Stats final is tomorrow. After tomorrow, I'll have all the work towards my associate's DONE! Fucking insane. The time I've spent so far in Portland has gone so ridiculously quickly. It's not fair. :[
I really hope Keeter and I can be roomies. That would be kickmyasshole-amazing. I loooooove Northeast Portland. I'm so pumped for Zumba next term! Hahahaha...www.youtube.com/watch www.youtube.com/watch I'm gonna need to buy a sports bra... The people in that class are gonna be fuckin' hilarious. Hahhaha.
I really hope Keeter and I can be roommates. I know I just said that, but this is how much I hope it can happen. I'll stay until after Keeter graduates in May if we live together so she doesn't have to look for a new roomie/move around in the middle of her last term of her Bachelor's Degree. If we doooo become roomies and I stay that long, spring quarter I may take French II and Biology (if i decide I want to go for an environmental science/college of natural resources major at Berkeley). By the time I move down to California I'll have my braces off. [:
I'm not at all concerned about finding a job once I'm down there-- up here, I'm weary. I'll have my AA and I have lots of skills...I'll do anything! And there are lots of needed writers. It would be awesome if I could get some work with a non-profit. I would love that so much. "Fullfilling" is the word Andrew used. I just want to change and influence and learn and grow and help others grow, in whatever I do-- always.

http://nature.berkeley.edu/site/se.php
http://nature.berkeley.edu/site/crs.php
There's a whole College of Natural Resources at Berkeley!! Awe at the world of options:
https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm
Yeah, catch: those are B.S. degrees, which take major preparation from transfers of fucking calculus, environmental studies (got that), physics, biology, chemistry and the social sciences (got those).
Oh, i savor and loathe my freedom of choice all at once. But in reality, I feel as is anything that requires calculus is not going to be something I can do. I should ask a Cal advisor if calculus and physics are required for a major in Society and Environment. As far as I can find, it doesn't require them.
http://nature.berkeley.edu/site/forms/oisa/se_major_snapshot.pdf
I have courses that fit all (except for economics) of those lower division course requirements!! That really excites me.
I wonder how many freaking posts about my major and career path I've made now. They'll continue.

I was looking online at philanthropic job listings and a lot of environment-oriented non-profits described people they're looking for as people like me. I especially am interested in www.Earthsparkinternational.org
I'm really passionate about helping developing countries, specifically the poor in developing countries, utilize clean energy sources and develop their economies and nations from clean energies. I'm very interested in helping developing nations get it right the first time, unlike the developed nations of today who are now struggling to reverse the effects of our dependency on fossil fuels. In the future when developed countries are compensating to stop the damage we're doing to the planet, our health and to the global climate now, we won't be able to afford for a whole new league of developing nations to be developed by that time by the means of coal, petroleum, natural gas and other non-renewable resources. We need to prevent the poor, developing countries of this world from getting on the wrong paths in the first place, as we did, while we're getting our developed nations on the paths toward a sustainable, healthy future. I really believe in this and would love to be in the direct productive pandemonium of change and action on this work that needs to be done for the future of the world.

If you think in ecological terms or about our origins, what the fuck is a "thing" anyway? Every time I say (or especially write it) I feel as if i'm giving kudos to something terrible in the world.

Oh my clitiros, Maddy, remind me to tell you about the fucking dreams I've had the past two nights that you've been in. Hahaha...
Dreaming of you is my subconscious missing you.

Paige and I and Existence:

Paige: Help me think I'm somebody else.
Alyse: Why would you want to do that?
Paige: No, help me not feel. I think back on experiences, and it's been so long since I have. I feel as if I'm there and i feel its power. I feel weak and vulnerable.
Alyse: Which past experiences are you feeling the power of?
Paige: When i drove through the Dalles 3 years ago with aunt susie. There was an abandoned park, and the energy was so sad.
Paige: In life you don't know what's going to happen and when it does you grow a certain emotional feeling to/from it. And you can't turn it off.
Alyse: I fucking know. Eventually, over lots and lots of time, layers of living bury them with new ones.
Paige: But each layer is the same.
(Half an hour later).
Alyse: It may seem that way now but it’s far from the truth. If you perpetually tell yourself that each layer is the same and put yourself on pause enough, you won’t allow for the layers to settle upon each other and build the soil of your existence. Think of all the feelings you’ve felt in your life— you can’t because there were too many and they’ve been too singular, unique and have passed. They can’t truly be remembered or felt again. Though some past experiences hold powerful energy you can replicate with your memory, feelings from the past are our own manifestations, they’re what we allow them to be. You’re now and there is no other time and this can never happen again.
Paige: Exactly! It will never happen again. I get attached.
Alyse: That's not being free.
Paige: I don't care right now. I was free in my sleep.
Alyse: I love you, go back to sleep.
Paige: Love you too.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From my Yoga class journal, November 16th:
Today during sabasana i had an incredible experience. lying there, I realized I was thinking about my eventful morning. I needed to clear my mind. I paused the frame of my memory and expanded outward from it. I pictured all of my thoughts as photos next to the image of a paused video in my head that had been replaying the morning. The photos that were representative of my thoughts were strewn across a table and I sat at the table and wiped them away. Once the table was uncluttered it became cleaner and cleaner until the metal table was so clean I saw myself in it and I was examining and fussing over my appearance. So I made the table dark wood but then the circles and shapes from where branches once grew became more and more elaborate and interconnected, demanding my attention and fascination. I let myself fall under the table and I was falling through the sky towards layers and layers of white clouds. I saw myself falling through thin clouds. The clouds became thicker and whiter, as if I was falling up (because the thinnest clouds are in the lower levels of the atmosphere). I transformed as I fell into a giant human-sized drop of liquid, shaped by the pressure of the air. Then my view was back in first person; I could no longer see myself, I could only feel myself and I saw the clouds getting thicker and whiter still until all I saw was whiteness. Quickly, again my view was outside of the liquid drop. I saw the large, speeding liquid drop I was fall into the white which was liquid, too and I became it.

Who knew Jason Schwartzman had a band! Bizarre musical choice, too.
Paige is growing out her armpit hair. Cracks me up.
NY legislatures dumped gay marriage. I don't know what's wrong with this country. Argentina just legalized gay marriage!
I hate PSU. I don't want to go there for another fucking term. v_v
There are so many options flying through the boundaries of my peripheral vision, pulling me in lots of different directions. It makes me wonder how many different directions I can go in at once.

I'm very much so over having hot flashes. It's been determined that they are caused by stress. I concluded this a while ago. I had one all day today, then I took a break from studying stats and talked to Paige and walked the dogs and it's been gone since. [: It's odd that I used to get them when talking to Abby all the time, perhaps very telling. But the strangeness lay in that she would take her pants off or something and then I'd get hit with a hot flash and tell her about it and she'd inform me she just took off clothing. We used to joke about that. It would happen without fail anytime she'd change while talking to me! Maybe she just changed a lot on the phone with me at the end of the day and I felt distressed by the distance between us often. Still, the timing was hilarious!

I'm so unclear of what I should do or where I should go. I need guidance. I'm going to try to talk with a guidance counselor and explain my whole plan and situation. I really love the idea of land use planning; i enjoy it so much. I have an endless love for words. I love the planet. I love vegan baking. I think I can do it all, I just need a focus and a plan that won't keep getting thwarted making me feel alone, forever challenged and hopeless.
I hate the holidays. It feels like advertising and decorations are especially obnoxious and very out of place this year. The year has gone way too INCREDIBLY fast. The fastest year yet of my life-- the first year of adulthood. I don't like that.
Mom and I are going to have our Angel Hair Pasta Dinner (it's our tradition and I'm capitalizing it, okay?) Christmas Eve and then it looks as if she'll be ditching me to be festive at Nate's house Christmas night if she can. Thanks, Mom. I can't wait to get away from you.
Mom wants to go caroling. I remember doing that with family at least a few Christmases. I sang all day today. It was wonderful. I had missed it.
Haha, Paige. "Happy Hollow-days." Paigey will be here for a week during Christmas to see her bitches. That's prettttyy exciting. If only it weren't assfucking freezing we could go biking and actually enjoy the part of the world that is most enjoyable-- the outdoors. It's so funny how we thought it was insane that we biked eight miles (on two occasions) one way to Clatskanie from my old house. It was pretty ridiculous that we did them unplanned so we had no water and it was a hot summer day and what not but it was fun as hell. It's funny though because now I bike up to 19 miles a day and 9 miles straight one way to Cascade three times a week no problem and right after do yoga. I love how much more fit I've been able to be in Portland. I love my bicycle.
Lf5 the Friday after finals! Whoooo! Too bad this isn't going to be my very last term before breaking after all. Godfuckingdammit. I have to call Berkeley and confirm that they need two quarters to equal their one semester of stats. Ugggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhh.

The United States people and military are too fatigued to continue to try to bring a war in Afghanistan, a nation with a 10% literacy rate, to a sturdy stance long enough for us to feel secure about the Taliban enough for us to leave. This war has been going on for eight years, and although in those eight years it has been fought all wrong including in the wrong places all together, it has still drained the resources, energy and hearts of Americans for all this time. We cannot make ANY further war escalation after July 2011, this war is weakening America in every facet and to continue to cripple this nation by an indefinite or impossible war mission is Anti-American and will end disastrously or with a dishonest, hyped up triumph home. It's extremely questionable whether or not we have the capacity to make progress and sustain stability enough to withdraw in the timetable set now. The United States is in one of the worst spots in terms of U.S. foreign policy and war that it has been in for decades. The American people are emotionally, economically and in all ways affected by wartime created by a disapproved of, appointed president, exhausted. Many of us asleep in the wake of the power being shifted and decisions being made during this war. I hope it takes something positive, not escalated violence, non-productivity and tragedy to awaken the American people to demand what the American people want.

It's too cold and more than that, I'm too stressed to sleep. I don't want to wake up in 5.5 hours to the first day of my study-a-thon for Stats and ES finals. Fuck. This stats final IS going to be the death of me.
I miss Brent and Keeter so freaking much. It's kind of sillyflippincrazy that i met two dear, rare friends in such a crapshit place. Reminds me, cheesily, of Modest Mouse's So Much Beauty in Dirt-- probably some of their most non-innovative lyrics ever.

I can't do things half-assed. It kills me. I'm not capable of doing less than more than is asked of me on assignments in school. I don't know why I am this way, it's just my nature and my only way. I felt so bad-- a girl in ES, Sonrisa (she has no hispanic in her hehe-- she does have an awesome binder with a feminist poem on it though, i took a picture), she decided not to present her Sustainable Community today because she saw me finishing mine in class during lecture (drawing trees is so relaxing) and she got discouraged about the quality of hers. It had good ideas included, I wish she'd presented it. I looked at her when we were the only two left and she wouldn't go so I did and hoped she'd go after me but there was no way she'd follow mine up. I don't know how or why people are so consistently lame. It makes me feel bad to be so grawesome! Shit!

Pcc is so retarded. I realized today I haven't had to (thus haven't really) used MLA since Writing 122 and a little bit in Speech 111 last winter term! I miss that speech class. I miss psych with LaKisha, too. And WAR with Brent and Existentialism with everyone. I miss the people from ES Geology Perspective plus Jill Betts. A class is such a brief yet special close-knit, communally shared experience. Everyone is committed to a focused, in-depth subject and experiences learning and growth together within the same room, at the same times each week. It's just special bonding you can get with no other people. I wish there was a way especially made to stay connected with old classmates. I guess that's what that facebook shit is about but that's too personal and invasive. Just a connection like emails about events, literature/movies and happenings pertaining to the subject matter learned in the class or the experiences gained from it would be appropriate. If only we had the time and if only the inhibitions stayed away long after the class ended. It's so hard to preserve the threads that make up the blanket of college we wrap ourselves in.
I wonder in the next three years how much of my being will be traded for new parts and what conglomerate themes will arise in me; my self added to like a slab of growing clay.

I woke up this morning stoned. Freaking Zack's birthday...the bastard. I was still pretty gone all throughout Geography but I aced my map test anyway. It's hilarious to observe myself high because I'm very objectively seeing it all since it's such a rare thing. Bong high is so different than vaporizing or smoking a pipe. Christ on a cookie, I had only done that once before. It's ridic. I was sooooo creative last night! As soon as I took my last hit I laid back for a moment and then took off my shoes and my belt-- I didn't even think about it, I just wanted them off. Hahaha. I drew a lot of wonderful things and wrote poetry on the bus on the way home. I also pulled apart some play-doe starting to make a human heart then I set it down and watched as the shape changed into 4665745362 things in front of me. I saw giant whales holding fins gliding over the entire arc of the spherical earth, horizon after horizon. I saw at least 30 changes in that play-doe. Oh god. Way to prepare for finals week, I hate you Zack, I hate you. I ate three of the vegan bday cupcakes I brought him. It's true that food tastes 3463463 times better while you're high. Those cupcakes were kiiiicckkk aaassssssssss anyway! Zack's reallystraightgirl cousin Nicole who loves animal products and when i offered her a vegan cupcake she literally turned around and walked away toward the stove where she was preparing to fry an egg. Her boyfriend/2nd cousin (I've always wanted to be able to use a "/" to make fun of incest people!! Yes!) made her try one and she ran out into the living room to me and said "Those are amazing!!" Oh yeah. I looooooooooooooooooove vegan baking, I'm not sure how I ever lived without it. When I'm a master I'm going to make more of my own recipes with which I should totally publish a vegan baking book-- or at least make a homemade one. [:
On Saturday Levi and I had oodles of fun going all over the place, picking up his Oz book, shopping for patches for holes in things we love, shopping at awesome places like Master Peace. In Jambo World Craft there was a small sign on the wall in between shelves that read had infinity symbols on either side of "Namaste" and basically elaborated on "namaste". It read: "I honor the place in you in which the entire universe dwells. I honor the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light and of peace. When you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, we are one." I modified it to encompass the proper uses of spelling and grammar which it was seriously lacking with its no commas and a random period. I tried editing the picture I took of it on my phone with the pencil tool to add the grammar-- it didn't work too well. Hahaha. English teachers can never succeed if they're also stoners, this must be an unpublished fact of the world. I still wonder if people in my yoga class or most yoga classes know wtf they're talking about when yoga instructors tell them "namaste" at the end of yoga and when they say it back. I swear they don't-- it's just mindless parrot-talk instead of the connected oneness. It frustrates me when people are ignorant.

I'm serious Levi-- you cannot get a pig until I have one first.

I just watched the president's speech on the war about the last surge to Afghanistan and the bringing home of ALL troops which will start July 2011. I just hope our fatigued military that has been drug through the throes of Bush's bullshit Iraq war can fulfill their mission in Afghanistan to help build and unite the country (oi), weaken and disenfranchise the Taliban enough to hand the fight over to Afghanistan and safely leave. It's incredibly disheartening to know that 30,000 more troops are going to fight a war that was started 8 years ago, a war which has accomplished an amazingly minuscule amount. I am glad there is now a set time-table for exit and I'm glad we're not leaving and calling ALL of the lives lost, resources wasted, harm done in every way all efforts executed in utter vain. I think this is the most responsible conclusion to this war we could possibly attempt. If only we'd had a level-headed, determined, just, focused, caring, considerate and strategical president when we got hit by 9/11. But if we had, it wouldn't have happened in the first place.

I'm so pumped about my sustainable community I'm designing for Environmental Studies. I knew I'd get waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay into this! The past couple days I've been bouncing ideas for it off of Levi and discussing stupendous future and plausible circumstances of a society and a planet. It's been hot. Land-use planning is really an area of interest to me. I also really enjoy designing area's infrastructures and designing living space and coming up with innovations and incorporating and integrating all necessary and beneficial pieces possible into a living, functioning, designed ecosystem. I love the entire process of this. What do you major in to ensure you can:
-Change the world with words
-Teach and inspire
-Write
-Design sustainable innovations and discuss sustainable technologies
-Designate area's best resources and plan how to utilize them best (geothermal energy in hot spots and near plumes, wind in the gorge and rainwater for the Northwest; sunshine, fog over the ocean and tidal-wave energy for central California)
-Help shape a nation in which its people are treated equally
-Help spread permaculture
-Help spread truth, passion (and anger as long as there is something to be outraged over)
-Help take down evil corporations
-Help shape a world that cherishes diversity and understands the biological and evolutionary responsibilities of the human race
-Make it apparent and more and more true and evident each day that the human race is a part of nature, including every single one of us, make it clear that our lot to be with the earth is inescapable.
-Invent things that have never been grasped at.
-Encourage justice for oppressed people.
-Read, study, discuss and write philosophy.
-Help the truth reach the most quieted, oppressed and knowledge-deprived corners of the world.

Perhaps I should start trying out of desperation and lack of turns to make and doorways to rush through, to think of my career has merely an ornament of my life-- not the basis for the good I do in the world. But if I can't incorporate what I feel I need to add to the world and the things I want to use to change and shape the world into how I make a living, will I feel at all complete or as if I'm living as productively or freely and right as I should? That's why I've loved my ability to incorporate things I adore into school such as Environmental Science, Yoga and Creative Writing. If I wouldn't have been able to take such great classes, I definitely would've been deprived of these great things while in school because outside of school, there's hardly any time. I must dedicate my career to causes and means that reflect my passions or I will never be content. Can I possibly do all I want to even in one lifetime?

I love Keeter and Thanksgiving! I missed her so much. Maddy, Mom, LaKisha and I were shopping all day for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Oh my jeeeeze. I'm so tired! I have soooooooooooooooo much cooking and baking to do tomorrow, I should get to sleep.
I misseeeeddd LaKisha! We ate falafels for dinner and had baby food for dessert. [: Then we went to Movie Madness(<33333333) and got Dead Alive. Oh my god, my body hurts from laughing so much and so hard. Then we went to Powells and the Fresh Pot cafe there and Keeter got tea and we had mexican coca-cola!! (Real sugar! Few ingredients. YESSS.) Then we got Sour Patch Kids and Bottle Caps (they had Shocktarts, too! Those aren't easy to find!) at the plaid pantry. The plaid pantry always reminds me of the plaid night gown i'm going to buy LaKisha one day. Hahahaha.
I hope tomorrow goes wonderfully!! It's going to be the most interesting mix of people, oh my...
I'm too pumped for words!

A shitty string of events today has led to me not having my jump drive with me. I'm saving my Media Review for Geography class here for now. I may keep it here.

Standard International News:
This is an important article! Read it.
When are nations going to learn that family values run deep in all families…including, or especially, families of politicians? A large change in governance will rarely occur when going from one ruler, to that ruler’s sibling. (Or son or any other direct relative of the same era.) In Cuba, Raúl Castro, brother of former leader known for fascism, is keeping those family values alive and kicking in his governance of the Cuban state. His government relies on convicting people who are offenders of “dangerousness”, a provision allowing the Cuban government to arrest anyone they suspect could possibly commit future crimes. (“Preventative crime-fighting” such as this reminds me of Bush’s Patriot Act, allowing the US government to spy on and violate the constitutional rights of privacy belonging to Americans. The Patriot Act is still law.) Alexander Santos Hernandez, a political activist, was sentenced to four years for “dangerousness”. He told Human Rights Watch, "[The police] picked me up at 5:50 a.m. while I was at home sleeping, and by 8:30 that morning they were already reading me my sentence." Santos was incarcerated without ever having a lawyer or any type of due process. His sentence was dated two days before his trial took place!!
From the article: “Raúl Castro's government also enforces political conformity using beatings, short-term detention, public acts of repudiation, and the denial of work, among other tactics. Taken together, these everyday forms of repression create a climate of fear that has a profound chilling effect on the exercise of fundamental freedoms in Cuban society.”
The report the article revolves around calls upon the Obama administration to unite with the EU, Latin America and Canada to secure the demand that the Raul Castro government release all political prisoners within six months of the demand being made. If the Cuban government fails to meet this demand, the coalition of nations who state the demand will take punitive measures in the forms of travel bans on government officials and withholding new forms of foreign investment. We need to get on organizing this effort and making this demand. The longer we wait, the more innocent people live their lives in total fear and oppression and the more innocent Cubans get jailed and subjected to cruel punishments and injustices.
http://en.mercopress.com/2009/11/23/blasting-report-on-human-rights-new-castro-same-cuba
News from the Realm:
With the World Health Organization recently releasing a report stating violence and inequality towards women is not declining in the world even today, Haiti is doing something to fight for the empowerment and betterment of the lives of victimized women. In Haiti violence against women is a large issue, particularly in the season of the carnival and in times of political instability in the country. The foundation of a nation is truly its women. Women are the keepers of life and a people’s main advocates for patience, compassion, diligence and reason. We’re no longer minorities in the world yet we’re treated subhuman in the majority of the world’s countries. From organization and planning efforts by women’s rights organizations, the Ministry of Justice and Public Safety and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and Women’s Rights is born a Women Victim Center in a police station in the city of Fort National, Haiti. In collaboration with funds from the UN and foreign donors, another center is going to open in nearby Delmas—the two centers only the first two of many Women Victim Centers set to open all across the country.
At Fort National’s police station courses on violence against women and gender relations are to be given to all new police recruits and the training is planned to be extended to all officers already serving. Fort National’s police station was chosen because it serves an impoverished area with high crime rates. This Women Victim Center is based on a Brazilian model and is a significant step for women and abused and unfairly treated minorities throughout Haiti and all developing nations.
http://www.haitiantimes.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Officials+Open+Women+Victim+Center+at+Police+Station-%20&id=3731321-Officials+Open+Women+Victim+Center+at+Police+Station-&instance=secondary_story_bullets_left_column
Voices of the People:
Please read this article.
The body of a nineteen-year old, gay Peurto-Rican teen, George Steven Lopez-Mercado was found burned, dismembered and decapitated a few miles out of his hometown in Caguas. Mercado was a well-known activist in the gay community. This crime was a hate crime. As if the crime itself is not dishearteningly sick and disgusting enough, the police investigator on the case was quoted saying “people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen.” The supposed defender of the law says nothing about this torturous murder being wrong or not only it being a grotesque murder but one fueled by bigotry and hate against a specific group of people, instead he gives a warning to other gays that they don’t have the protection of the police.
From the article: “By ripping off someone’s arms, legs, and head the murderers symbolically attempted to separate George Steven Lopez Mercado from his humanity. In pieces a person seems less human and less important. The world will remember George Steven Lopez Mercado as he was, an innocent Puerto Rican citizen who lived a lifestyle that was legal and consistent within himself.”
Also from the article: “Hate crimes are not new to the gay community around the world. No matter what one’s views on homosexuality, citizens attacking other citizens on the basis of a personal characteristic is unacceptable. I have had several of my friends attacked because they were gay or their gender representation was not what the attacker thought was appropriate. It is not appropriate for citizens to take legal matters into their own hands by causing harm to other citizens.”
The author of the article says “take legal matters into their own hands”, but there is no legal matter involved in the life of a law-abiding, legal, innocent citizen! That phrase “take legal matters into their own hands” is used when for instance, a superhero “serves justice” to a criminal instead of allowing legal authorities to do their job. There is no job to be done against innocent, gay citizens anywhere in this world! There is no legislation anywhere outlawing gay people from living, which is all George Steven Lopez-Mercado was doing! And there is nothing to take into your own hands involved with the life of an innocent, law-abiding person. That phrase leads the reader to believe this horrendous action would be taken against the person through legal means if attackers in hate-crimes didn’t do so, which is completely false! Although the author’s intent throughout the article is clear, they didn’t word that very well by choosing to stick a non-fitting, misleading cliché phrase in place of meaningful words, thus their intent is vastly skewed.
Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and this hate crime falls under the hate crime legislation signed into law less than a month ago by Barack Obama, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. After a twelve-year fight by Matthew Shepard’s family, allies of LGBTQI people and gay rights organizations, the legislation was signed into law in October, extending hate crime protection to people of all sexual orientation, gender identity as well as people with disabilities. No murder has ever been classified as a hate crime in Puerto Rico to date.
From Wikipedia: “U.S. federal law applies to Puerto Rico, even though Puerto Rico is not a state of the American Union and has no voting representative in the U.S. Congress. Because of the establishment of the Federal Relations Act of 1950, all federal laws that are "not locally inapplicable" are automatically the law of the land in Puerto Rico.”[51]
This atrocious crime is the true test of United States justice in holding up our federal laws. I’ll be writing to Obama to ensure that this crime is treated as what it was—a murder driven by hate for gay people against a gay individual.
http://www.clevelandpride.org/home/2009/11/hate-crime-gay-puerto-rican-teen-george-steven-lopez-mercado-brutally-killed/
Image of a Place:
One of my good friends is from Costa Rica and this is the exact site she’s told me of witnessing while driving down the highway in her home country; pesticides being sprayed in mass rains from airplanes over crop fields. This photo is of a pesticide-spraying plane over banana plantations. Bananas are the #1 most eaten fruit in America. Yum, DDT pesticides on your morning breakfast, the same chemical used in WWII by the same company (Monsanto) that manufactured Agent Orange for Vietnam which caused “jungle rot”, five types of cancer and many other often deadly illnesses in Vietnam veterans. Not to mention Agent Orange exposure during and post the herbicidal warfare the US called on Vietnam led to the deaths and disabilities of 400,000 Vietnamese and the deformations and birth-defects of 500,000 Vietnamese babies. Buying organically grown food is one way to assure your food purchase isn’t fueling the profiteers of war.
http://www.sunyjcc.edu/files/userfiles/aerial%20spraying.jpg
Music of the World:
Reggae originated first in Jamaica in the 1960s. This is a video of one of Bob Marley’s sons, Ky-mani Marley at the 2009 Monterey, California Reggae Festival singing “No Woman, No Cry”. This show was AMAZING. I was there, in my hometown of Monterey for a couple weeks in September visiting colleges and family and we went to Reggae Fest. There were so many beautiful people to dance with; it was such a good time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ8rlUNMKFw

I learned some about this in the War class. There's never too much knowledge to read:
http://www.sunyjcc.edu/files/userfiles/aerial%20spraying.jpg
Maker of Agent Orange?
Guess!
Take an uneducated guess, because I'm positive you have no idea.

Monsanto.

I just really like this word, particularly the second definition.

Fer⋅vent  [fur-vuhnt]
–adjective
1. having or showing great warmth or intensity of spirit, feeling, enthusiasm, etc.; ardent: a fervent admirer; a fervent plea.
2. hot; burning; glowing.

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I'm sooo anxious about my modeling photos! They'll be up Sunday. Gaaaahhhhhhhhh!
I found an awesome coconut milk(fat) recipe for vegan whipped cream. Oh, I'm pumped like a well. Sometimes I make real bad descriptive metaphors. I wish Hana wasn't across the country! She would fucking fall IN LOVE with Portland. We would have such a fucking fun time here together. She wishes she could come to our Thanksgiving with our rice turkey and many pies and sweet potato-ey goodness. She wants to eat at Burgerville and experience "Oregun". She still tells people about this time when I was talking to her and I was like "holy shit" and i told her how right then my neighbors were burning trash. Then later during that same conversation I was in the chicken coop collecting eggs and my mom was yelling at me to do some chicken chore. She tells people of her Oregon friend with trash-burning neighbors and my chicken coop and they're like "No way, shut up!" and crack up. Hahaha. She almost peed herself when I told her tonight about the Buffalo across the way from me. I almost pee myself every time she says "orange" with her NY accent.<3 I'm making her another mixed CD and it's going to have Belt on it by Regina Spektor in which she says "orange juice" with her NY accent. I freaking love "orange" said that way, it makes me giddy. I missed Hana so shitting much! We talked about sleepwalking and when I peed on my brother's feet in my sleep when I was little hanging off of his bunk bed and when her uncle slept walked and made a big-ass omelet with 4 eggs, mushrooms and peppers and freaking discussed what he was doing the whole time like motherflipping Julia Child. We talked about local places in the NW, how amazing philosophy classes are, her roommates, white people and changing and asexuality and her love Jessica and the past and memories. She said words that are perfect for New York accents for me like cawfee, dawg, arange, chawcolate for a good five minutes making me laugh. We've known each other for five years; since eighth grade! It's so crazy. I'm going to send her my goddess poem once it's up on Sunday. Hahahahaha.
I love Hana!

http://www.clevelandpride.org/home/2009/11/hate-crime-gay-puerto-rican-teen-george-steven-lopez-mercado-brutally-killed/

"It is not appropriate for citizens to take legal matters into their own hands by causing harm to other citizens."
Sure, but a legal gay citizen getting attacked has nothing to do with legal matters. Lethal matters, yes. A gay person living is not anything that can be stopped through any legal processes. Fuck. That was really bad wording.

I live in a country where the Tea Party is a registered political party and in a country that has organizations such as this:
http://americansfortruth.com/news/analysis-of-2009-hate-crimes-bill-hr-1913.html
America...I want out.

Goodish news: Both of the two hate-criminals from Norfolk, Virginia who cornered and brutally beat openly gay Jack Price have been arrested. Jack Price suffered a broken jaw, fractured ribs, a lacerated spleen, and the collapse of both of his lungs. He's now in a medically-induced coma.

I'd heard of genetically modified food and crops but I've only really been learning about GMOs and Monsanto since I saw Food for the Future. I watched this tonight with Mom: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844&ei=lGn9SZnhMqOKqQP9ppjsBQ&q=The+World+According+to+Monsanto#
Watch this documentary. For real. It's the most important documentary I've seen yet. In some ways, I think it was better done than Food for the Future. Although, both are essential and have a lot of different information. The World According to Monsanto spells out for you the global-scale by which Monsanto is really a threat and shows it is much more than GMO vs. Organic, it's Monsanto vs...every farmer on the planet. There is a third documentary I've heard of about Monsanto. I don't remember its name but I'll find it out when I can. If you are reading this and don't know who/what Monsanto is (although this doesn't suffice-- research them and watch documentaries), here's a brief description:
Monsanto is a multinational agriculture company which experiments and uses soley biotechnology for their products (their most famous being the herbicide Round-Up) and for their patented seeds. They originated from St. Louis, Missouri (hiss) and are the same company who brought the wide use of PCBs (which were banned in the 70s and are in every living thing as a result of its insane half-life and bio-accumulation-- the Orca whale is predicted to be extinct by 2035 because of its height on the food chain, thus unprecedented amounts of PCBs which cause cancer, hepatitis and numerous other diseases) as well this is the company that introduced DDT products including Agent Orange. During WWII Monsanto contributed to Uranium research that led to the development of the atomic bomb. They are champions in the business of war. Now they're waging war against everyone in the world through agriculture, inescapably, because we are all a part of the food chain, the same chain they are invading and attempting to taking complete control of. The most infuriating part may be to some, that Monsanto insists everywhere they can-- on their website, in commercials, when they promote their products, on products, to everyone by any means, that their goal is that of establishing food security and helping us live in harmony with the environment. Monsanto's intentions could not be FURTHER from these bologna claims to keep environmentalists and all kinds of people at bay and try to take over the movements of people who have fundamentally opposed everything they have done and everything they are doing for over a century. They even use the word "organic" on their site. 90% of the genetically engineered crops grown in the US are Monsanto's.
"What's at stake with GMO foods" is talked of but it's really more about what's at stake in Monsanto's conquest.
Calling Monsanto's incentive to take over the world horrifying and other synonymous adjectives is the largest understatement in all of history. I don't insert terms such as "taking over the world"...ever. I may have been hyped on the concept of conspiracy theories in tenth grade, but no longer. I'm not overreacting. Research this company yourself. This corporation that has been around since 1901 and is deeply embedded in the eternal practices of the US government. What I've said will be reinforced.
They spend millions on PR, they will not be interviewed, they are the emblem of a secretive, greedy, fascist corporation. Lack of transparency results in corruption, that's agreed on internationally. And lack of transparency is deeply unpatriotic. Yet, our nation has been cooperating, working with and laying the money, infrastructure and means which have kept Monsanto alive and allowed them to grow into the uncontrollable entity they are today.
Golden Rice and Nuclear Energy are both PR by-products to try to make way for a general acceptance of what is engineered by Monsanto. People seeing the profits can say "These things are not all bad-- bomb technology can be used for energy, biotechnology used to feed the hungry!" (Energy that produces toxic waste that is impossible to be broken down especially in ANY safe way). "Feed the hungry" being a euphemism for meddle with foreign places' local agriculture and food producers, disabling obviously already impoverished or underdeveloped/underprivileged economies and peoples, forcing them into dependence on foreign aid which wants to monopolize them as slaves to their products and suck them dry for profits. This is possible because foreign crops from the US are always cheaper than the local crops because of US government agricorp subsidies. As the government paves the high-speed sidewalks on which Monsanto may take its incomprehensibly destructive steps, the annoying arguments of how innovations made by these corporations can appeal to their opposition, similar to "Clean Coal", or any other half-truth, are led to masquerade as an authentic solution. These false gestures toward those who care about the goodness for all are brought up in the media to distract the public every chance possible and as every counter-argument to any meaningful expression of truth and reason against these innovations in front of false and selfish intentions. This is a vast working machine to keep the machine of Monsanto alive and growing and eventually the only machine. Our government doesn't seem to care as long as they're part of it in the end. By Mansanto having all of the hundreds and exponentially growing numbers of patents on seeds, they are strategically manipulating biology to allow them to control markets across the world, agriculture across the world, people across the world, truly, all life across the world. The ramifications of letting Monsanto continue on its path of world take-over are unspeakably incalculable and positively abhorrent.

I wonder if I can find actually sustainable biodiesel or if I'm going to have to sell the completed diesel Clementine or if I can live with myself supporting war, climate change, ecosystem degradation and EVERY AWFUL THING that goes along with fossil fuels. I'm thinking not. I hope I can find biodiesel made from locally-sourced, non-GMO crops. I bet I can. I won't be driving but perhaps twice a year. It seems only karmically fair to exude the energy needed for the movement of my body anyway. I'm so glad Capri and I, my bicycle, have such a lovely relationship.

http://www.instructables.com/id/The-BEST-chococlate-cake-ever...that-happens-to-be/

It really is the best chocolate cake I've ever goddamn tasted. I made it for Mom's bday and I'm gonna make it for Jeannine tomorrow.
My sweet potato pie is in the oven. C: The filling tasted delicioso (damn my mom and her freaking insertions of random Spanish words into her speech throughout my whole life). I made the crust myself, it's alllll from scratch, the only way to bake, I swear!
This is really dang handy: http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Cake-Pan-Size-Conversions/Detail.aspx
It's better yet though to use math. I used Area formulas and found that we have a 9" circular cake pan that is only .4" apart in Area from the 8 X 8 inch square dish pan the recipe calls for. I've been using stats formulas in life also. It just brings accuracy and precision to your life to apply math, it's not totally necessary often.

Bikram was like being really high. It drained you and kept you feeling like liquid and malleable at the same time. I haven't been able to pee very long pees all day since I sweat out all my liquids in Bikram. Hahaha. It was intense, I wish the instructor wasn't a dill-hole. They have lots of different instructors there though, perhaps I can encounter other ones.
I met a super cute lesbian on the bus today. She was wearing the same rainbow wool hat as me! She smiled big at me and grabbed my attention with her moving rainbow head and her big blue eyes and said "I love your hat!" "I love yours, too!" I smiled. We talked and couldn't stop spilling out all the things we had in common to one another. She had buttons, loves autumn as i do and hates cars and loves transit and bicycling as i do. We talked about so many things! Thunderstorms, the smell of rain, autumn days when it's sunny but cold outside, autumn foods, eating apples and cheese as a bedtime snack when we were little! She saw the rainbow that i saw last week. I asked a girl (anyone ever actually) for her number for the first time! She asked for mine back. [: Justine is her name. It's so insane how interconnected names are. I just met another Justin who is very...arrogant and philosophical. He's great. And i've known two Justins before who make my eyebrows raise and my head shake when I think of each of them. Justine also sounds like Jeannine, my lesbian buddy with an equally gay name. Hahaha, universe, you're an odd one.

I'm soooo exciteeeeddd...and I just can't hide it! Oh I'm about to lose control...
Okay. Done.

Haha.
BUT OHMYGOD tomorrow-- Bikram Yoga. 105 degrees and a bunch of half naked females. I might orgasm on the spot. Downside ---> Males from my Cascade class are going to see me half-naked. v_v
I have You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch stuck in my head along with that I know that you know you're alll ooooover me nowww song from Loving Annabelle. My consciousness is seemingly entirely random.
I love to bake. Tomorrow will be exciting. My mom is out of town (hallejuah) and I'm going to do Bikram and bake Jeannine a cake and finally make that sweet potato pie. Oh, i'm excited.


http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5AD06O20091114
America's priorities on liberal causes are pretty fucking skewed if, indeed, Paige and Zack are able to get a medical marijuana card whilst some in the senate are trying to hardwire essentially a ban on health insurance covering abortions and the 31st state has banned gay marriage. Oh the times are a changin'? Or the powers that be are trying to quiet the left by allowing them to calm by their own means, marijuana. I am one, but this one liberal will not smoke away my cares. I care too much for that.

A girl named Heidi (all the connection in this post are too much!) from my stats class who I talk to sometimes is really neat. She's 29 and has moved all over the place, too. She transferred from PCC and has taken Dana Gail (my yoga instructor at Cascade) also. I need to get on fabricating my entire goddamn yoga journal I've supposed to have been keeping throughout the quarter. I started today. Anwyho, Heidi and I had lunch together after stats when I got in line next to her at Food for Thought, the awesome vegan/vegetarian, organic, local student-run cafe at PSU (the only part of PSU i've found that i really love). All their food is made there from scratch and it's goddamn delicious...so is the lesbian who works the cashier Tuesday Thursdays around 3 'til closing. Hahaha. Heidi and I had salads (and she had soup) and our amazing salads had hazelnuts, house-made balsamic, cranberries and little bits of carrot. I left the bits of carrot and she the cranberries because she's allergic to cranberries. I thought it was funny. I would've eaten her cranberries but she isn't as conscious about zero waste as I am and she started piling stuff on her plate. I guess she wouldn't have taken up my offer to eat my bits of carrot. Haha. Maddy would've. We were talking and I told her about the special election in January and she quickly asked "Is there anything on gay marriage?" My sexuality hasn't even been mentioned yet to her so it's not as if she was assuming that's what I was segueing into discussing. I felt so happy that a straight person was concerned and asked that above caring about any other political cause. Such encounters in this world give me hope.

                                                                    

"Stop the madness!" yelped the meadowlark.

A couple eyes shifted directions through windshields and vehicles slowed;

She stuttered in the spotlight, “You took a twenty minute shower today and have driven through a carwash while some have only water enough to drink, cook with and reuse to wash their dishes!”

Passing vehicles slowed to hear. “What a lovely song,” they told each other. In parked cars, they closed car doors but unrolled windows as they started their engines.

“…the coastline is retreating!! So you add more ships to the oceans and run more gas turbines for them, further adding to the acidity of the ocean and sloshing the coasts with higher waters. The sea is not your bath tub!”

“Is that a sparrow?” The slowed cars picked up their speed as if their listening to the song of the bird was enough of an excursion.

“And I know you know of the stratosphere you’re crippling and of the troposphere you're clogging.
Is this preserve all you think needs preserving?!”

Winds picked up, and air flew over the meadowlark’s perch, as the cars fled the parking lot and headed for the highway on-ramp. They propelled through the air, creating wakes of wind on either side of them.

The meadowlark took flight overhead and watched the fields of the national wildlife preserve below and took periodic glimpses of the moving highway, wading through the changing atmosphere.

 
This made me think of you.

I see noses that are natural disasters, oxymorons walking down the street, completely pointless technology invented by those who believe effortless living is our main goal in our technological advances-- which everyone uses unquestionably, people who are very unhappy to be stuck in a car in a jam or while driving, homeless people whose first resource to attempt at utilizing is Christian faith, fat people "grocery" shopping at 7-11, young poor families with lots of kids demographically resembling the the families of underdeveloped nations, and people who have changed themselves so much on the outside through makeup, clothes, piercings, tattoos, surgery or hair styling that they don't look like just a person anymore.
What deity of reason or insight can i report these things to?