed.

So what do I have to show for myself?

A cabinet full of video games, many of them un-played. A room full of fake oriental knick-knacks I don't own or want. So many extra pounds on my fat ass I might as well be genderless.

I have some nice grades to my name. That's nice. Grades earned among recovering gang members and recovering teen moms and recovering soldiers and recovering housewives and recovering drop-outs and recovering farm workers and recovering battered women. Almost everyone in my classes is running from or resting from something traumatic. The rest were too goddamn lazy and entitled to do anything worth anything that might risk trauma. It's like a little incubator room from adulthood. I'm sure I fall squarely in the latter group. My point is, my grades don't mean much at all.

My point is, I'm a goddamn English major who {that(who)} can't write. Except vox posts. Which isn't writing. It's narcissism. My point is my head is full of useless facts and theories and but not the aptitude enough to apply any of them to anything. My point is, "I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint."

See that shit right there? That was angst, son. Of the C+ variety.

I have lived in this town for thirteen of my twenty-one years. An easy majority. I am afraid that I am going to stay here, develop alcoholism here, spit out fat little babies here. I am beyond afraid that I am going to die here.

What if you planted your dream seed and you got a potato instead of a tree?

Potty Party!

Yipee!

My attempt to get rid of the exploded confetti eggs in my purse. The bad news: I pretty much failed. The good: Gav now has an exceedingly festive toilet.

EDIT: I realize this makes two potty posts in less than a week. How very Freudian of me.

Vox Hunt: Photo Thursday

Show us the very last picture you took. No cheating!

We Are Prod of 2008!

Go Gavilan College parking lot.

At least it looks like someone tried to smear in a "u" with dirt.

Sociology Quote of the Day!

Ahem:

"In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed of male brains... All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women... recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Without a doubt, there exist some distinguished women, very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads."
                                  --Gustav LeBon, 1879

Thank you Social Darwinism!

Why I Am a Feminist

Had to answer that question for sociology. Here's what I came up with. Kinda lame but seemed like a bloggish kind of thing. Which probably means I shouldn't turn it in. Oh Well. Oh god im so tired please kill me.

I absolutely consider myself a feminist. I feel as though it would be shooting myself in the foot not to. I am a feminist because I am firmly convinced of my humanity. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am just as capable, as clever, as fragile, and as worthy of respect as any of my male counterparts, and I refuse to settle for anything less. Nor will I settle for less for women in my family, for my gay friends and friends of color, or for the women living around the world in oppressive societies I can not begin to imagine coping with.

    I am a feminist because I know that I am more than the sum of my private parts.  Because I love kicking my boyfriend's ass at Mario Kart and hate Bratz Dolls. Because I have ambition and drive and refuse to be constrained by the lifestyle Desperate Housewives is so desperate to sell me. I'm a feminist because I can look around and understand that the world has been run been run by men for the last 2,000 years, and I don't particularly like what they've done with the place, so maybe I'll lend them a hand. I am a feminist because I'll be damned if my little brother or God forbid my future son grows up to believe he can exert his will over another simply by virtue of his sex. And I would sooner die– literally rather die– than live in a world where a pastor I've never met can determine what I'm allowed to do with my body. Feminism was never even a choice for me, it was just a development of things I've known to be true since I was a little girl, and my experiences as I've grown have only served to further cement those beliefs.

QotD: Random Acts of Kindness

What was your random act of kindness today?
Submitted by Cher Cabula.

I chased a little old man so I could give him my grocery cart so he wouldn't have to wrestle with the jammed ones.

A little creepy of me.

Well

That didn't happen.

Scary pee time

At Glenview Elementary School the teachers have to pee in a plywood closet. I am so not even kidding.

Little kids are cute, but I'm glad my time with them is over. I really think I am more suited to older kids.

I guess it's good though because now I appreciate my junior high students more. Aww.

QotD: Why I Blog

Why do you blog?
Submitted by littleduckling.

To remember things, to sort out ideas, to fill time. To pretend I'm some sort of writer, if not in a meaningful capacity. I'm simply not the type of person to keep a physical journal. To stroke my ego. To stake out my little bit of the intarwebs. Because it's good for your brain and spirit and because blogosphere is a funny word.

Although spellcheck tells me it's not a word at all. Neither is spellcheck.

Half-Ass Resolution

So since I have this fucking thing I've decided that I'm going to try and write in it every day. No excuses. Just write anything, as long as it's SOMEthing. I read this article in Scientific American where some fancy pants expert dudes talk about how writing every day makes you like ten billion times more creative in all aspects of your brain: i.e. your poetry improves AND you become a better problem solver.

Bullshit? Perhaps. But why not.

I'm  tired now though. So here are some pictures.

We're Here, We're 12, Get Used to It

One of my junior high kids at Aromas made this. I laughed my ass off.

I'm ready!

Some old dude left this receipt on the counter of the copy center at work just before memorial day weekend. One pocket comb and four mini American flags. He was good to go. This is simultaneously the saddest and cutest thing ever.

Yassah

A worksheet we gave to the first graders today. Math paint by numbers. Racist as shit.

Down the road, not across the street

This was a poem posted to the wall in the room I tutored in at San Juan. I'm not sure if a dick kid was writing this about someone they hate or if some tormented lesbian 7th grader wrote it about herself. If for whatever reason you can't read it:

In the outside,
she is hot,!
She likes boy's,
and she is Cool.

In the inside
She is ugly,
She likes girls,
and she is not cool.

Since this is poetry, I choose to believe the grammar and punctuation fuckery is a deliberate artistic choice. So, snaps to this budding young poet.

And saving the best for last:

This is Bonerkid. The special needs kid I worked with all last week at Aromas. He's not really a sped, per se, but he's got problems. It was my job to hang out with him for my entire shift and try to tutor him in stuff, or at least make sure he didn't attack people on the playground. He was unnaturally attracted to me. He could say and do some pretty awful things, and yet, sometimes he'd be really cool for a little while. If you ever want to experience a maddening combination of frustration and affection, hang out in the special ed classroom for a while.

In this picture Bonerkid is dancing to the Party Bus song on the last day of school. Sadly this does no justice to exactly how bad a dancer he is. Imagine a sped skipping around in circles, and head banging, and pawing at the girls, and trying to do the running man all at the same time. Now you kind of have half the idea.

The joke was on everyone else though. After a few minutes Bonerkid was NECK DEEP in pussy. None of the other boys would dance, so the 6th and 7th grade girls were forced to dance with him. I tried really hard to get a  picture of this crowd of tweens bumping and grinding on him but it didn't come out right (and anyway, that might make me a child pornographer). He was in heaven.

QotD: Famous Last Words

If you knew you were about to lose your voice permanently, what is the last thing you would want to say?
Submitted by exer.

Fuck.