A Public Service Announcement (of sorts).

So, I guess I really don't need to point this out, but I haven't actually posted in a while.

A long while.


Part of the problem is that I got sorta disenchanted with my blog.

Which, I will admit, is my own fault.


I am slightly obsessed with politics. The way politics functions, the way laws work, (and how they don't work).

But there are already too many political type blogs on the internet already.

Of course, I started blogging before I was totally into politics. I was realy into Finland then, but we're not going to get into that.

The point is, though, that I promised myself that I would never write about politics.


And, by a logical extension, I would never write about trains, either. That makes sense, to me, because I can look at the LIRR map on my wall aith the pencil scratches where the abandoned stations are, and the train schedules all around my bed, and I can say to myself that, okay, no one wants to read what I have to say about politics, and they really don't care about what I have to say about trains, either.


And that doesn't leave me very much to write about that still interests me.


So I'm going to cut this short. I'll be moving some of the archived posts over to a new subdomain, and I'll start writing about new things.

I may even do something to Sixty Percent.


Stay tuned.

Yay updates!

Break from the normal routine:

I actually bothered to update Sixty Percent Chance of Rain for the first time in nearly three months.

Also: There's 95 chapters now. Ninety-five. I gotta do something special when I hit a hundred. I dunno what yet, though.

But I can guarantee that it'll be special.

Quote of the Day

"So you have non-presidents talking about a non-war to cover up an actual president who is perpetrating an actually terrible war." -- The New Low News Show

"Privileged Information"

So, apparently, UMBC just found out that I'm not in Maryland.

I'm going to let that sink in.


If you go skimming through the archives, or if you know me personally, you'd know that I was kicked out of the dorms in February.

(Fun fact: it's currently November.)


The Bursar's office, and a handful of other bureaucratic-type people, had no idea that I had been forced out of my room, and had my classes cancelled -- and, in fact, insisted that I had done really well during the spring semester.

And they couldn't figure out why I wasn't answering mail -- specifically, notices about money that I didn't really end up owing them -- that they were sending to my dorm. Y'know, the dorm that they kicked me out of.


I mean, good God, how stupid can you be?

I know where the camera is.

My Grandmother has -- or, rather, had -- a Fuji Discovery 1000 Zoom.

I say she had it because, a number of years ago, she lent it to my dad.

She began to complain that, any time she lent us something, she wouldn't get it back, and that, like her dishes, it was lost forever. She sends us leftovers regularly, but now she sends them in disposable tupperware instead of on plates. On the other hand, three of her dishes are sitting in our dishrack, and see normal use.

A few years after she loaned us the camera, my mom, now sick of hearing about the damn camera, declared that she had found it, and we all had a good laugh, until about a month later, when nana went to use it, and found that mom hadn't bothered to look inside the case, and had instead returned an empty case.

Mom does not remember it this way, and, however many years later, insists she returned it.


It has become a point of contention.

So contentious a point of contention that mom managed to make nana cry over it today.


But I know -- for a fact -- where the camera is.


I'm dropping the film that was in it off to be processed tomorrow.

Have you ever heard of a cat who's afraid of the dark?

I have.

He's a ten-week old kitten named Rocket. His name is Rocket, by the way, 'cause Mom wouldn't let me call him Darth Vader.

Which, if you saw this cat, would be a perfect name.

Because he's tiny, and skittery, and nervous, and gives off this general air of helplessness; plus he's white and soft and fluffy. So, really, he's the antithesis of Lord Vader.


But Rocket works too.

I mean, you shoulda seen him dash under that wicker thing in the Studio. I mean, seriously. And when he did finally settle down for a nap, it was still kinda daylight, but when he woke up, it was dark out. And he freaked out and started yelping and crying -- and I had to set up a nightlight for him.

I had to set up a nightlight for a cat.

Don't worry. I'm still here.

I've been having an, um, interesting couple of weeks.

I'm still unemployed, because, apparently, being able to lace a woman into a corset isn't what most people consider a "marketable skill".

I had a fish -- a crowntail betta -- named Sophocles, and he died recently. And it sucked because his tankmates that died before him are buried in Maryland, and he had to be buried here in New York.

Then, we got a call from my aunt, telling us that my grandfather had died. So we had to drive out to Southampton, for the funeral -- she had moved my grandparents out there, near her -- and it was kinda weird, 'cause he already had a plot in Queens. And he was all gaunt and pale and shit.

And they had to get the funeral director to pry the casket open at the cemetary so they could send him off with cigarettes and a lighter, because, "if there's any justice in this world, he won't be near an open flame."

Quote of the Day

"Jack decided to submit some gay porn to a U.S. District Court Judge last week and the judge didn’t seem to find the anal pounding relevant."

What ever happened to Acid Rain?

You remember acid rain? It was all anyone ever complained about, right?

It was caused by pollution, and it had, I think it was sodium in it.


I remember one of my elelmentary school teachers telling us that the sky turned the color of chocolate milk during an acid rain storm. And someone else told us that if you strung a tee-shirt across a thing, so that it's flat, and parallel to the ground, the acid rain would eat through it.

I think Linda Ellerbee may have even done a special Nick News on acid rain.


Now, some how, I don't think that Acid Rain simply stopped happening.

I mean, where'd it go?

Did it stop?

Or did just stop being trendy?

I think I figured out this whole God mess.

I've been thinking alot about God lately.

I kept coming back to what everyone likes to call the "problem of evil". It's fairly self explanitory, really; if there is a god, and if he/she/it is, in fact, omniprescient and omnipotent, then there shouldn't be evil in the world. But there is evil, so either (a) god isn't as powerful as we say he/she/it is, (b) he/she/it is unable, unwilling, or outright malevelent, or (c) there is no god.

So.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

I started doing some reading about different theories about god.

One group, the deists, beleive that, although god did exist at one point, there isn't a god now. Or, at least, he isn't around in a way that he can be reached.

Then, there's the pandeists, who hold that the universe is all that's left of god.

It's all incredibly convoluted, I assure you.


So, last night I had some trouble sleeping.

Sometime around three, or two, or so, I got to thinking about religion again.

I was thinking about that pandeism thing.

About how there was a god, but there isn't anymore.

I mean, where'd he go?

What'd he do after he created everything?

What, did he just leave, to go create another eveything?

Well, yeah.

He created another everything. And anotherone after that. And so on, infinitely.

And all that's left of him, in this universe, is, well, this universe.

So, theoretically, he's everywhere, and nowhere, simultatneously.


It's Schrödinger's God.

Quote of the Day

"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" -- Socrates, Euthyphro

And I have now, somewhat officially, lost track of how many disturbing dreams I have had.

Okay. It's been a while since I've written about a fucked up dream.


This time, though, it wasn't about the Public Affairs Scholarship, and there were no zombies. No stained glass floor, no mask, and no British guy offering spurious advice.


Because this time, I was Lorelei.

Why, I don't know. But it was me, and Midge, and Pierpont, and we were hanging out at a dingy amusement park. It was kinda like how I remember Adventureland being, only dirtier. And with a wood rollercoaster, because I don't remember offhand if their rollercoaster is wood or not, but this rollercoaster was specifically made of wood.

So, anyways, we're hanging out, at this dingy, delapidated amusement park, and we meet up with this guy. And it's the guy who took over writing Sixty Percent after I stopped writing it.

Let me rephrase that: I -- as Lorelei -- was talking to the man who took over writing the story that I had stopped writing -- as Kinezumi-Risu.


So, Midge started to give him a hard time, about how he was taking himself too seriously -- her exact words were "you need to get the stick out of your ass". Pierpont just asked hime a bunch of questions about upcoming chapters, most of which had to do with Chet, and all of which he refused to answer.


It was pretty surreal.

As 9/11 Draws Near, a Debate Rises: How Much Tribute Is Enough?

As 9/11 Draws Near, a Debate Rises: How Much Tribute Is Enough?
© New York Times, September 2, 2007
By N. R. KLEINFIELD

Again it comes, for the sixth time now — 2,191 days after that awful morning — falling for the first time on a Tuesday, the same day of the week.

Again there will be the public tributes, the tightly scripted memorial events, the reflex news coverage, the souvenir peddlers.

Is all of it necessary, at the same decibel level — still?

Each year, murmuring about Sept. 11 fatigue arises, a weariness of reliving a day that everyone wishes had never happened. It began before the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. By now, though, many people feel that the collective commemorations, publicly staged, are excessive and vacant, even annoying.

“I may sound callous, but doesn’t grieving have a shelf life?” said Charlene Correia, 57, a nursing supervisor from Acushnet, Mass. “We’re very sorry and mournful that people died, but there are living people. Let’s wind it down.”

Some people prefer to see things condensed to perhaps a moment of silence that morning and an end to the rituals like the long recitation of the names of the dead at ground zero.

But many others bristle at such talk, especially those who lost relatives on that day.

“The idea of scaling back just seems so offensive to me when you think of the monumental nature of that tragedy,” said Anita LaFond Korsonsky, whose sister Jeanette LaFond-Menichino died in the World Trade Center. “If you’re tired of it, don’t attend it; turn off your TV or leave town. To say six years is enough, it’s not. I don’t know what is enough.”

As the ragged nature of life pushes on, it is natural that the national fixation on an ominous event becomes ruptured and its anniversary starts to wear out. Once-indelible dates no longer even incite curiosity. On Feb. 15, how many turn backward to the sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898?

Few Americans give much thought anymore on Dec. 7 that Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941 (the date to live in infamy). Similar subdued attention is paid to other scarring tragedies: the Kennedy assassination (Nov. 22, 1963), Kent State (May 4, 1970), the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995).

Generations, of course, turn over. Few are alive anymore who can recall June 15, 1904, when 1,021 people died in the burning of the steamer General Slocum, the deadliest New York City disaster until Sept. 11, 2001. Also, the weight of new wrenching events crowds the national memory. Already since Sept. 11, there have been Katrina and Virginia Tech. And people have their own more circumscribed agonies.

“Commemoration aims to simplify, but life as it’s lived and feelings as they’re felt are never simple,” said John Bodnar, a professor of history at Indiana University.

The Sept. 11 attack may well have an unusually long resonance. It was a watershed moment in the nation’s history. And it is a tragedy named after a date. But the way it is recalled is sure to undergo editing.

For the first time this year at ground zero, the main ceremony will not be at the trade center site. Because of construction, the families will be allowed to pass onto the ground only momentarily, but the ceremony will be shifted to nearby Zuccotti Park, at Broadway and Liberty Street — its moving on somewhat of a metaphor for the feelings of those who favor change.

Sept. 11, of course, remains complicated by its unfinished contours — continuing worry over terrorism, the war in Iraq, a presidential race in which candidates repeatedly invoke the day and its portents. Episodes like the fire at the vacant Deutsche Bank building stir up haunting memories. Books rooted in the attack continue to arrive.

Some people are troubled by what they see as others’ taking advantage of the event. “Six years later, we can see that a lot of people have used 9/11 for some gain,” said Matt Brosseau, 27, of Westfield, N.J. He sees the public tributes as “crassly corporatized and co-opted by false patriots.”

“Me personally, I wouldn’t involve myself in a public commemoration,” he said. “I don’t see the need for an official remembrance from the city or anyone else. In six years, is Minneapolis going to pay for something for the people who died in the bridge collapse?”

David Hendrickson, 56, a computer software trainer who lives in Manhattan, said he began being somewhat irritated by the attention to the commemoration on the third anniversary. “It seems a little much to me to still be talking about this six years later,” he said. “I understand it’s a sad thing. I understand it’s a tragedy. I’ve had my own share of tragedies — my uncle was killed in a tornado. But you get on. I have the sense that some people are living on their victimhood, which I find a little tiring.”

Mental health practitioners see a certain value in the growing fatigue.

“It’s a good sign when people don’t need an anniversary commemoration or demarcation,” said Charles R. Figley, the director of the Florida State University Traumatology Institute. “And it’s not disrespectful to those who died.”

Laurie Pearlman, a clinical psychologist in Massachusetts, said, “Our society has a very low tolerance for grief — it’s exhausting and unrelenting, and we don’t want to hear about it.”

Some of the relatives of those who died that day hold fast to the anniversary and are the most insistent that it not be dismantled.

“I would no sooner tell survivors of the Holocaust how to mourn or how to commemorate their atrocity, so why do others feel they have any right to dictate how family members should feel or memorialize our loved ones on Sept. 11 or any day, for that matter?” said Nancy Nee, whose brother George Cain died in the attack. “Six years feels like the blink of an eye. That number means nothing to me.”

Ms. Korsonsky has not attended any of the ceremonies at ground zero, but she has watched them on television. “I always have a lot of friends who watch it and then call me and tell me they listened for my sister’s name. I can’t tell you how much that means to me. She’s remembered for that one instant. I’m just so afraid that she’ll be forgotten.”

But even family members diverge over what should or should not happen on this anniversary of death.

Lesli Rice, 26, who works in insurance and lost her mother, Eileen Rice, on Sept. 11, thinks something respectful should occur on the anniversary — a tolling of church bells or a moment of silence — but that otherwise the event should be scaled back. “The grieving part has to be more personal,” she said. “The whole city wasn’t affected by my mother’s death.”

A hairdresser’s question told Nikki Stern something about her own sensibilities. Ms. Stern lost her husband, James Potorti, in the collapsing towers. Two years ago, her hairdresser mentioned that she was planning to marry on Sept. 11. It was a Sunday, a day that worked best for all involved. She was grasping for guidance: Was that all right?

Ms. Stern suggested that if it was the most convenient day, fine, but perhaps a portion of the wedding gifts could go to some charity.

“I thought that it was completely cool,” she said. “The last thing my husband would have wanted was for everyone to lie down and die.”

“I still get so many letters from people that even I suffer from 9/11 fatigue to some extent,” she said. “People who don’t want to do anything on 9/11, they shouldn’t be forced to. I never thought I’d say that.”

Part of the problem with remembrances is that people are unsure what is expected of them, said Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “People wonder, ‘How sad am I supposed to feel? What do you expect me to do, because possibly I’ve gotten over it,’ ” she said. “We have to figure out how to commemorate other people’s grief. It’s a generic question we haven’t answered that goes beyond 9/11.”

An organization called myGoodDeed.org was begun last year to urge people to do something nice for Sept. 11, and, if they want, to post it on its Web site. “We asked what should 9/11 be 20 or 30 years from now, and the big concern is that people will become tired of conventional ceremonies,” said David Paine, president of the organization.

Some 150,000 deeds were posted last year, with more than 40,000 intentions clocked so far this year. One person chose to put quarters in expired parking meters. Another is knitting socks for soldiers. A boy said he would help his mother around the house and not torment his siblings.

Where you were, your proximity to the attack — these things shade your tie to the anniversary. On Sept. 11, Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, was crossing Washington Square in Greenwich Village and was approached by a panhandler, whom he brushed off. The panhandler then said, “The World Trade Center is on fire.”

Dr. Zimmerman didn’t even look. Not until he got to his office did he find out it was truth. “I now pay more attention to what homeless people say,” he said.

Dr. Zimmerman knows that the N.Y.U. dynamic is now different, the undergraduates who were there during the attack gone, supplanted largely by students who did not see it and whose feelings are thus likely to be more varied.

“I’m quite troubled about all this talk of 9/11 fatigue,” he said. “It’s true that commemorations can take on bombastic and ritualistic forms that trivialize them, but 9/11 is with us every day. Every political issue in our times is refracted through this event. I can understand why some people are sick of hearing about it, but they should get used to it.”

It seems likely that attention to the anniversary will ebb and flow. Events become artificially magnified during 10-year, 25-year, 50-year demarcations.

What might happen on Sept. 11 a hundred years from now? “It’s conceivable that it could be virtually forgotten,” said Dr. Bodnar, the history professor. “Does anyone go out on the streets of New York and commemorate the firing on Fort Sumter?”

Fuckin' doctors.

I'm sure you guys are curious as to whether or not I can drive.

Trust me. I am too.

But there's no answer for me just yet.

Still waiting on that answer.

I'm back.

...and I still haven't got any answers.

They said I'd get answers "by Tuesday".


Oh, and I didn't bring any pictures, either. Just know that my head was almost completely wrapped in bandages to hold the wires on. Couple that with the fact that I spent most of my time coloring... yeah.

So, apparently, I'm still part of the pediatric system, but when I went to check in, they were like, "um... no."

So they sent me to the regular Neuroscience ward.

And then the regular Neurologists and the Pediatric Neurologists were fighting over who got to be in charge.

And then a Pediatrician showed up, only to find out that, "oh, hey, you're 19. I, uh, I really don't have to be here."


It was good times.

Wires. Lol.

So.

I hope you like the fact that Sixty Percent updated every day for almost a week.


Oh, and I spilled my soul out onto the keyboard.


So, I get back from Maryland, only to find out that I have to go back, because, hey, wait, we still have more wires that we have to glue to your head.

I'll be in the hospital having a Video EEG.


No more chapters for a bit.

But I might get a driver's license out of all this.

Quote of the Day

"A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason." --J. P. Morgan

I believe that the best way to solve an inherently private and personal problem is to air it in the most public of places.

In other, simpler words: The best way to solve a really personal problem is to dump it on the internet and hope to God that no one makes fun of you.

This is probably why I have a blog.


At any rate, I'm going to go ahead and fill you in on my personal problem.

I can't drive. But it's not like "I'm 16 and I can't get my mom to take me to get my learner's permit this sucks so bad!". It's a bit more complicated than that.

When I was little, my parents knew I was fucked up. The fact that I didn't figure out something as basic as how to talk was pretty much a dead giveaway. Something was obviously wrong.

In the third grade -- yup, I'm a dork, and my timing goes by grades -- a doctor found out that I was having seizures. Petit-mal seizures.

He told me I'd grow out of them by the time I was 15.


It's the eleventh grade. I'm 16. I've had an Electroencephalogram every two years since the third grade. /* EEGs, for those keeping score at home, record brain activity. They basically glue wires to your head, and the little wires tell the computer some stuff, in the form of squiddly lines. And if the lines are smooth and even, you're normal, but if it's all fucked up looking, then, well, you're all fucked up. */

My doctor -- the same one that told me I'd grow out of the seizures -- tells me that, well, I'm never going to be able to drive, and that, state laws aside, even if I did improve, he wouldn't sign off on the letter.

/* New York state law: you must be seizure free for a bunch of time and have a letter from your neurologist saying it's safe for you to be on the road and you have to be on a course of treatment. But if you have a seizure, you aren't required by law to tell the DMV. */


Okay. Fine.

He put me on some medication. It was mostly for migraines, but it's technically a seizure medication... one of those "two birds with one stone" thing.


So. It's three years later.

I start playing with buses, and trains. I got a really kickass bike.

But it's just not the same as a car.



So I called up my Doctor and was like, "hey, I never got an EEG after I started these meds... and, um, hey, I'd like to drive. Is that cool?"

So I get an appointment for an EEG and for an actual consultation.

I get the EEG done. And the guy was cool. He was just gluing crap to my head, y'know, and talking, and we were talking about frivolous lawsuits, and shit. It was cool. And then afterward I had to wash my hair in the ladies' room sink. I know from experience what happens if you leave that crap in your hair.

So then I get to my doctor's appointment. And I have to recount my entire medical history. And they're like "have you had any seizures?" I don't know. No body else notices them. How the fuck should I?

And then I got my retard physical -- which I passed, by the way. /* Anyone who has ever had a doctor play the "touch your nose then touch my finger" game knows exactly what I'm talking about. */

...But he didn't tell me how I did on the EEG. He was like, "so, we want to see a brain MRI. Oh, and a Video EEG. You're okay with a Video EEG, right? 'Cause, you'll have to be checked into the hospital for about four days so we can, um, monitor you."

That's right, kids. I can get checked into the hospital for four days so they can glue crap to my head and have a computer draw squiddly lines.


So. I have no idea if I'm ever going to get to drive.

But I do feel better airing all of this in public.

Quote of the Day

"So we are favored, you and I, who only want the living truth."

-- Paul Laurence Dunbar

So, apparently, it's only slightly drizzly.

Posts about Sixty Percent = Bad puns involving rain.

Anyways.

If you're actually reading that mess, you've probably noticed a couple things.

First off, it's taken a turn for the worst. It's getting weirder. And darker. What's-her-face got kidnapped, the other one got shot at (again), and, oh, hey, there's a crazy dude in a robe.

It's good times all around.


Also, I'm not updating on Fridays anymore. That's not to say I don't like Fridays; I mean, it's Friday. But, I need to get back in the habit of actually writing it before I can get in the habit of posting it on a regular schedule.

Edit: Didn't even notice that today was Friday. Wow. I'm fuckin' swift.

So... yeah.


Also: I've got eighty-eight chapters written. Holy crap. When did that happen?