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Listening to: From the Choirgirl Hotel. Not for long, though... it's not really matching my mood quite like I was expecting it too.
Currently Reading: Just barely started Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music. Kind of saving it for the train, as well as a stack of others (both fiction and non). Also, I recently read Laurie Notaro's I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl (again) in like two days, and peed myself laughing. Highly recommended. I also devoured The Broke Diaries by Angela Nissel in, like, a mere few days. Laughed until I peed. Also highly recommended.
Wishing: income. Lots of it. Other than that, life's pretty good.
I couldn't be more right now.
Buy "Civilised Conversation..." Merchandise! Please? All the cool kids are doing it....
Please help me pay for college by purchasing items from Amazon.com through this link!!
19 September 2001 | 8:27 PM
When Little Catholic-Geeks Attack. Tonight on Diaryland.com!
Okay.
I ordered these two greeting cards. This guy sells greeting cards with his artwork on them. He does really pretty pieces with religious figures on them. So I ordered "The Sacred Heart of Jesus," and "The Queen of The Rosary." I took them to this custom framing place yesterday. It's this place called "Frame Central," and they custom-cut your frame and show you how to put it together, and you assemble it yourself, with their help. It really cuts down on their labor costs, so it's less expensive, plus you come out of there feeling better about yourself. Look, Mommy! I assembled a custom frame!! So I put them up today. They look really cool. I showed them to the lady who directs our liturgical choir, and she was really impressed with how they came out, framed, and said, "You're such a little Catholic-geek." Isn't that hysterical? I was like, "Yeah, I guess I am!" Heh! She's such a kick. But she's right, I'm the little Catholic-geek!
Anyway, I got those up on the wall today. I also did a lot of around-the-house type things. I'll have this place perfect in no time, I think! There's still a lot to do, though. Which is weird.
I just checked my email a couple of minutes ago, and my Stepmother sent me a couple of forwards. I dislike forwards to begin with, usually, unless they're hysterically funny things. I don't like the "make a wish, pass it on to a million people" things. I just don't like those. It's totally bewildering. My Father doesn't acknowledge my existence. She probably wouldn't email me to say, "Hello" if the world depended on it. (I'm totally fine with this, of course... I understand that they don't care about me anymore, and that's okay with me, really. One less Christmas card to buy, right?) But it's so weird, because when it comes to real contact, they couldn't care less, and yet, when it comes to stupid forwards, I'm right there on their email list with my Aunt, my grandparents, my Stepbrother... Amazing! Also a little irritating, you know? I mean, I'm pretty sure that they understand that my religious and political views differ from theirs, but they send me religious and political emails. It's beyond me, really.
So one of the forwards was about how America is uniting over this terrorism thing, blah, blah. It's basically an email condolence card to everyone who lost love ones in the attacks. So, I added my name to the list and passed it on. Big deal. The other forward reads:
> Published Wednesday, September 12, 2001 in the Miami Herald
>
>
> We'll go forward from this moment
> It's my job to have something to say.
> They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that
which
> troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot
> tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only
> words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this
> suffering.
>
> You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.
>
> What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward's attack
on
> our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would
> learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.
>
> Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your
> cause.
>
> Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.
>
> Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.
>
> Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome
> family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but
a
>
> family nonetheless. We're frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous
> emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae -- a singer's revealing dress, a
> ball team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We're wealthy, too, spoiled by
the
> ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of
> that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We
> are fundamentally decent, though -- peace-loving and compassionate. We
> struggle to know the right
> thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of
> faith, believers in a just and loving God.
>
> Some people -- you, perhaps -- think that any or all of this
> makes us weak. You're mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in
> ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.
>
>
> IN PAIN
>
> Yes, we're in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in
shock.
> We're still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still
> working to make ourselves understand that this isn't a special effect from
> some Hollywood blockbuster, isn't the plot development from a Tom Clancy
> novel. Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable
> final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of
> terrorism in the history
> of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You've
> bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before.
>
> But there's a gulf of difference between making us bloody and
> making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow
the
>
> last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such
> abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage,
> terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will
> bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of
> justice.
>
> I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my
people,
>
> as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to
> tremble with dread of the future.
>
> In the days to come, there will be recrimination and
accusation,
>
> fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and
what
> can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened
> security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We'll go forward from
> this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But etermined, too. Unimaginably
> determined.
>
>
> THE STEEL IN US
>
> You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That
> aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don't know us
> well. On this day, the family's bickering is put on hold.
>
> As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and
> asAmericans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.
>
> So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs
to
> me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If
> that's the case, consider the message received. And take this message in
> exchange: You don't know my people. You don't know what we're capable of.
> You don't know what you just started.
>
> But you're about to learn.
ARGH! Okay. Am I the only one who is having trouble with the thought of all of this? Can we just stop? Do we HAVE to answer violence and death with violence and death? DO WE? WHY? What sense does that make? That just proves to the world that America can be a silly, hypocritical little ferret! Terror, carnage, rage, yes- all these things happened to us, but this is nothing that doesn't happen in any other country every day of the week! Who says that America is so different that when something like this happens, it's okay for us to retaliate? Are we so much better than people from other places that it's necessary to kill other innocent people, just because they live in a country which may have fostered this? I don't understand why people have to die, to be KILLED just because we're upset? Can't we deal with it in a more productive inspirational way? Can't we? Are we so childish that we can't stumble without sobbing? Are we so childish that we can't get hit without hitting others? Sure, the Bible talks about an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but the Bible also says that women shouldn't be allowed to speak in church, and that unruly children should be stoned to death! Should we start doing that, too? WHERE'S THE LOGIC? I'm not seeing it.
Don't think that I'm not affected by all of this... I was as tearful and mortified and uncertain and scared as any other American Joe. I just don't think that all of this retaliatory reactionism is necessarily appropriate, I guess.
Honestly.
College friends should be coming back over the next three or four days, though, so that makes me kind of happy. I miss friends from back home, though. I really do.
Anyway, I should get back to making this place into a home.
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Oh, Whoops. - 10:34 PM , 02 September 2005 In Like Hula-Hoops. - 11:28 PM , 12 April 2005 A - Z - 4:37 AM , 26 March 2005 w00t - 12:15 AM , 25 March 2005 Just Let Her Go. - 12:12 AM , 20 March 2005
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