I'm The Scorpio, Gotta Love Me

excepts from an eerily correct astrological description...

Scorpios are the most intense, profound, powerful characters in the zodiac. Even when they appear self-controlled and calm there is a seething intensity of emotional energy under the placid exterior. They are like the volcano not far under the surface of a calm sea, it may burst into eruption at any moment.

In their everyday behavior they give the appearance of being withdrawn from the center of activity, yet those who know them will recognize the watchfulness that is part of their character. They need great self-discipline, because they are able to recognize the qualities in themselves that make them different from other humans, and to know their utterly conventional natures can be used for great good, or great evil [...] they make lifelong enemies by their outspokenness, for they find it difficult not to be overly critical of anything or anyone to whom they take a dislike.

Part of the negative side of the Scorpio nature is a tendency to discard friends once they cease to be useful.

They are fortunate in that their strong reasoning powers are tempered with imagination and intuition, and these gifts, together with critical perception and analytical capacity, can enable the Scorpions to penetrate to profundities beyond the average. They have a better chance of becoming geniuses than the natives of any other sign.

Rebelliousness against all conventions, political extremism to the point where hatred of the Establishment makes them utterly unscrupulous terrorists, brooding resentment, aggressive and sadistic brutality, total arrogance, morbid jealousy, extreme volatility of temperament, these are some of their vices. At the other extreme is the procrastinator, the man or woman who is capable of so much that they do nothing and become indolent and self-indulgent, requiring extravagant praise and flattery from those whom they make their cronies.

Scorpio is the symbol of sex and Scorpios are passionate lovers, the most sensually energetic of all the signs [...] They are thus capable of the greatest heights of passionate transport, but debauchery and perversion are always dangers, and Scorpios can become sadistic monsters of sensuality and eroticism. Their feelings are so intense that even when their love is of the highest, and most idealistic kind, they are nevertheless frequently protagonists in tragic, even violent romances, "star-crossed lovers."

go check out http://www.astrology-online.com/ if you want to see yours.

(yes, finals still suck, but you saw the description, I'm a procrastinator...)

the finals made me do it

This week: 2 projects, 1 paper

Next week: 3 papers

The week after that: 4 final exams, 1 paper

And that's in addition to my normal workload, which usually keeps me up all night. So, the next time you hear from me, I'll probably be homicidal. Please forgive.

Mass Appeal

I have a project for my mass media class due Thursday. There is a book I need to read before I can begin to work on it. Someone has had this book out from my school's library for like two months. Cough, asshole. Anyway, since time is winding down, I figured I should just go buy it. Thus, I ended up in Downtown Crossings on a Friday afternoon, which is always a bad idea. Crowds and I don't get along.

So, I was walking and I spot this group of shifty looking guys on the corner. They had to be like 15 years old. Which meant trouble for me, because those are exactly the kind of guys that always try to "holla" at me. I went out of my way to put people between me and them. Didn't work. One of the guys (let's call him guy #1) literally slides around a bunch of people and starts walking next to me. The conversation went something like this:

guy #1: hey, can I talk to you for a minute?
me: silence
guy #1: what's your name?
me: rolled my eyes and sighed heavily
guy #1: you can't talk?
me: No
guy #1: why not?
me: Busy

At about this point another one of the guys pulled up on my other side.

guy #2: esperate un momento, mami
me: silence
guy #2: you speak spanish?
me: No
guy #2: Oh, what are you then?
me: silence

Then another guy walked up. Maybe I should mention that guy #1 was black, guy #2 was latino, and guy #3 was white, because I found this multiracial, united, attack front somewhat entertaining. I should also note that I never stopped walking, so they were following me for a like a block and a half. Anyway, the conversation proceeded.

guy #3: word? she got a batman shirt on?
guy#1: yea, yo. she's gansta.
guy #2: nah, she's gonna fly away.

I don't really understand why the shirt was funny, but they thought so. By this point, we were in front of Barnes & Noble, so I opened the door and went inside. The boys lingered in front of the entrance.

guy #1: why you gonna go in there? cus you know we don't read? that's fucked up.

And sure enough, they would not come in the store. It was like in the movies when people run inside of a church to escape the bad guy. They really just couldn't cross the threshold. So I found myself in this weird position where I was like...Yes! They can't read. While simultaneously thinking it was a damn shame that they were ok openly admitting that to a stranger.

To those boys and everyone else who doesn't know: It is not cool to be stupid. In fact, it's just a facet of that crab-in-a-barell mentality that 'minorities' use to oppress one another. How can we ever hope to stand on equal ground with the people in power if we keep ourselves on a lower plane of knowledge? Think about it. Just think in general.

Dollars and Mulattoes

So, I had a funny conversation/argument the other day. It went something like this...

Guy: I don't know if I want to buy tea. But I don't want to pay $1 for it, because I only want the tea bag, not the cup and the water. I want to make it myself.
Me: What's the difference if you make it or they make it for you?
Guy: I just don't know if I want to spend the dollar.
Me: ...ok. Well, I don't they're going to give it to you for free and if you can spare the dollar, what's the big deal?
Guy: A dollar is a lot of money. There are some people who make less than that in a day of hard work.
Me: Yes, but you aren't one of them.
Guy: So, you're saying that I should just forget about everyone else and just think about myself?
Me: No, I just don't see what difference it makes whether you keep the dollar or spend it. Either way you aren't giving it to the people that need it.
Guy: So I just shouldn't think about them at all? It doesn't matter if I waste money even though there are some people who would kill for a dollar? I can just throw away food while people are starving?
Me: I'm not advocating that you be wasteful. I'm just saying, if you aren't going to actually help these people that you seen so concerned about, then stop complaining. Whether you spend $1 on a teabag or save it for something else, you are benefiting yourself. Either you will get tea now that makes your throat feel better or you'll have more money to spend on something else you want later. How does either of those options affect the starving people you mentioned?
Guy: So nothing I do matters? I should just be selfish and just not care about anyone else? That's what you're saying?
Me: ......

Now...either I'm not as clear a speaker as I think I am or this guy was totally beyond the reach of logic. I mean, it'd be cool if he disagreed with me, but he didn't even understand what I was saying. How do you talk to someone like that?


In other news, I was in downtown Boston the other day and a guy called me a mulatto. I was coming back from seeing a movie: Thank You For Smoking. It's greatness can, in my opinion, be summed up in this line: "If you argue correctly, you're never wrong." But anyway, I was walking back to the T with my bf and this middle aged Black man walks up to us. He goes into this spiel about running some organization that does diversity education and needing some donations. And he randomly stops and asks what my ethnicity is. I guess that's not completely irrelevant given what he's talking about. However, it's not exactly tactful, especially for someone who does race education. So, I tell him I'm black and white and he says something to the effect of "Oh. That's ok. It's ok to be multatto."

1. Mulato literally means "little mule"
2. Mulatto in the context of the US brings to mind Jim Crow and the "One-Drop" Rule

Do you go around calling anyone "little mule" or "octoroon"? Don't think so. Plus, what hell does that mean "its ok to be mulatto"? He made it sound as if being biracial is something he expected me to feel ashmed of and something a person needs comfort and support to get through. It's not a disease. It's not a tragedy. I'm not scarred for life. Thanks though, asshole.

Um, despite the fact that I've been ranting...
Peace, love, and blessings

So, it's been a long time. Yous guys got a problem with that?

If you do, oh well. This blog is all about me anyway. Who cares about you? Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!

Speaking of which...I've been feeling kinda crappy lately, so I'm going to vent here. Deal. Or don't. Just don't expect me to care either way. So...

I have this guy friend. And I have this very blushing, school-girlish, going-no-where (mainly because I have a bf who I love and wouldn't dream of leaving) crush on him. He's wonderfully intelligent, cynical, and awkward and he's great. I am not alone in feeling this. Pretty much everyone ever is crazy about him, but for some reason he didn't take the attention seriously and never actually tried to pursue any of the vast options he had. However, in the last couple of weeks, I think he's realized that he is a senior, he has nothing to lose, and that he really is as attractive as everyone is always saying he is. Long story short, he's lost the timidity and now he's juggling like 5 or so women.

Great for him. And I'm really serious about that. I'm happy for him. He's a great guy and he deserves some play. When I get into the emotions this change has brought up in me, don't mistake it for mere cattish jealously, because it's not. Shoot, I never had any intention of getting with him, so it's not that I'm mad that I don't have the opportunity now. I am jealous, but not of the girls spending time with him. It's more than that. I'm jealous of him, of that freedom he's found, of all the options he has.

Another warning: I am not jealous of his being single and being able to date as many people as he wants, although at first that's what I thought it was. I thought maybe I was bored with my relationship. I thought maybe I just get tired of the same person after about 2 years (if one is to judge by my relationship history). I thought maybe I might be one of those people who need periodic change, who can never be happy with one person, who'll always think 'what if.'

But then I realized it's not that. I know myself. 2 weeks tops and I'd be so depressed by the emptiness of jumping from person to person without having any deep, substancial relationship with any of them and I'd be ready to tear out my hair. The fact of the matter is that kind of single lifestyle has never appealed to me. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I am, at the core, a solitary, melancholy, introverted, antisocial, person. All of my social interactions are superficial and devoid of any meaning, as far as I'm concerned. It's all bullshit. It's all play (in the theatrical sense). And I'm a bad actor at that. I don't want a single trivial relationship more than is necessary. Thus, 5 guys hanging around to do nothing more than flatter and fuck me = not appealing.

So, I am not jealous of the single lifestyle. I like my relationship. It's closer to perfection than I would ever be bold enough to ask for or think I deserve. I'm comfortable with it and happy in it. And it keeps me sane to know there is at least one person out there who knows me well enough that, if I died this second, could pass on a close to accurate representation of me to others so that I wouldn't just dissappear from the record of human history. But I digress.

Point is, I don't want to be single. I want to be free. And granted, my guy friend isn't free now, but he's more free than he was a week ago, so his situation got me to thinking: I really am banging my head against the bars of my invisible prison right now and it hurts. I am so fucking stuck where and I right now and I always will be. Don't mistake me - by where I am, I don't mean school, or MA, or in a relationship; I mean organized society as a whole. Everything is so laid out and preplanned. Everything is so limited. I can do this, I can't do that. Any deviation from the blueprint has serious consequences, which usually entail you being screwed for the rest of your life in some way or another.

And I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of having to go to class, of having to do homework, of having to get a job I'll hate just to live comfortably. When the fuck do I get to live at all? I don't want to pencil my bf in around my schedule. I don't want to have to fit my sexuality in when there's time and supress it when there's not. I don't want to relegate my passions in life to the realm of 'free time' which never materializes.

Routine is a fucking killer. I'm never finished with the things I have to do. I just takes breaks, because sometimes I'm too exhuasted to go on. Or sometimes I feel like if I spend one more second doing some bullshit that I could care less about while the years roll by, I will fukcing lose my mind. Like seriously. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to bang my head against the cement walls of my room. I want to hit things. I want to hit myself. I want to sleep even though I can never make up for all the hours I've lost or be well rested ever again.

Call it laziness if you like. But I feel oppressed.

People are supposed to work their whole lives, so that they can be free in old age. Both my mother and my grandmother died at age 47. What happens if I work and work and work and never get to live? What kind of life is that?

What's the point of life? Ever since I've been able to comprehend the question, my answer has always been: TO LIVE. There's nothing before life that I can remember and as far as any of us know, there's nothing after. We make a metaphysical debate out of what is a natural process. Sperm, egg, life, death, decay. We come and we go and the world remains. Even the greatest men and women, the ones that have changed the world, only have minimal significance in the present moment. We might document their existence or their actions or their image or their words. But we don't really remember them, because we don't really know them. Is that worth working your whole life for: to be a sentence in a history book. Isn't it more important to be happy while you're alive than to be vaguely recalled when you're dead?

But what can you really do? What can I really do? I see no way out...