Perspectives

Saw this today on huffpost and thought it was ballsy and that I agreed with it so here it is.

I am Julian Assange

Also I just want to say that I did a zumba class today and it was fun and a great workout.  I highly suggest this to anyone.  I have no rhythm and it was still fun so don't be intimidated.  Driving through Ghent on my way home was just gorgeous as well.  I wish I could live there like yesterday...but all in good time.

Securitayyy!!!

Ok this is a little late but I would just like to rant about people complaining about the new airline security measures.  The new thing is that 1) go through the body scanner or 2) get patted down.  Ok so the body scanner can see all your marbles.  Well get the fuck over it.  I'm so sick of people complaining about this.  It's for security purposes and to stop another 9/11 from happening.  I personally think they should let all the people who refuse to get scanned or patted down get onto another plane that you don't have to be subjected to security checks.  How much of a fuss would they put up over this if that was the case?  Yeah sure everyone is bitching about how it violates the Constution and takes away their freedom and all that but what about lives that would be taken away if security measures like this weren't in place?  And so what if the TSA people are going to see you essentially naked?  No one is going to be seeing ANY of you if your fucking plane gets hijacked and blown up.  I'm a nurse and I see naked people every day while they are sitting on the OR table unconscious, getting worked on; no one complains about that.  You know why?  Because it's to save lives, and so does a simple 5 second action like walking through a body scanner.  Do you know how many people the TSA guys probably see naked walking through those scanners every day?  Probably hundreds.  I'm telling you, when you see that many naked bodies on a regular basis you really don't even notice anymore, it just becomes second nature.  And you will never see these TSA people again.  It's not like they're gonna see you sitting across the bar next weekend and whisper to their TSA friend "hey look remember that guy?  he had huge balls."  The hot girl sitting next to you is more likely to whisper to her friend "hey I think that guy is gay, he keeps staring at those two TSA agents over there."

So my point is, yes, our personal freedom is what makes America great, but when that freedom interferes with the safety of its citizens then there needs to be a little give and take.  Walking through a body scanner is a small sacrifice to make to protect the people in this country and make them feel safe compared to what our military men and women do every day overseas, so shut up and just walk.

Bollocks

I recently discovered this amazing new British TV show that I just have to write about.  It was my suggestion on the last post.  It's called Skins and its about this group of teenagers that live in Bristol England.  Its a comedy but it also has alot of serious aspects too.  And the way the show is set up is different than any other show I've seen.  Each episode focuses on a single character, and in each character's episode you get to go deeper into their lives than you would if the episodes just focused on everyone all the time.  It's really kind of a revolutionary idea and its great.  Another thing the show does is that every 2 seasons it completely changes the entire cast.  Similar US shows like the O.C. and Dawsons Creek (both of which are mentioned jokingly in the show) followed their characters off to college and the shows took a turn for the worse.  Skins avoids this and just flat out gets new characters when the current ones are finished with high school.  Its keeps the show fresh and free from boring predictable story lines. 

    
In each group of friends there is a character you can relate to, whether it is Sid from seasons 1 and 2 who is in love with his best friend's girlfriend, or Emily from seasons 3 and 4 who is constantly in the shadow of her prettier, more popular sister.  There is definitely a lot of over the top and gratuitous sex and drug use but the actual stories behind the insane parties used as plot devices somehow make even the most surreal moments seem utterly and totally believable.  I'm not sure if its because everyone speaks with an accent and uses vocabulary that I'm not quite familiar with, but the show is also hilariously witty.  Terms such as spliff, and tosser are used constantly, both of which it took an episode or two for me to figure out what they meant.  The word skins actually refers to rolling paper used for joints or "spliff" as they call it.  Seasons 3 and 4 are by far the most emotional I've seen.  When I'm watching, I kind of forget about everything else around me and just let Skins take me.  For a television show it just has amazing connective powers.  Sure I've felt like that about movies but never about a 45 minute episode of a TV series.  Again, I think it's the set up of the show that each episode essentially is a short movie about a single character, complete with the ups and downs of human emotion.

    
     MTV is unveiling a US version of skins in January.  I'll definitely be watching it but I just can't see how it can be the same.  The kids in the British version are all of legal drinking age which makes the party scenes and lack of parental control somewhat believable but I'm not quite sure how the US version will manage to pull this off.  Sure there's fake ID's but it just wont have that aspect of realism that the British version has.  So if you have netflix the go watch Skins and I promise you won't regret it.

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving and what better day to start up with my blog again.  Seeing everyone's status on facebook about what they are thankful for made me think about what I was thankful for and really one thing popped into my head:

I am thankful for you Heather Marie Leahy.  Without your cruel trial of self truth and self abuse that threw my life for one giant loop I would not be where I am today.  I would not have my amazing job and my amazing coworkers that make me laugh and want to wake up every morning.  I would not have met some other wonderful people that really make my heart sing. I would not get to see old friends and family as much as I do and I would not have nearly as much fun as I do every weekend.  I discovered new music, both from my speakers and my own hands.  I am thankful that you treated me with no respect and showed me people and attitudes that dripped with anathema.  Recognizing good people is second nature to me now and knowing the opposite of respect, dignity, sanity, safety, honesty, passion, and determination only make me know the real meaning of these words better.  So thank you foolish worker bee, I feel like a queen. 

On a lighter note Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Song suggestion: Missy - The Airborne Toxic Event
TV suggestion: Skins

How?...Is that?...What did I just see?

   I saw this Axe commercial on Spike a few days ago and I thought I was watching SNL for a while until I realized that somehow it was real and made it past the censors.  I was blushing by the time it was over.  Things like this can get put on the air but Katy Perry gets criticized for wearing an outfit on Sesame Street that most of the demographic has probably seen their mothers wearing anyways?  Doesn't make sense to me at all.  Watch and see for yourself.    
   The part at 1:00 is probably the worst and I didn't know whether to laugh or just sit there with my mouth open.

Hogwarts castle please?

   Ok so I went to the beach last week and it was pretty perfect.  Warm weather, refreshing water, not too crowded, decent waves.  The tide was going out and you could walk pretty much as far out as you wanted and not hit water deeper than your waist.  The way the sandbar was situated there were also these rogue waves for lack of a better term that would hit the shore and kind of go back out to sea.  When a normal wave and one of the rogue waves collided it would make this big explosion and was especially cool if you happened to be standing where these two waves met.  I was fortunate enough to be riding one of the normal waves when one of the rogue waves was coming at me and it was like being launched into a ramp made of water.  I shot up in the air about a foot maybe two and it was easily the best wave I've ever caught in my life.
   The best wave of my life was diminished by the presence of a clusterfuck of what we always called nettles when we were growing up.  I'm not sure what they actually are but they aren't nettles, because I have since been informed by several websites that nettles are a type of vegetation that look to me like a mix between poison ivy and weed.  I have no idea what these little animals are but they look like TINY little sandcrabs.  They are about as big as a grain of sand but when they get in your suit they feel like little pinpricks.  And since swimsuits usually only cover your vital areas, you can imagine how unpleasant this is.
     I went to the beach a few days later for the neptune festival and saw some awesome sand castles at a contest that was going on.  Here are some of my favorites.

We asked the guy who was doing the second one how he came up with the design and he said he smoked a lot of pot (nettles?)  Its hard to see how extensive the detail is in the pictures but it was amazing.  And if you're wondering how they get their creations to stand up to the wind?  Well when they get the sand wet for the sculpting phase, instead of just using water they mix in a little glue to give themselves a harder base to work with.  Sounds like cheating to me...but I guess glue is the fondant of the sandcastle constructing world.
   Oh and what's the opposite of a butterface?  A carface....as in seeing a hottie pull up to the gas station then seeing said hottie get out of the car and realizing he/she looked better when he/she was seated in the car and thus could only be seen from the shoulders up....imagine the face of Kristin Cavallari on the epic body of The God Warrior....or don't actually.

Book suggestion: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Song Suggestion: Mercy Me - Alkaline Trio

Elevator Hater

    So yesterday I was flying back home from Memphis (home of Justin Timberlake of "Dick in a Box" fame.)  I normally hate talking to people while I'm in the airport or on the plane or what have you.  I've usually got my headphones in, oblivious to the world around me and just thinking about random things in life.  I mean what's the point of telling someone where you're going to or coming from?  There's nothing I hate more than small talk...except maybe small talk with a random stranger in an airport.  This is why I usually try to find a bar or a table to myself where I can drink my layover away, fall asleep on the plane and wake up ready to deboard.  This also gets me past that annoying 10 minutes when the plane has just landed and people stand up in the aisle as if they are going somewhere.  Sit down.  You are not going anywhere until the 20 rows in front of you get off.  Anyways, to make a long story short I ended up talking to this really interesting woman where I was drinking and as luck would have it we were on the same plane and from the same area.  We started talking and drinking (her: wine, me: blue moon) and talking about places in the area we liked to go.  Well, drinks were poured, food was complained about and we ended up sitting next to each other on the plane and having a grand old time.  She walked me to my car we exchanged numbers and became facebook friends and parted ways.  So now I guess I have to rethink my whole antisocial attitude towards airports and planes...but not to boring small talk.  
    Is it bad that I find it easier to talk to people after I've had a few?  I mean isn't that the main reason people drink; to feel more relaxed and comfortable?
    Something else I wanted to write about was a term I came across while I was fooling around on the internet the other day and I think if it was a medical condition I would have it for sure.  Staircase wit.  You know when you've had an argument or discussion with someone and after its over you think of the perfect comeback but its too late?  Well there's actually a term for that out there and its called staircase wit or the staircase effect.  Its called this because the guy (or gal) who coined it had just had an altercation with a friend and then turned to leave.  While walking down the stairs from this guy's apartment/house he thought of a perfect response to whatever it was they were arguing about.  But, as is life, it was too late to use his comeback and he would have no doubt looked like a fool to run back up the stairs and throw his retort back to his friend.  Viola.  Staircase wit is born.  The guy was French and I think the original term was L'esprit D'escalier.  I have no knowledge of French and therefore no idea how to pronounce those words so I just settle on using the term staircase wit when this happens to me which is pretty much all the time.  I can't think of a name to call a person who has this condition but I'm sure I'll think of something after I've already published this post and walk downstairs...


Song suggestion: Eddie Money - Baby Hold On
Book suggestion: Love in the Time of Cholera

Melancholy (water)melons

    I go running at night all the time and for some reason looking up at the stars when Passion Pit is playing makes me feel like i was actually meant to be here.  Living through an entire set of human emotions in about a week isn't easy and it's really trying on my body and mind.  After you deal with that it makes brain surgery and rocket science look like an episode of Dora the Explorer.
  
    Oh and Kubler-Ross must've gone through some shit in her life because her work was spot on.  When I go back and think about that one week, (and I've gotten really scientific in my view of it) I realize that I went through every stage in exactly the same order.  I mean it actually amazed me that I could make a list of the stages and write down specific examples of each one.  That's why I fucking love psychology.  A professor once told me that studying Psychology is dangerous because after you read about schizophrenia and general anxiety disorder so much you start to think "Oh Shit! Do I have this?" That the more you learn about it the more your mind is capable of playing tricks on you and you interpret every little social faux pas that you have really really aggressively.  For me I think it could be almost the opposite.  I think experiencing something like depression or having suicidal thoughts lets you in, gives you an in to what its actually like that you can't get from a book.  I'm not suggesting that I want people to get depressed or start hearing voices in their heads, but I wouldn't trade my experience with those things for anything.  It's almost as if I was meant to do it so I could understand, or that it would somehow make me stronger.  Who knows. 

Movie suggestion: TiMER
Song suggestion: Passion Pit - To Kingdom Come