Breaking with Convention

Spanish

bell12 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:58:54 +0000

I love my Spanish class.
I love Spanish because it is pretty fun, and interesting, and I have a good teacher.
I also love Spanish class because there is this one really cool guy in my class - I don’t know his name - but almost every day he comes in wearing a large, orange knit hat over a mass of dreadlocks, carrying a bag with buttons on it with words on them like “Hello to all the friends I haven’t met yet” and wearing shirts that have pictures of wind turbines on them, or some other sort of environmentally friendly logo, and then he sits down after saying “Hola” in a sort of soft way, and takes out a glass jar, the kind you might find preservatives in, but instead of jellied fruit, it is full of chocolate milk.

Once he brought in a hanging potted plant and a cactus, and he held up the cactus to our teacher and said “como se dice?”
“cacto” said my teacher

And today we were talking about media, like television and newspapers and how much time we spent watching television, and he said “No tengo un television.” Which is so awesome. How many people don’t own a television? Okay well I mean I guess you can always watch your TV online now, but somehow I think he is more concerned about other things. Just think about all the other things we could be doing not stalking people on facebook, not watching TV, not spending time surfing the web. I always get really excited about thinking about all the things I could be doing, but then when I actually try to do those other things I just get tired and bored and go back to doing what I was doing before…

Fun things

bell12 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:08:09 +0000

Yesterday I saw a squirrel stalk a girl with a red bag on the quad. She was trying to take a picture of her friends but it kept sniffing and coming steadily closer to her. Her friends looked apprehensive. She kept looking back at it. When it got a foot away from her she moved forward a bit. So did the squirrel. Her friends looked really concerned. I ran at it. They thanked me. It came back again. It was kind of strange…

This weekend I saw some neat costumes I’d like to tell you about:

A moose
A penguin
A girl dressed as grapes with purple balloons
A guy wearing a sign that said “nudist on strike”
A girl dressed as the walk of shame (actually that was me…lol.)
A giant banana
Allan from “The Hangover”

Hope everyone had a happy Halloween

We are the Wild Things

bell12 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:29:50 +0000

Last week I saw where the wild things are with the RSO The Tree House Society. We dressed up and made costumes. I mean we painted our faces with whiskers and made our noses darker. And we made ears or horns out of head bands and cardboard and fur and whatever other materials we could find. We got some funny looks on the bus, but it was worth it.
And the movie was so.. real. The graphics were awesome of course, but what made it so real was the dialogue; there was just this little kid who made up all of these crazy stories that any kid would make up. And just having his igloo hut crushed was the most devastating thing in the world to him. He had to go into his sisters room with his wet boots and stomp all over her things. The reactions made it real. I remember when I was a kid, and I did things like that, and my brother did things like that, and I’m sure you did too. For a movie based on a book that consists of only a few sentences, it was great.

Here are some fun clips, complements of youtube. The first is the actual story, and the second is the movie trailer.

Platypus

bell12 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:09:02 +0000

In my philosophy class we are talking about morals, which are extremely confusing by the way. My mind pretty much wants to explode when I go to my discussion class on Fridays to try to make sense of this metaphysical nonsense. There are two categories a person could fall under: objectivism or skepticism according to the author (Russ Shafer-Landau) of the book we are reading (Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?). And then skepticism branches off into three categories, which are nihilism, subjectivism, and relativism. What all of that means, isn’t really important. But talking about these different labels made me think about other categories people create to help make sense of complicated issues – or just life in general. Like… scientific classification of species even. Or of course, the cliché stereotypes you find in high school – like the jock, or band nerd. Not to go “High School Musical” or anything, but I think categories really don’t work. I mean, they can be helpful to help us make sense of the world around us, but some things just don’t fit into a category. Like the Platypus – it’s a mammal that lays eggs and male is venomous. Some things just can’t be placed into a category.

From www.ansci.wisc.edu

I remember when I was younger, and I was struggling to find a religious identity. I was baptized and got communion, but for some reason I found myself unable to believe in the Christian religion, and for a long time I felt worried- I tried to find an existing religion that fit what I did believe in, that I could fit into. I looked at Buddhism, glanced at Judaism, found transcendentalism extremely appealing (although it isn’t technically a religion) but didn’t really feel truly compatible with any of those options. In the end I basically created my own beliefs that don’t really fall under any established religion. Okay…. Sorry if you think I am blasphemous but just bare with me. People might want to fit/fall into a category because that gives them a chance to identify with others who have similar interests or beliefs. But in the end we are all unique; we all have different experiences, different thought process, different opinions. It is almost impossible to be strictly limited to one category. It is possible to be in more than one category. Maybe you can be a jock and a band nerd, or maybe you should create your own category – The platypus is in the order Monotremata, with only five other species. Or you could just break free from categories altogether, you know - think outside the box. Maybe categories and labels don’t have to be applied.
I mean we don’t have to throw rules away and resort to anarchism, but I think it would benefit us to question the categories we are given. Many people are often simply assigned into one place by society or peers, or look at categories without really questioning them. These are human creations, and can be changed or challenged. Look at Christianity and how it has branched out into so many subcategories over the centuries. It’s okay if you want to pick a label, fit into a certain place, but I just think it is important to think about what these assignments really mean, and to know that they are not, by any means absolute. These lines are only drawn, they aren’t the bars of a prison cell, and we can move between the boundaries, stand on the line, or draw our own.

New Life Tattoos

bell12 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:58:02 +0000

So I got my nose pierced. Finally. I have been planning on getting my nose pierced for about… six months, and I finally got it done last week. Why the wait? Well, basically my parents didn’t like the idea, and kept coming up with reasons why I shouldn’t do it. My dad said nose piercings looked slutty, my mom just kind of cringed and mentioned how it would look unprofessional later on when I have job interviews (but that future is so distant!! And I can…take it out… for the interview), my grandma told me people would always stair at my nose when I spoke, and my uncle just told me it was a waste of money. But who really cares about all those things? Life is happening right now, and should I really care what other people MIGHT think of a little (lovely) nose piercing? I’m pretty sure the first thing they teach you in kindergarten is that we are all unique and wonderful, and shouldn’t care what others think, but follow our own desires and passions. So maybe wanting a nose piercing isn’t exactly a “passion” but you know, I’m just doing my own thing, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Isn’t that more important than a distant job interview or the money I had to pay to get it done? My family will just have to bite their tongues and deal with it, because this piercing isn’t going anywhere.