hot toddy

"The People of Iraq are sometimes so full of democracy that they walk into a crowd and explode."
--from Saturday Night Live

this made me laugh for many reasons even though its mainly morbid if you think about it. i'm not very savvy when it comes to politics (ie: i have forgotten who the Speaker of the House is) but criticism is best appreciated by those who have no idea what is being criticized since they have no opinion of their own on the subject. i've never seen Bush converse with troops in Iraq via satellite, but watching SNL do a parody of it was enough for me. i'm horrible, i know, and someday i'll get my act together and be a better American, but right now, getting through school is more important.

at least i know where the continent of North America is on a map! a survey was done in the 1980s that found that at least 30% of college students did not know where the united states was on a map. really! i've known where it is on a map since 3rd grade! we even did a study of maps and cartography in 4th grade! it reminds me of this past year's academy awards when chris rock went around LA asking people if they'd seen million dollar baby and all those other oscar nominated movies--to which they replied "no" with a puzzled look. when asked if they'd seen white chicks, they all said yes, sometimes with the added "that was real good." but isn't that what criticism is based on? personal taste? knowledge of related material?

i also do not have cable, so i'm stuck with 13 channels. no CNN for me, although network news on NBC and Fox now have that annoying scrolling marquee at the bottom of the screen that reports other tidbits of news while the anchorman/woman is talking--which i can only guess is done in imitation of CNN. so they only political commentary i get is on filtered shows like the american president and SNL. but that's just me making excuses.

a woman came into the bookstore two days ago with a two week old baby in the stroller. she'd come in many times before while pregnant and it was neat to see the transition. the baby looks a lot like the father--same hair color. now that my sister is married i've been taking note of pregnancies and infant care, just in case. she's still only 23 and she and her husband plan to wait a couple of years, but i don't think she was paying attention when my mom was explaining to her about cycles and i also don't think she really cares. she'll have a baby when she's ready, just like she got married when she was ready, regardless of age. i respect that, but in my opinion, "ready" is a relative term: when she thinks she's ready, i'm not so sure its the best time. i can't imagine her pregnant. my mother always tells me what a difficult delivery she had the first time, but she's told me the story so many times that its lost its impact. my co-worker on the otherhand told me her story once and it made me shiver. she told me that she had a long, laborious delivery for her second son. she just closed her eyes, shuddered and said, "he turned me inside out." thank God for mothers.

halloween is next monday, and what an unfestive halloween it will be. my mother will be out of town on business (Atlanta, Georgia again). my father will be working overtime because its end of the month. i will be working until the customary six, but then i agreed to babysit my neighbor's daughter, Lauren, who is also only two weeks old. so, we're not even buying candy because none of us will be home to give it out. but i don't mind babysitting lauren. she doesn't do much yet because she's still very young, but i hold her for hours at a time as she sleeps and she really is the sweetest little thing i've ever held. like all babies, she doesn't have complete control of her muscles yet so the strangest expressions come across her face. in any case, that means no parties, no costumes, no abundant amounts of sugar. i could do without the sugar and the costume, but a good party wouldn't hurt.

blather, blather, blather and goodnight.

procrastinating

i will be the first one to admit that i am a vain person who'd rather show off her ability to post thoughts unmatched than do her homework.

but i haven't written for a while so i feel i must write something, vanity not withstanding.

first off. school has begun. today was the last day of week 2 and i think i've gotten a pretty good grasp of the situation. my french teacher is adept, but perhaps not savvy. my anthropology lecturer is an education in himself. my english (poetry) teacher is a crack up ("so, there was love...and sheep") but i dislike his methods. my linguistics teacher is a spaz. all in all, a quarter with some merit, although let me just say that i'm not exactly on top of things. i posted a criticque on the noteboard for my english class late and i only got an 84% on my first linguistic homework assignment. i suppose there's no hope for me getting straight A's if i don't care anymore. perhaps 8 weeks is long enough for me to recover. did i mention i have a draft for a paper due on monday?

Cornelia Funke is coming to the bookstore tomorrow to do a signing. yes, i know, you probably don't know who she is, but take my word for it, she's big. new york times bestseller for all five books. a fine writer. has been compared to JK Rowling and found intriguing. big.

a friend and i were talking about books before and after our linguistics lecture (yes, yes, we have already established that i am a nerd). she was saying how quickly her bookshelves filled up and i agreed. i told her the more bookshelves she gets, the more books she'll get to fill them up. she agreed and said that she thought the amount of books grew to fit the bookshelf just like a potted plant grows to fit the pot. we parted ways at the steps down to SSLH.

but the thought process hadn't left me just yet. i wondered what it was about the idea more. why people want more, why more seems better, why more seems necessary. "sometimes more is just more". even the idea that less is more is disagreeable. why do we always want more? the poetic answer would be "to fill the emptiness", but poetry is only a gaudy imitation of life. what's the real reason? maybe its the fact that everything is quantified these days. beanie babies come 6 in a bag. buy one get one free. 2 for a dollar. not to mention timecards and interest rates and gas prices. everything is numbers, everything that matters is counted. things like happiness and love are counted too. how many times have you been married? have you ever been in love? and the strange thing is that having more only breeds the desire for more until no one is ever content. i remember, freshman year of highschool, a classmate and i talked about the hours in a day. a lot of people think that there aren't enough hours in a day to do what one needs to do. though, this is true most of the time, i don't think a proper solution to this is to add more hours to a day--assuming that we could, which we can't. at first, the novelty of having more hours would be bliss: everyone could get their work done and still get a goodnight's sleep. but being human, i know this won't last long. gradually, people will begin to consider an inevitable, but logical conclusion. more hours in a day means more time to do more things. and before you know it, those extra hours will be filled with more activities until, again, we will complain that there aren't enough hours in a day. like my bookshelf and my friend's bookshelf: the more room there is, the more books we get until we are pining for another bookshelf. why is that?

i can't consider any theories because i have to do my homework sometime, but let me finish with this thought: be content with your present miseries (there's never enough room, there's never enough money, there's never enough time) and be wary of "more".