In Case You Didn't Know

April is National Poetry Month! And, well, April just ended two minutes ago, but I feel lame for not doing anything to celebrate. So I'll comb the YouTube treasure trove for lovely spoken word videos in the next few days and post them here for your viewing pleasure.

Additionally, I wrote up that Op-Ed last night, right around this time (the only time I do any work, apparently). I'll be posting that soon, too.

Nom nom nom

Books! Books, nom nom nom. I got The Second Sex, Nine Stories, The House of Mirth, and The Portable Dorothy Parker at Half-Price Books today. None of them are what I went in looking for (100 Years of Solitude and The Lovely Bones, if you're curious), but I'm pretty satisfied with my score. All the paperback fiction was half off (half off being half off, I know), which is AWESOME. Four books for $7, what up what up?

I'm a little afraid that my eyes might be bigger than my stomach, if you know what I mean, with The Second Sex. It's big! And scary! And originally written in French! But I feel like I should read some hardcore second wave feminist lit before starting in on more sparkly, pink third wave books that are mostly referencing and responding to second wave ideas.

If that made zero sense to you, I recommend this really great overview of feminism is the US from Bitch Magazine's website.

On a similar note, today is Equal Pay Day. Equal Pay Day is the day when the average woman catches up to the average man in terms of annual pay. So, the average man works 12 months to earn $44,300, whereas the average woman would have to work another four months to earn that same amount. That's effed up.

Also, I didn't write that Op-Ed article yet, ergh. But I have an early release day tomorrow, so I'll have lots of time to get to it, theoretically. I will do it!

Things That Make Me Say Yeah

This NY Times article.



"When you look up, you sometimes wonder if at the centre of the solar system, if in the middle of the Sea of Tranquillity, there isn't another one like you also looking up, also trapped by geometry, also struggling with fear, rage, madness, hopelessness, apathy."
-Yann Martel, The Life of Pi

Really? Reeally?

Yesterday, in my Political Philosophy class, we discussed a Supreme Court case being heard right now. Maybe you've heard about it. The case involves a 13-year-old girl who was strip-searched by two female school employees due to an unsupported claim by a fellow classmate that she was distributing ibuprofen. Slate has a great piece on the case that's worth the read just to get a sense of the absurdity of Supreme Court justices being involved in anything that involves youthfulness.

But my issue with the case is not whether the girl's mother should've been called first (she wasn't), or whether another type of search would've been more appropriate (obviously), but why we live in a society in which strip searching a 13-year-old girl in middle school for drugs is even within the realm of the possible. Or imaginable. I'd prefer my schools not to bear striking similarities to maximum-security prisons, thanks.

The system is broken, guys! Why are we discussing painting the cogs of a broken machine instead of fixing it? Children and teenagers aren't wild lunatics who can only be contained by magnetically locked doors, security guards, and strip searches. When those things become necessary, someone should take a good, hard look at what's going on and, let's be honest, throw money at the problem until class sizes are smaller, teachers are motivated, supplies are unlimited, and schools are exciting places to be inside.

Just sayin'.

On Womanhood (a stretch), and Activism

A few videos and a link.


That video is fan-made. Isn't that awesome?



On that note, OutFront's justFair Lobby Day (lobbying for the marriage equality bill; recognition of marriages from out of state; Safe Schools bill, which protects GLBT and other youth; health security for children; and runaway and homeless youth supports) is tomorrow, for anyone in the Twin Cities. Register here.

coughcoughcough

So, I left on a somewhat cliffhanger-y note last post and then just did not deliver. Lame, I know. I've been sick for the past two-ish days, though, if that's any explanation (not really, seeing as all I do when I'm sick is lounge around in my pajamas and not shower and check my Facebook).

Anyway, the brief explanation of the Hindu temple is that I'm a member of this cool group called the Interfaith Youth Leadership Coalition that does... interfaith service-y stuff. We organized an Interfaith Day of Service, we learn about other religions, blahblahblah. It's a little lame in that the only religions really represented are Judaism and various branches of Christianity, but the idea is cool.

The group had a retreat this past weekend, and for part of it we went on a "scavenger hunt" that basically involved visiting different places of worship around the Twin Cities areas and being awestruck. We visited aforementioned Hindu temple, a mosque, and a Presbyterian church. Regardless of my own shaky spiritual grounding, the places people build to feel part of something larger than themselves are truly inspiring.



(Annoyingly, I can't remember the name of the mosque we visited, and Google isn't helping me out. I'll post a photo of that too, if I do remember at some point.)

On an unrelated note, I'm planning on writing an Op-Ed for submission to the Star Tribune this week on unschooling. I'll post it here by Saturday or Sunday, hopefully. I've also written another little piece on unschooling that I might put up, just for kicks and gigs.

Did You Know...

That there's an INSANE (meaning beautiful, intricate, huge, extremely un-Prarie-Home-Companion-style-Minnesotan) Hindu temple right in the middle of the most middle-of-nowhere-ish part of Maple Grove?

I didn't! Check out these photos, though. You learn something new about Minnesota every day?

More on how I ended up in Maple Grove tomorrow.

"I'm All Alone at a CROSSROADS...

I'm not at home in my OWN HOME..." (Thanks, Beyoncé!)

Jay kay. But really though, I have a pretty big unschooling decision to make soon. My senior year is fast approaching, and it could go one of two ways.

1. Full-time PSEO at the U of M. Probably four classes for both semesters. If that made no sense to you, PSEO stands for Post Secondary Enrollment Options, and it's a very cool program in MN that allows high school juniors and seniors to take college classes at colleges for high school (and potentially college, depending on where you go) credit for free. Full-time PSEO would be a full courseload for the whole year. I might get some amazing profs, I might learn some interesting things, I might have some terrible graduate student TAs and a ridiculous amount of work. I might save up to $40,000 of freshman year college tuition, if the credits I earn apply to the college I decide to go to.

2. A full year of complete unschooling crazyness. I'd have to plan out what, exactly, this would entail, but probably a lot of writing, a lot of traveling, maybe learning how to repair bikes, maybe getitng a kick-ass internship, maybe a big, self-directed research project-- things like that. It would undoubtedly be an fun, exciting, stimulating year, but would it get me into the colleges I want to go to, or would they be like, "I see no AP Stats class-- REJECTED."? There's no way to tell. And if I did get into the colleges I wanted, we're still talking four years of up to $40,000 (although probably significantly less, given financial aid) of tuition.

If you have any advice or thoughts, get at me! Comment below, or call me up-- it's something I'll be thinking a lot about in the next few weeks.

Oh, also...

In the spirit of talking about the Internet (post below), check out this poem by Rives that I found yesterday.


Also, if you don't know about TED talks online, check them out! TED is an annual conference where a bunch of really, really smart people get together and talk and, like, braid each other's hair for four days. Didn't you always kind of know they did something like that?

Self-Referential Blogging

But first, a brief aside. So, sorry for the moderate lack of posts and... weirdness of my Monday post. Time for excuses! I'm a really huge procrastinator (I procrastinate responding to Facebook messages. Seriously.), and I've had two large assignments due this week-- one due yesterday, and one due today. Naturally, I didn't remember either of them until the night before they were due, which was when I had been planning to blog. Ohh well. I'm back. It's been two days. I'm not even sure if that merits saying I'm back. Moving on.

Anyway, as promised in the title, this is a blog about blogging. I know-- harf, right? But I think this is kind of cool, in terms of illustrating what the interwebs are good for.

I read feminist-y pop culture blog Jezebel pretty much every day. Last weekend, they had a post about a NYT Magazine article that was previewed on the NYT website on sugar daddy/sugar baby connecting websites. (Aaand that's enough linking for the rest of my life.) I read the Jezebel post, but not the article.

The next day, my dad mentioned the article, and the skeezy vibe of its subject matter. I mentioned the Jezebel article, and then showed it to him, and from the Jezebel blog, I eventually read the NYT article. Now I'm blogging about it.

The mind. It's boggled.

Oh Dear...

I have a Track meet tomorrow, and I'm not allowed to wear my nose ring in meets (because Track is a contact sports, obvs). I went to get a retainer, which is a clear plastic stud that is essentially invisible but keeps the hole from healing over, today, which brought back unpleasant memories of my last experience with new nose jewelry.

Hopefully this will go a little better.

I'm currently watching my mother's dog attempt to escape out the back gate by kind of pawing at the gap between the gate and the ground, so I should probably wrap this up and reign him in. What a bad dog.

Lent?

I was really bored last night. I was too full to eat out of boredom, and I already had run a killer Track workout that afternoon, so I couldn't go for a run, but I was still feeling restless. I was sitting at my computer, listening to restless music (The Hold Steady usually does the trick), and trying to think of something to entertain myself.

Which is why, out of boredom, I decided to give up complaining for Lent. Lent-ish, I guess, because Easter is this Sunday, so I'm really just giving up complaining for the long weekend. This will probably be pretty difficult for me. If you've read this blog somewhat regularly, you've probably noticed that I really enjoy whining. Waaah, school sucks, Seventeen sucks, not being 18 sucks, waaaaah! Whining is one of my options for my blog tags. Seriously.

So we'll see how this goes. I'll pretty just build up a huge repository of bitter unsaid thoughts until my head explodes.



















Which could be cool.

Unschooling How-To

Dropping Out of High School in 6 Easy Steps!



















1. Read The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewelyn. Ignore the drama queen title, pay attention to the solid advice.

2. Tell your guidance counselor that you want to become homeschooled. Wait as s/he explains all the other options that are a little less drastic and don't bring down the school's standardized test scores.

3. Tell him/her you still want to be homeschooled. Get a phone number for the Department of Education that you could've found online with less attitude.

4. Call the number. Follow the steps you're told by the Director of Home Education. It'll probably involve filling out some paperwork, and, if you're under 16, getting a copy of your birth certificate, your parents' college degrees, if they have them, writing up a schedule of your unschooled year, and planning to take some kind of standardized test once a year.

5. Turn in the paperwork.

6. FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE.

Major Life Achievement

I am now pretty decent at Mario Kart Wii. I can die happy.

Wii is a form of interactive video games that THOSE DARN KIDS are using these days. You hold a white remote in your hand, and it has some kind of sensors or something that recognize when you move your hand up or down, or side to side, and control your game avatar on the screen as such.

Mario Kart is a game for Wii where you race other players around various tracks using the Wii remote/joystick inserted into a faux-steering wheel. It's really, obscenely easy. You push down a button, and then steer your racer using the steering wheel. Despite its any-idiot-can-do-it design, I have seeeriously struggled with it for quite some time. A friend of mine has the game in his basement, and we play it occasionally when we're over at his house. My usual process with video games is to play once, realize that I am shockingly bad, give up, and then text my female friends while the boys I'm with continue playing the game.

Unfortunately for me, this past Saturday, there weren't enough boys to monopolize the controllers. This meant that I was forced to do something I'm bad at, over and over. I really hate that. But I kind of sucked it up (maintaining a long stream of complaints throughout), and played a few rounds. Surprisingly, I found myself getting better and better. I probably should've found this less shocking than I did--uh, why yes, you do something repeatedly, and then you improve--but I've always figured that I'm just a natural failure at video games.

Apparently, that's not that case. And if there's one thing I love more than I hate being bad at things, it's being good at things and then beating other people. Sweet.

Anyway, that was my second source of major satisfaction over spring break. The second will be revealed... tomorrow. Teaser!

Embarrassing Gushing

Basic summary of the rest of this blog, if you're rushed for time: OMGDESSAOMGOMG.

So, I went to a show at the 7th Street Entry last Friday, and I was expecting it to be pretty decent. I was kind of pouty about not being able to go to the later 18+ part of the show in First Ave proper, with Sage Francis and Building Better Bombs, but I was pretty much over it. Cecil Otter, who's part of the Doomtree crew, was slated to perform at the all-ages show, as was the Battle Royale, a greasy (literally-- dudes needed to shower) indie band, and spoken word artist El Guante. I was like, you know, I hate not being 18, whine whine whine, but I can deal with this.

I got there an hour late, because I had track practice until 4PM, when the show started, and I needed to bus from Central to First Ave., so I missed El Guante, but I was there for Cecil Otter. And who gets up onstage with him but Dessa Darling, writer/MC/McNally Smith prof/overall badass. I have a huge girlcrush on her (she's so pretty! And smart! And talented!), so I completely geeked out. This is a really good all-encompassing clip.



Dessa's in the middle of the trio in the first part of the clip, and Aby Wolf, another tight local artist is to her left, but I'm not sure who's on the right.

Anyway, I bought her book, Spiralbound, from her backpack after the show-- 7th Street Entry is so small that once she was finished performing but still onstage I just walked up and asked her if her book was for sale. I'm planning on starting to read it within the next couple days.

Sage Francis also ended up performing without any accompaniment, because all the planned performers were playing off their iPods, for reasons unclear. So that was cool. Overall, an extremely value-added type show. Good ups.

Oh, also, the whole show was put on by Substance, a non-profit somethingrather committed to arts and the environment and probably advancing whatever their mission statement is. This is their website, though their Myspace seems a little more comprehensive right now.

SPRING BREAK.

(For me, for my two Central classes.) I might blog sporadically the rest of this week, but I'll be posting semi-regularly again next week.