blood diamonds
i am apparently a movie buff because i always seem to have a commentary on the latest. anyway blood diamond was good. it may have been good because the one person i heard rate it said it sucked so i had low expectations. real good movie though- if you walk in with no expectancies. so it explodes the whole situation that happend in the late nineties with diamonds being smuggled to england and america. i think its interesting that they keep diamonds in a vault because they want the demand to be high/supply low so they can charge so much for them. i knew that, but i didnt realize what was happening in africa due to this. the government is at war with their own people who are supplied with ak-47's through the people that receive the smuggled diamonds (england, us, etc). and currently india is getting in on it and undercutting our prices.
personally i think if diamonds were cheap then they wouldn't symbolize an engagement ring or "commitment". they need to be expensive or they're not special. but after seeing a glimpse of what the natives go through and reading up a bit, listening to my dad's stories from the business, i see the core of a diamond- its birth- does not honor commitment and love and all that. it is not as it seems, in clarity and purity. it is tainted from bloodshed and its core represents fear death and war.
Blepharospasm
I can officially diagnose myself with a "disorder" called blepharospasm. (or blepharohemispasm). This is:
Involuntary eyelid twitching. It is also referred to as an eye muscle spasm. The term blepharospasm really applies to any abnormal blinking or involuntary eye twitching of the eyelids caused by uncontrolled contractions of the muscles around the eyelids.
I can remember when it started- junior year of high school. Once college applications became an issue i remember it happening in class sporatically. Since it is on my eyelid my vision is slightly obstructed so it feels like its very visible. I was constantly seeking reassurance that it was barely visible if at all. Now that i've overcome the self-consciousness over it, im working with the annoyance. See i hear it happens to people once in a while. Staring at computer screens too long, excessive stress loads, straining the eye..
its funny because half the time mentioning the GRE's or opening up a practice can send it off on an on.off. tick from anywhere to ten seconds to an hour. i know its conscious and subconscious. sometimes it starts off right before finals and lasts a few days after. sometimes it just happens, with no acknowledgement of a stress stimulus. either way its annoying and i cant just breathe deeply and meditate to have it disappear.
im lucky this is all im worrying about really.
new years resolutions
it makes sense people try to start the "new year" with fresh ambitious ideas of how we can better ourselves. it makes even more sense that most people come up with overly-ambitious ideas and lower their self esteem once they realize they bit off more than they can chew. i like to make resolutions that are not far fetched, but still a challenge.
weight loss is a big one. not for me this year, but my mom and i notice how people always flood the gym in january and by march its back to normal. those three months are pretty rough. on everyone.
this year i decided im going to do more volunteer work (by more i mean any at all. see? thats easy). save-a-pet has something where you can volunteer to help out. im assuming we can walk the dogs and give them baths and all that jazz. aimee and sarah have a nice bumper sticker that pretty much hits my feelings on the nose "the more people i meet the more i like my dog". i wish there was a higher client demand in the k-9 psychology field. id sign up in a second.
so if i don't do anything with save-a-pet theres also the step up foundation for women/girls. you can be a mentor to a younger girl and other things.
now that my gpa is decent, i can also sign up for "peer-counseling" @ adelphi where your basically a psychologist for other students. its has a rigorous training program but, hey, i think everyone gains out of volunteer work.
so theres that. ill start my new year with kris in the florida keys, sipping on daquaries in the sun, and all that goes with it. were both really psyched to go scuba diving- possibly near some ship wrecks (yesss). 2007 is gunna be a good one, i can tell.
power
There's a blossoming idea out there that it would be good to -be more like England and- have cameras posted everywhere in public. Like on every traffic light or street light.
Apparently no one thinks with common sense or understands that power corrupts or reads anymore. Has anyone read 1984? Orwell's right on the money. "The 'liberals' think it will invade their privacy" a radio talk show host said. Ok who's been feeding her stupid pills? Actually i feel bad for her, clearly she's as naive as the people who think we went to war in Iraq because the Al Quaeda (from Afghanistan*) are responsible for 9/11. Some people will believe anything they hear if it's got a stamp of approval from a "higher power" in office.
Clearly i'm angry. But let me elaborate as to why i'm so passionate on this topic.
I was too young to know him but my grandfather used to say,"Common sense isn't so common anymore."
Almost every civilization in history has a leader who gets drunk with power and starts to make incredibly short-sighted decisions before they fall. It is human nature to look out for oneself. It is way too common for a human in power to abuse it to his advantage, no matter what the loss for others is. Sometimes it takes months to see it, sometimes years and decades. I'm not here to write about history except for the fact that some people are ignoring the history we have repeated and are bound to repeat. again and again. until we blow ourselves up or a rock from outerspace starts Earth over for us. (NASA is currently building an aircraft that can hypothetically land on an unknown moving rock and sample it. just for fun.)
So to the people who say cameras will tag serial killers and rapists and lower crime: I say, that's how they'll get the rally going for the cameras. Ra Ra Ra! Besides what have you got to hide? Then, inevitably, it will fall into the wrong hand(s) [everyone has their price] and then you'll only have yourself to blame for how much harder you made your life when traffic tickets are mailed in to you and the mayor gets exposed going to a strip club because he refused to pay a bribe. And on that note, a word from jamiroquai:
Oh yeah, what we’re living in, let me tell ya
It’s a wonder man can eat at all
When things are big that should be small
Who can tell what magic spells we’ll be doing for us
And I’m giving all my love to this world
Only to be told
I can’t see, I can’t breathe No more will we be
And nothing’s going to change the way we live
’Cause we can always take but never give
And now that things are changing for the worse
See, it’s a crazy world we’re living in
And I just can’t see that half of us immersed in sin
Is all we have to give these
Future’s made of virtual insanity now
Always seem to be governed by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh now there is no sound, for we all live underground
And I’m thinking what a mess we’re in
Hard to know where to begin
If I could slip the sickly ties that earthly man has made
And now every mother can choose the colour of her child
That’s not nature’s way
Well that’s what they said yesterday
There’s nothing left to do but pray
I think it’s time I found a new religion
It’s so insane
To synthesize another strain
There’s something in these
Futures that we have to be told....
Oh now there is no sound, for we all live underground
electronic leash
so for starters today my adelphi friend Tara and i are going to an alcoholics anonymous meeting. its for extra credit, im not pulling a lindsay lohan. Were both kind of scared but in part its because i think we have the stereotype that alcoholics=angry. i dont think that thats entirely true but i do believe that alcoholism is a male-dominated disease because it helps one release their emotions. We all know that society has a vendetta against men speaking up to how they feel (well, straight ones anyway) and this is a pretty broad stereotype. But i genuinely believe that some people that habitually drink do it to release the emotions they are otherwise unable to articulate sober. on that note, i dont think i should do any speaking at this meeting.
secondly i had a bit of a brainstorm on my drive home on this unseasonably warm day. although, we should start getting used to 60 degrees days in december because the earths temperature is slowly rising. So. The brainstorm. There was a cop with someone pulled over on the side of the southern state and, as usual, everyone had to brake hard to see the commotion or theyve just never seen a cop car before. Those stupid infinitely expensive signs they hang up that have the "updated" traffic reports said nothing of this five exit back up. I started thinking about how much money of the taxpayers NY will piss away for fun. Theyre really starting to rub it in our faces.
Then i thought; hey its only a matter of time before they put radar or laser machines under the overpasses so they can pin people for speeding. Now a days the ez-pass obviously has the license plate of the number it scans. what some people still dont know is that when it scans a plate in, say, new york and again in jersey it can calculate whether or not the person held a speed above the speed limit. In other words, in X amount of miles if you get to point B from point A too quickly like say doing 80 (and dont hit traffic) then you get a ticket sent to you in the mail courtesy of ez-pass. SO i wonder how long it will take for them to start putting machines down like that under our overpasses on parkways and such-- just so they can send NY some more money and piss some more of ours away. its beginning to look like 1984.
my point simply put here is: the cheaper technology gets, the tighter our electronic leashes will be. that is all.
