Last night I dreamt I lived in Trenton, NJ (where my grandfather was born) in the 1940s or so and I was part of a church or something... and then there was some sort of natural disaster, and I thought it was my fault that the highly imagined version of Trenton was largely destroyed, and a whole bunch of crap. I kept waking up and falling back asleep to pick it up again. The only think I'm really able to remember clearly now is that the pastor's youngest son was killed in this disaster, but it was basically Rallo Tubbs from The Cleveland Show and I kept thinking his name was Rerun. Stupid show.

I also had a dream that I was living on a big campus where everyone lived in RVs (sort of like Road Rules meets mini-dorms) and competed in singing/dance contests with each other. I know Stacy lived there, and I think Alison did too.

Weird.

So, most of my mom's family comes from the Netherlands, England, Germany, and Belgium. My dad's is Irish, English, and Cherokee. That's what I've gotten so far. I think there's some Spanish members of my family waaaay back there, but despite their names I can only find information that they were born in the Netherlands. My family is full of Quakers on both sides, and it seems like all my ancestors just hopped on the boat in Holland in the 16th or 17th century and decided to create my entire family. My uncle and his son are Quaker. Fun fact.

Oh -- people in Holland do not know how to spell names, by the way. It's like someone took normal names, pulled each letter J from every Scrabble game they could find, and just threw them down.

Bonus: How a funny-sounding last name changes over time:

1580, Germany: Plaug
1606, Germany to Belgium: Plaug
1647, Germany: Pflug
1675, France: Pflug
1697, France: Pflug, Fluch, Fluck
1700, Germany to Pennsylvania: Fluck
1745, Pennsylvania: Fluck, Fluke

etc.

Okay: As a North Carolinian, I want to make a deal with you, South Carolina. You vote for www.robmillerforcongress.com -- you can call your state "Carolina" a couple of times. I mean it. This is a huge deal. I think I may go around tomorrow and yell "You tell the truth!" at people who lie, just to really establish the crazy. Too bad I'm not a member of Congress.

So on to important business: A+ Obamarama for givin' everyone the bidness for Team Healthcare Reform. I'm only twenty-two -- but as someone already way too familiar with the healthcare system as it is, having honestly had a nightmare last night about losing my health insurance and not being able to get a new policy due to pre-existing conditions (a valid concern), I am so freaking proud to have my president stand up and fight for the ENTIRE country when some are too selfish and short-sighted to save the lives of our country's most vulnerable members -- not only the sick and injured of today, but the sick and injured at any point in the future (aka all of us), and the generations that follow.

If I know anything about what my current and future family deserves, it is the right to be healthy without having to be broke. If America is at all the amazing country we say it is, that should be a given. I refuse to let my grandparents, my parents, my friends, my children, my grandchildren, or their children, and so on live in a country where we have a government that resists its innate duty to protect and truly serve every American regardless of class or culture. We are better than that.

Members of Congress have health insurance -- and it is really a "public option"; a form of health insurance run by the government, their employer -- an option they chose. If they don't agree with a public option for their constituents, they can drop their own public option and join the rest of tens of thousands of Americans without health insurance. Then, give them a middle-class income, and see how they like paying for the treatment of their colon cancer -- the colon cancer which would have been screened for had they had affordable health insurance.

This is weird -- it seems like every September, I go back and look at my past September entries and reflect on all the life that's happened since then.

So, honesty.

I'm not where I want to be right now. Life has gotten very complicated and I'm struggling with trying to figure out how to make myself get in line for some real initiative in life -- but that would be much easier if I knew what I wanted to be doing in the future (on any scale).

The way I see it, I should be more successful than I am right now, I should be more driven to succeed, and I should be focusing on my future AND living for the moment -- instead, I'm either stuck in the past or confused about what "future" even means. For once, I really don't have any plan -- I have to be an adult, and I have to make extremely important decisions about what my life will be. I'm scared I'll look back on this time as something so precious that I just wasted. I do feel like I'm wasting it, to an extent... but it just seems so difficult to find a sense of purpose. I'm looking for guidance, I guess, but I'm having a hard time even beginning to look for it. It seems lazy, but I just know where I'm not going to find my future. If it were the other way around -- if I saw any avenue I knew I might just want to try -- I feel like that would be a good starting point. At the moment, it's like looking at the night sky over the lake on certain nights -- there are clouds of light pollution, but no stars... and I need a star, no matter how faint.

I'm also upset about being so disconnected from other human beings. I talk to my parents and Mark, and Ed occasionally, but I feel like I've abandoned my social life. It has nothing to do with how much I care about people or how much I want to see them or spend time with them -- it's all about my own motivation to have that social life, which seems twisted just in of itself. It's as if I'm stuck in Maslow's hierarchy and I can't allow myself to have a social presence. The worst part about this is that I am twenty-two years old -- one of those ages I'd expected to be getting things done and going out with friends. I don't want to waste my twenties, and I'm already one-fifth of the way through. Time suddenly seems like the precious commodity everyone says it is, but I feel like I'm lost in it... like measuring progress in my life by a cut in time made with safety scissors as opposed to a razor blade. I'm stuck cutting the same section over and over again -- a rut that I refuse to acknowledge.

I do have faith that I will find equilibrium -- that I'll settle into myself as a human being and find my way, and it won't take a great deal longer for me to do that. Right now, it doesn't seem so easy -- but I believe I'll get through. I'm not big into determinism, but it would be comforting to know that there is a reason I am where I am right now. Hopefully, this will be one of those periods in my life against which I can measure happiness in the future. No one can be fulfilled all the time, and if I know anything, it's that you always have to start at the bottom to work your way up. I just hope that I'm not sitting on the bottom for much longer -- I want more than that. I really do.

Somehow, when I moved out, my kids' books didn't expatriate along with all my other stuff. Instead, they ended up in the closet -- and I'm talking about everything from baby books to stuff I probably bought in 7th or 8th grade.

I love how so few of them have anything to do with pretty ballerinas or Disney princesses or whatever. I found my entire collection of Animorphs and Goosebumps books (soon to be donated), along with a lot of books about natural science. I might have had two "girly" books, and they were, without a doubt, gifts. I had a pop-up book about Pendragon Castle and an illustrated encyclopedia (probably aimed at the 9-12 y/o audience), and they were torn to pieces. I loved those things to death. On the other hand, there's a book about a unicorn and a few about ballerinas, and they don't even have broken spines -- which is crazy, considering how much I read as a kid. I also found a book on Darwinian theory that belonged to my mom when she was in junior high... I realized I'd basically memorized what was on every page. I've even pulled a few out that I wanted to look at again. Like the book about mummies I bought at the book fair one year. Oh man, I loved the book fair. (I was Clifford from 1999-2001)

Having scientists for parents was so cool. I chalk up the bulk of my limited intelligence to a cult of curiosity they fostered for me. I remember following my mom around frequently and asking her to multipy large numbers in her head for me. I was completely amazed when she always answered without blinking, and it only encouraged me. It took me a while to figure out she was just giving me random numbers most of the time. She finally ended up gettinge me do the work myself -- at which point I think I probably decided I didn't like multiplication (it had seemed so magical before). But besides that bit of mathematics, science was my world -- I wanted to understand everything. I always asked my dad questions about why the sky was blue and what made the wind and why some insects were one color and others were different, all of which he took careful time to explain. In second grade, I did an AG report on my mom's lab at UNC and got to have my picture taken with a huge microscope (maybe scanning electron, I dunno). It was awesome.

Speaking of natural science, I'm pretty sure one of the guppies is pregnant. SWEET!

Due to the nature of my stay at my parents' and its unknown length, my mom is letting me redecorate my old room. In eighth grade, I painted my room red -- which was kind of weird at first for my parents, but they eventually got used to it. It looked really cool, actually -- I'd actually used my 13-year-old brain for planning something, for once. When my parents renovated after I went to school, my mother decided to re-paint. I think she was going for a more distinguished red, but it ended up looking exactly the same, which was a little amusing.

Unfortunately, red is one of those colors that gets old when it's in a room that doesn't get quite enough light. It's also filled with a lot of dark wood and old-world (some antique) furniture... so it's a little depressing to stay here every day (as opposed to the occasional stay in a guest room, which is what it's supposed to be). So, I get to re-paint, re-decorate, whatever. I just promised to help my mom carry out her own vision for the room when I left. It's going to be really good -- there's a big difference between getting my creative juices flowing for money and getting everything out in my own way -- interior decorating is one of my favorite ways to get that energy out. There's something about establishing a degree of personalization that can't be overlooked.

My grandfather has a stub on Wikipedia!

I'm going to write his article!

THIS IS RAD!

My grandfather was one of the more famous French historians of the 20th century, and despite the fact he may have used the internet just once in the mid-90's, he has over 4.5 MILLION hits with Google. On his full name. His works on the French Revolution were completely earth-shattering for all studies of the topic (and Napoleon, Marxism, French culture, bourgeois society, and politics etc etc), and a lot of modern studies in French history have been based on his work. The man is going to be 90 years old this year and he hasn't touched a computer in at least ten years. On the other hand, the internet is my blood, and I have an obnoxious internet footprint -- but if you search just my first and last name, you mostly just get a stupid porn star. It's insanely awesome.

Also, among the books I was cleaning out of my closet, I found a copy of a symbolic logic textbook -- that belonged to my grandfather -- that he studied at Rutgers -- in 1938 -- with notes. Not just the kind of notes you'll find in all his old books (ALL of them), but also a brief personal note written between him and one of his fraternity brothers during class. It was like striking gold. More like finding a previously unknown masterpiece by Da Vinci. Something like that.

Symbolic logic is my college love. I had an amazing professor for my logic courses and I couldn't get enough of the subject. If there were a more advanced class than the Advanced Logic class I took, I would have pounced on it. Depending on how you look at it, it's either unfortunate or quite fortunate that it's just the foundation of theory for pretty much every subject ever (especially law and economics). I just happen to love the logic itself, though, and couldn't care less about most of its "real world" applications. I have a problem with that sort of thing.

I consider my grandfather a genius -- he was the ultimate scholar and knew something about absolutely everything. He also told the most amazing stories with the most amazing passion and the most amazing, booming, voice. He was like this wonderful, intelligent, regal lion -- but ultimately a kid at heart, and incredibly gentle. I spent so much of my childhood with him, and largely credit him with a great number of my mildly impressive talents. He's since had a series of small strokes which have greatly impacted his neurological functions, which have devastated such a powerful man -- but he's still the same person underneath it all. I'm so proud of him, and my family. I'm so excited about this.

Follow-up to my Michael Jackson entry -- after consulting the book "Stiff" by Mary Roach (one of my favorite books), considering the climate to which Jackson's body was exposed, and the ten-week period the Jacksons decided to keep Michael six feet above, it likely mattered very little how much embalming fluid the mortician used. After about four days, max, he would have definitely looked like a cadaver -- after 10 weeks, he would have been decomposing. The only reason I can imagine why he would have remained in any better shape would have been a combination of both refrigeration and a hermetically sealed coffin. It is, however, very important to note that anaerobic bacteria would still play an immediate factor in decomposition, no matter what preventative measures were taken. And, that a refrigerated body decomposes twice as fast once it is exposed to a warmer climate.

Long story short: Don't keep your loved ones laying around for more than a couple of days -- DEFINITELY not seventy-one days, also known as about two and a half months, also known as grosssssssss.

In other celebrity death-realted news, RIP Dominick Dunne (10/29/1925 - 8/26/2009) -- as creepy as you may have been at times, and as suspicious as you were for knowing so much about the murders and crimes of the rich and famous, and the slight possibility you could have been the owl in the new Michael Peterson "feather defense" -- you had a good show, buddy. I watched. You were like a rich, morbid, gossipy, creepy grandpa -- and you were loved.

They just buried Michael Jackson. The man has been dead for ten weeks. TEN WEEKS. I'm sorry -- no matter how much embalming fluid you pump in anything, that's just gross.

Oh, also, South Carolina is not "Carolina" -- anyone who says otherwise is 100% retarded. Posers.

Twitter is so weird.

I've never heard of Maia Campbell and all the sudden she's a trending topic because she acted in some sitcom in the 90's (In The House... with LL Cool J?) and apparently she's crazy or had a schizophrenic episode or was on drugs or something. I had to look her up on Wikipedia. Then I had to look up the show on Wikipedia. Then I had to look up the show on IMDB. Then I had to look up the show on Google. I still didn't recognize anything I was looking at.

Apparently I was not LL Cool J enough to have any idea this show existed at all, much less during my lifetime.

No, I'm not tweeting this. I refuse to be a part of a trending topic unless it's at all relevant to... anything. Plus I'd be one of another thousand people saying "who the hell is maia campbell and why is she a trending topic?" That always happens. Something totally random becomes a trending topic and I get sucked in because I have no idea what the hell people are talking about. Then, I have filter through the people who are just listing all the trending topics so people see their tweets. Then I have to filter through everyone asking "Who/what is so-and-so?". Then I have to filter through brief statements without any real informational value about the topic (this is sort of what Twitter is, all in all, though). Then I finally give up and have to look it up on Wikipedia or Google.

It's a stupid cycle and I hate being a part of it but RT RT RT @EVERYSINGLEGODDAMNPERSONONTWITTER WTF WHO IS MAIA CAMPBELL AND WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE CARE????? (<-- 104 characters)


( If you went to State and don't want to hate me, probably don't read this. )


I liked that. I should write on Benadryl more often.

Soooooo the Cracker Barrel Mark and I eat at got shot up last night. It's, you know, less than half a mile from our house.

I HATE DURHAM.

I talked to the dude at Expressions today aaaaaand they're ordering Starbuzz and Al Fakher! No idea when it'll get there, but they finally took the initiative, and that's what counts. Good job, college head shop! Having never ordered Starbuzz because it's too damn expensive online, I'm excited.

Also, Al Waha's After Nine is my new favorite cheap shisha. Smoke was a little wimpy at first, but I think that was a matter of the coals I'd been using not having been hot enough. Not having a stove with coils sucks. The side-dish part of the grill is my alternative, but that still takes forEVER, and if I use a small coal I have to hold the damn thing with tongs. It normally ends with me getting impatient and just waiting for the coal to burn through on its own for a while.

I finally got a new nose stud, which was my primary reason for going into town. I'm tired of using bend-your-own varieties (I always end up bending it too loose or too tight), and my piercing isn't big enough to handle anything besides practically the smallest gauge. Also, my nose in general is just too small for most twist varities (thank god it's catching up with the rest of my face), but I finally found one that worked... I just had to press through a bit of scar tissue to get it in right. That was left over from when I was an idiot and took my original piercing out for the first time over a sink with an open drain, then had to wait a couple of days to get a new stud (at which point the freshish piercing had started healing), and I had to re-pierce the new tissue. That was gross. Messing with piercings is gross. They're fun to have, but not fun to mess with. Remember that.

Anyway, then I washed my hands, cause boogers are gross too.

Bonus: A fair bit of off-brand shisha and two studs came out to just $22! Not having money is an adventure.


Finally, I just found out the new medication I JUST started taking for my insomnia is one of the misbranded drugs Pfizer is getting sued for. Which is fine, because I take atypical antipsychotics purely because of their sedation side effects -- I guess if I had schziophrenia, though, I'd be pissed at Pfizer right now. Benzos and nonbenzos have absolutely no effect on me... which is okay, I guess, since I don't really like getting addicted to pills or hallucinating or sleepwalking. If you can name a drug normally used to treat insomnia, I've taken it, and they were all shit. Lunesta gave me this gross taste in my mouth, too. Basically, I would suck hardcore at being a recreational drug user.

Ooookay, I think this entry is long enough for talking about nothing.

Anyone have good resources for career advising? I'm not enrolled at UNC this semester, so I'm not sure I'm eligible for their services. I'm pretty sure I know what I'd be decent at, but it'd help to get some sort of evaluation.

By genetic makeup, I'm way more Cherokee than straight Irish, and I'm definitely not Catholic, but damn it if Ted Kennedy doesn't make me want an Irish wake for myself. Not that I would expect Orin Hatch to show up and tell funny stories about me, but I've always liked the idea of a "fun funeral."

Directly down my parental line, you'll end up with a British knight who came over to Ireland with King John (when he was a prince) when the Pope went alll "yeah you guys go ahead over and take Ireland even though a bunch of people already live there." Is that a theme in my heritage?

Anyway, John was all "yo Richard, thanks for hookin' a brother up -- lemme give you these two counties out west." John pissed off everyone in Ireland pretty quick though, so he went back to England to go piss off Robin Hood and then kick off modern democracy because he was pretty much an all-around stupid king. After that, my great-grandpas were all "uh we've always had these castles here, who's John?" They were doing pretty well for a while. They just had to leave all our stuff there while they went on vaycay to the New World to get away from Henry VIII (who was all about killin some Protestants).

I think I'm a duchess or something to all these people.

I would be, anyway. But, you know... watch out... cause... yeah, one day I might come back to Europe. I'll be all "where's my stuff."

Inexusable movie quote, GO!

Cypher : Woah, Neo! You scared the bejeezus outta me.
Neo : Sorry...
Cypher : It's okay.
Neo : Is that...
Cypher : The Matrix? Yeah.
Neo : Do you always look at it encoded?
Cypher : Well, you have to. The image translators work for the construct program. But there's way too much information to decode the Matrix. You get used to it... I, I don't even see the code. All I see is... blonde, brunette, red-head...

This is why I hate designing sites around templates made by someone sitting at a desk at a web-development software company. Do I need scripts and sprites for a chat room interface? How about a guestbook? No, absolutely not, ever. Then why are they embedded in this stupid template? Because there's a jerk making software, that's why.

My dad's new company had some guy doing their website -- he didn't have time for it, so I'm working on it. It looks okay -- not anything spectacular, and there are a lot of consistency issues I couldn't have let go if I started it myself -- but it's okay. Much more than I ever got around to doing when my dad first asked me to do the site (I chose classes instead). What is absolutely killing me is how the site so clearly started with a random Dreamweaver template, and besides the useless script and images and files which will never ever see the light of a monitor screen, it has some sort of in-bred kid-gloves navigation system. A system, for whatever reason, which Dreamweaver has allowed to lock the code for both the footer navigation and the drop-down navigation. I can look at the code and see what needs to change, but I can't touch it. So, Dreamweaver obviously generated the code for the navigation -- but it is absolutely impossible to find. ESPECIALLY with all that Geocities crap floating around and mucking up the site's file system.

I'm so tempted to just open it in SmartFTP and fix it like I'm whoring out Dreamweaver's girlfriend, but I know that's not sustainable.

I think, before I shut this down for the day, I'm going to put a <blink> tag somewhere really obnoxious.


... Alas, no, even I am not that cruel.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I wish I still worked at OCUQ. That would be so, so, so fun. I miss that job like nobody's business.

Looking for administrative work ATM. Getting through some web design problems my dad is having in the meantime.

Totally going to make this work. Can-do attitude, full-speed ahead...

Also, update on Goldfish: Goldfish is TKO'd a couple days ago. Despite all the other fish remaining happy and healthy in a clean and well-maintained tank, it got tail rot -- and despite a truly valiant effort on my part to save the thing, it went to fish heaven. Or purgatory. Or wherever that fish deserved to go.

Anyway. Remaining fish are very happy and healthy. I'm going to just have guppies and black skirt tetras, I think. Denzel deals with the guppies very well and the guppies are hardy as hell. I just think Denzel needs some friends his own size, because he did kind of follow Goldfish around when dude was alive.

Denzel's a little odd in that he's totally healthy, but swims at a minor slant, like he's constantly just a little drunk... it's sort of cute. There really doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong with him and he doesn't behave oddly otherwise... so maybe it's a genetic neurological problem. Or maybe he actually knows which way is up, and the rest of us just don't get it. Maybe swimming at an angle is his autistic superpower.

I'm a bad person.

I suck.

My sleep schedule has been completely ridiculous for like a month or two now. I've been waking up around 7 PM and falling asleep between 9 and 11 AM. This has led to me leaving the house once, maybe twice. I did see "Funny People" with Ed the other day... and it did have lots of chuckles, but dammit, I hate when Adam Sandler plays Dark Bitter Adam Sandler. I'm not a huge fan to begin with, but (maybe just because it's so convincing or odd) I get the feeling that's how he is in person. At least at times. And that bothers me. Seth Rogen is wonderful, though. I didn't fully appreciate him until Mark and I watched Freaks & Geeks. Awesome.

Anyway, with the sleep -- depending on how you look at it, then, it is either fortunate or unfortunate that I think I'm getting sick with something. Yesterday, I slept all day and woke up around 6:30 or 7. I ate dinner, had a glass of wine, and somehow managed to fall asleep around midnight. I kept waking up on my own around 5, but I fell back asleep about 45 minutes later. My alarm went off at 8:15, at which point I convinced myself to get up (I was still exhausted) and drive to campus. As it turns out, that was a waste of windshield wiper fluid, gas, $.65 for parking, and time, but at least the advisor I met with for two minutes was really awesome about the whole thing.

I have to withdraw this semester due to financial issues. Basically, fuck the housing market and what it's done to my family. Rather than take out a loan (because aid isn't an option -- I'm a 22-year-old 9th semester senior with an average GPA), I'm going to work. I'm actually happy with this -- I think time off without trying to work out a bunch of paperwork will serve me well. I'll be graduating later than I'd like, but as long as I graduate, I'll be happy. In light of the pneumonia which kept me from classes last semester, I'm accepting that I may be dangerously close to just burning out -- getting my head straight can only serve to benefit me right now. Life's gotten so complicated recently that I can't ignore the pressure anymore. Not to mention that I generally really enjoy work. I have a rare and incredible talent for making mindless and numbing tasks enjoyable. Often, I don't even have to do anything.

In the meantime, while I search for work, I think I'm going to try to self-instruct myself on a textbook from a Comp Sci class I wanted to take. I haven't done any code in so long... a refresher would be nice.

Finally, still considering all of the above:

ECK: I AM A FAILURE AND I LOVE YOU AND I MISS YOU AND I'M SORRY!!! I'm going to make sure I'm not sick/contagious and then FIX THIS JUNK. I think I'm going to go into my savings for our visit to Raleigh... I think Raleigh, anyway. Also, we should go to IKEA. I used Craigslist to get an almost-new king-sized mattress and box springs for $50, and now I need the bed to go with it. So I need to check how far into my savings I can go, and if I can get some quick work done in the immediate future. ALSO I want to know about how rad your Carrboro place is.

THE GOLDFISH IS A JACKASS.