So got to work today and wore my engagement ring. I usually don’t have it on when I am there because I have to wear plastic gloves a lot and I’m always worried the ring will rip the gloves. Anyway, for the first time my coworker saw that I was engaged and asked when we are getting married. I told her not until N. is done with school next year at the earliest and then she asked what my name would be when we got married.
When N. and I do get married, he is taking my last name instead of me taking his. When I told her this (and after having it happen so many times I don’t know why I am still surprised) she looked at me like I was nuts and was like "why?" Ugh! What the hell do you mean, why? Because. Because we want to do it that way. That is the only reason, there’s no back story, there isn’t any big reason we just decided that when we get married he’d become Mr. J instead of me becoming Mrs. N. Why the hell SHOULDN’T we do it that way? Granted, to be fair, there have been a lot of people that were like, oh that’s cool and stuff like that but even that reaction makes it seem like it is something really out of the ordinary, which I don’t think that it is.
N. was actually the one that first suggested that he take my name after we had a discussion about how my mom kept her maiden name when she got married, and how my step-mom kept her last name when she married my dad. N. asked what I wanted to do and I said I’d never thought about that much but that I didn’t want to do the hyphenated keep both names things. After that he was like well I’ll just change my name then. So that’s what we are doing, you would think though, by people’s reactions, that it was the craziest, most unheard of thing to ever happen. I mean, come on, its 2010 guys. There was even one person who said that N. "wasn’t a real man" if he took my name. WTF?
So anyway, that happened right before she left and then I spent the night stewing about the situation. I also saw a bunch of commercials that annoyed me by being super sexist, though I am sure I was a little more sensitive to it than usual because of the whole name discussion. One was for this sheer cover makeup. It was a lady talking to an audience, and it was like this.
Lady: "Ladies, what is the most important day in a woman’s life?"
Audience enthusiastically answers: "YOUR WEDDING!".
Lady: "And what will you being worrying about most on that day?"
Audience: "HOW WE LOOK!"
Lady "Exactly! And with new sheer cover you can make sure that you blah, blah, blah."
Barf.
Seriously? I mean, are you eff-ing kidding me? I love N. more than anything else in the world but I don’t eff-ing tell me that the most important day in a woman’s (and apparently this applies to ALL women) life is her wedding. I am not saying that it isn’t an important day, but I am pretty sure that when I am celebrating finding the love of my life with my family and friends my inner monologue won’t be "Good God, do my pores look too big? Can they see that zit on my chin?"
Add to that, a bunch more commercials about makeup work out plans, diets, diet pills, and tummy slimming underwear and I finally just turned off the TV and read.
I am glad that I was born in this time period instead of earlier, but man, there is still a lot of sexism out there. For example, when I posted on facebook that I was about to graduate from college one or two people were like, "yay, congrats." When I posted that I got engaged, it was like a flood of congratulations. I mean, I am glad that my friends were happy for me, I'm not trying to sound ungrateful, but based on how much attention one got versus the other it was pretty clear what was more exciting. That kind of bugged me, but don’t think I am saying that I like my college degree better than N. Obviously I am head over heels in love with him and my degree and me are barely even speaking at this point because it hasn’t done sh*t for me in terms of finding a job. My point just is that based on people’s reactions, it was clearly a bigger achievement for me to get a husband than it was for me to get a degree.
But I am probably overreacting, you know how women can get so emotional over things….
Graffitti on the Great Wall of China
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Here are some random ramblings
1. I’ve become addicted to surfing through blogspot and reading strangers’ blogs. Most of them I just skip over (especially the ones about people’s babies, their businesses or art ones) but there are a few I have found myself reading like they are a novel. I’ve decided that there are a lot of single women who blog about dating and it is all very Bridget Jones-ish. Interesting though. It makes me super glad that I have a guy who is funny, affectionate, a genius and very respectful…also glad I found a guy that is not chauvinistic and doesn’t expect me to do the household chores just because I am the person in the relationship who wears a bra.
2. I graduated from college a year ago (crazy!) and I have been feeling very nostalgic for my friends from school and the town of Superior in general. Scratch that, I have been feeling nostalgic for Lake Superior and Duluth, the only way that I could feel nostalgic for the actual town of Superior is if I loved bars and boarded up businesses…which I don’t. But I do miss the group of girls I used to live with in the dorms, even though I have lost touch with some of them…on the other hand there are still a few that I talk every few days. I also REALLY miss being politically active (I haven’t been able to find anything political to do around here except for a few postings about democrat functions and I’d rather do nothing at all then hang out with people who didn’t get it) and the people I used to hang out with in that whole period in my life. It makes me bummed out that during the last few years of school, I lost touch with a lot of those people and now I have to resort to lengthy rambling blog posts (like the one about Afghanistan and the other one about trying to find a job) just to get all my annoyances at the way the world works out of my system. And of course I miss N.’s family (he is originally from Superior so when we lived there we had a whole extended family thing in the area).
3. I think I should go on that show intervention for my extreme Diet Coke addiction. I just read the list of ingredients and the only ones I recognize on there are carbonated water and caffeine. I feel that it is not an especially healthy drink. I don’t eat or drink dairy products because I am freaked out about what is in them but I guzzle down about five of these cans of tooth decaying chemicals every day. But I know myself, I still probably won’t stop.
4. I am going to find out in about a week if I am going to have a niece or a nephew! I am so excited, I am not ready to have kids for a few years but now I will have a little person to buy adorable outfits for and read all my favorite kid’s books to. This kid is going to be the first grandkid on our side and on his or her dad’s side, so everyone is pretty excited.
5. Two more days and I get to go home to my parents’ houses. My dad is moving and he called to ask if N. would come down and help him move furniture. I think that my dad is pretty psyched that he now has other guys in the family and I am hoping that while they are moving the piano and large appliances I will get to hang out with my sisters. Fun fun.
Well, that’s enough random thoughts for now, its time for me to go to bed…
2. I graduated from college a year ago (crazy!) and I have been feeling very nostalgic for my friends from school and the town of Superior in general. Scratch that, I have been feeling nostalgic for Lake Superior and Duluth, the only way that I could feel nostalgic for the actual town of Superior is if I loved bars and boarded up businesses…which I don’t. But I do miss the group of girls I used to live with in the dorms, even though I have lost touch with some of them…on the other hand there are still a few that I talk every few days. I also REALLY miss being politically active (I haven’t been able to find anything political to do around here except for a few postings about democrat functions and I’d rather do nothing at all then hang out with people who didn’t get it) and the people I used to hang out with in that whole period in my life. It makes me bummed out that during the last few years of school, I lost touch with a lot of those people and now I have to resort to lengthy rambling blog posts (like the one about Afghanistan and the other one about trying to find a job) just to get all my annoyances at the way the world works out of my system. And of course I miss N.’s family (he is originally from Superior so when we lived there we had a whole extended family thing in the area).
3. I think I should go on that show intervention for my extreme Diet Coke addiction. I just read the list of ingredients and the only ones I recognize on there are carbonated water and caffeine. I feel that it is not an especially healthy drink. I don’t eat or drink dairy products because I am freaked out about what is in them but I guzzle down about five of these cans of tooth decaying chemicals every day. But I know myself, I still probably won’t stop.
4. I am going to find out in about a week if I am going to have a niece or a nephew! I am so excited, I am not ready to have kids for a few years but now I will have a little person to buy adorable outfits for and read all my favorite kid’s books to. This kid is going to be the first grandkid on our side and on his or her dad’s side, so everyone is pretty excited.
5. Two more days and I get to go home to my parents’ houses. My dad is moving and he called to ask if N. would come down and help him move furniture. I think that my dad is pretty psyched that he now has other guys in the family and I am hoping that while they are moving the piano and large appliances I will get to hang out with my sisters. Fun fun.
Well, that’s enough random thoughts for now, its time for me to go to bed…
Monday, June 21, 2010
My ad for the Personals section: CEF seeking ARC for FTE.
You know how when you are little you daydream that as soon as you are ready, you are going to find “the one”? You hear about it in books and movies and from your friends, and it seems like it happens so easy for other people. They decide what they are looking for and then go out and find it. I have been searching for over a year now, trying to be outgoing, trying to let it “just happen on its own”, hell I’ve even tried looking on those internet sites that try and help you find a match. All this work and all I have found are dead ends but I am done searching the old fashioned way, I’ve decided that I am just going to take out an ad in the personals section. Its going to read: CEF seeking ARC for FTE. (College educated Female seeking A Real Career for Full Time Employment).
Yeah, har har har, I was talking about finding a job, not true love. (Side note, cause I know he reads this, I have found true love). But back to the whole job thing, I busted my ass through college to get my degree…OK “busted my ass” should probably read “attended most of my classes on at least a weekly basis” but I did graduate with honors with a Bachelors degree in Sociology with a minor in English and do you know what kind of stellar job I have found? One that pays exactly one dollar over minimum wage, has no benefits and where I only get 32 hours a week.
Don’t get me wrong, in some ways I love my job. I work at a residential facility for physically and cognitively disabled adults and I love the time I get to spend interacting with the people that live at the house. Unfortunately, I work from ten o’clock at night until six in the morning, so the time I spend with them is exactly none at all because they are asleep. So yeah, basically I paid thousands of dollars to get a degree to get a job where I do house work and occasionally bring a glass of water to someone who wakes up thirsty.
I look online every single day trying to find a job that is either more interesting, pays better, or has better hours. I wouldn’t need a position that meets all three of those conditions, just one of those things would make me happy. (And notice I didn’t even mention benefits in that list, that’s not even something that seems remotely possibly to me) But every time I look for jobs, and like I said its every eff-ing day, it’s the same thing. The jobs are either limited term employment, part time, or minimum wage.
My favorite thing is when I see a job that looks like exactly what I want to do, which incidentally is working with disenfranchised populations, I am not looking to be CEO of Fortune 500 company here. But anyway, my favorite thing is when I see a listing that sounds perfect so I click on it, see that I am perfectly qualified, the pay is good, and…that the position offers like six hours a week. And here’s the eff-ing kicker, usually these postings say that they are looking to hire, like, 10 people. Seriously? Instead of paying one or two people a LIVING wage and benefits you are going to hire ten people to work like six hours a week?
But that’s the system that we live in and that every flag waving American swears that they will die to defend. OK, I know that seems like a pretty big jump in thought but let me explain myself. So in the United States, there was a very long battle to get labor rights, things like a minimum wage, benefits for full time employees, safety standards etc. So companies in the US had to hire its workers and make sure that they could at least survive.
Seems simple and logical, but this system cost big companies a lot of money so somewhere along the line someone figured out that hey, if it costs too much money to hire workers here, why not hire workers in developing countries? Why pay $7.50 an hour when you can pay 13 cents a day? (FYI that isn’t an exaggeration, a worker in countries like Thailand and Cambodia really get paid those kind of wages).
So all the jobs got sent to other countries. Here is why this system will ultimately ruin itself. Say you own a shoe factory and your shoes cost $50 a pair. You make them in the United States and after you pay wages, make sure safety and environmental standards are met, and provide benefits for your workers you end up with a $10 profit on each pair of shoes. But, since you are paying your workers and since car companies, toy factories, clothing makers and other companies are also paying people in the United States money to make things, people here have the $50 to spend on a pair of shoes.
But ten bucks isn’t a big enough profit for you, so you decide that you are going to make your shoes in China, where it only costs five bucks to make the same exact shoe, and then sell it in America and get a $45 profit. Brilliant. You just more than quadrupled your profit margin! However, every other manufacturing company sees the idea and sends all their jobs overseas so they can quadruple their profits too. Sounds great right?
Wrong. Once all the jobs go to other countries, all those people that used to work in manufacturing will be unemployed so they won’t have $50 to buy your shoes…or the cars, or the toys, or the clothes or anything else because you took away all their jobs. So what you have done is eliminate a GIGANTIC portion of your consumer base…but hey, not all Americans work in manufacturing right? There are lots of other people who work in medical fields or administration or retail…they are all still getting wages so they’ll be able to buy your crap, right?
Wrong again. Since so many jobs went overseas, and so many people became unemployed, the job market is FLOODED with people willing to do whatever they can to get a little bit of money. So now, companies that can’t outsource can offer ten people jobs where they will only work a few hours a week. This way the company gets out of having to pay for benefits or retirement funds or anything like that. Companies also don’t have to try and lure employees in by offering high wages, they can do the bare minimum and still have people lined up outside fighting for a paycheck. So basically, this system takes 95% of the population and makes them too poor to have any purchasing power and soon there won’t be anyone left to buy that hypothetical pair of shoes we discussed earlier. By allowing companies to take all the jobs out of our country, we completely and totally ruined the United States economy.
So, yeah, the next time that you start to blame the economic state that our country is in on ridiculous fucking reasons like too much social welfare, immigrant populations, unions, or the insane fantasy that the government is being taken over by socialists, remember that the reasons no one has a job is because companies like Nike, The Gap, Dell Computers, and about a trillion other ones sent most of the jobs overseas and left millions of people to fight over the ones that are left.
And now that there are hundreds of people competing for each job, do you think that the companies are going to increase or decrease the wages, working conditions, and hours that they offer the workers? If you are unsure about what the answer to that is open your nearest “help wanted” section of the newspaper.
Since this blog is already WAY too long, I’m not going to describe what this system has done to economies in developing countries (spoiler alert: they’re fucked too) but I am going to leave you with this one thought. If you were a huge corporation, would you want desperate workers willing to do whatever you told them or would you want workers who knew that if you provided a shitty job they could reasonably expect to find a better one somewhere else? Remember that the next time you vote Republican or Democrat or any other candidate that is sponsored by a big business or the next time you want to run your mouth off about how the government should not be able to tell companies what to do.
But now that we have looked at the big picture and I have written this eloquent and intellectual post, is anyone out there interested in hiring me? Please? Pretty please? Pretty, pretty please??
Yeah, har har har, I was talking about finding a job, not true love. (Side note, cause I know he reads this, I have found true love). But back to the whole job thing, I busted my ass through college to get my degree…OK “busted my ass” should probably read “attended most of my classes on at least a weekly basis” but I did graduate with honors with a Bachelors degree in Sociology with a minor in English and do you know what kind of stellar job I have found? One that pays exactly one dollar over minimum wage, has no benefits and where I only get 32 hours a week.
Don’t get me wrong, in some ways I love my job. I work at a residential facility for physically and cognitively disabled adults and I love the time I get to spend interacting with the people that live at the house. Unfortunately, I work from ten o’clock at night until six in the morning, so the time I spend with them is exactly none at all because they are asleep. So yeah, basically I paid thousands of dollars to get a degree to get a job where I do house work and occasionally bring a glass of water to someone who wakes up thirsty.
I look online every single day trying to find a job that is either more interesting, pays better, or has better hours. I wouldn’t need a position that meets all three of those conditions, just one of those things would make me happy. (And notice I didn’t even mention benefits in that list, that’s not even something that seems remotely possibly to me) But every time I look for jobs, and like I said its every eff-ing day, it’s the same thing. The jobs are either limited term employment, part time, or minimum wage.
My favorite thing is when I see a job that looks like exactly what I want to do, which incidentally is working with disenfranchised populations, I am not looking to be CEO of Fortune 500 company here. But anyway, my favorite thing is when I see a listing that sounds perfect so I click on it, see that I am perfectly qualified, the pay is good, and…that the position offers like six hours a week. And here’s the eff-ing kicker, usually these postings say that they are looking to hire, like, 10 people. Seriously? Instead of paying one or two people a LIVING wage and benefits you are going to hire ten people to work like six hours a week?
But that’s the system that we live in and that every flag waving American swears that they will die to defend. OK, I know that seems like a pretty big jump in thought but let me explain myself. So in the United States, there was a very long battle to get labor rights, things like a minimum wage, benefits for full time employees, safety standards etc. So companies in the US had to hire its workers and make sure that they could at least survive.
Seems simple and logical, but this system cost big companies a lot of money so somewhere along the line someone figured out that hey, if it costs too much money to hire workers here, why not hire workers in developing countries? Why pay $7.50 an hour when you can pay 13 cents a day? (FYI that isn’t an exaggeration, a worker in countries like Thailand and Cambodia really get paid those kind of wages).
So all the jobs got sent to other countries. Here is why this system will ultimately ruin itself. Say you own a shoe factory and your shoes cost $50 a pair. You make them in the United States and after you pay wages, make sure safety and environmental standards are met, and provide benefits for your workers you end up with a $10 profit on each pair of shoes. But, since you are paying your workers and since car companies, toy factories, clothing makers and other companies are also paying people in the United States money to make things, people here have the $50 to spend on a pair of shoes.
But ten bucks isn’t a big enough profit for you, so you decide that you are going to make your shoes in China, where it only costs five bucks to make the same exact shoe, and then sell it in America and get a $45 profit. Brilliant. You just more than quadrupled your profit margin! However, every other manufacturing company sees the idea and sends all their jobs overseas so they can quadruple their profits too. Sounds great right?
Wrong. Once all the jobs go to other countries, all those people that used to work in manufacturing will be unemployed so they won’t have $50 to buy your shoes…or the cars, or the toys, or the clothes or anything else because you took away all their jobs. So what you have done is eliminate a GIGANTIC portion of your consumer base…but hey, not all Americans work in manufacturing right? There are lots of other people who work in medical fields or administration or retail…they are all still getting wages so they’ll be able to buy your crap, right?
Wrong again. Since so many jobs went overseas, and so many people became unemployed, the job market is FLOODED with people willing to do whatever they can to get a little bit of money. So now, companies that can’t outsource can offer ten people jobs where they will only work a few hours a week. This way the company gets out of having to pay for benefits or retirement funds or anything like that. Companies also don’t have to try and lure employees in by offering high wages, they can do the bare minimum and still have people lined up outside fighting for a paycheck. So basically, this system takes 95% of the population and makes them too poor to have any purchasing power and soon there won’t be anyone left to buy that hypothetical pair of shoes we discussed earlier. By allowing companies to take all the jobs out of our country, we completely and totally ruined the United States economy.
So, yeah, the next time that you start to blame the economic state that our country is in on ridiculous fucking reasons like too much social welfare, immigrant populations, unions, or the insane fantasy that the government is being taken over by socialists, remember that the reasons no one has a job is because companies like Nike, The Gap, Dell Computers, and about a trillion other ones sent most of the jobs overseas and left millions of people to fight over the ones that are left.
And now that there are hundreds of people competing for each job, do you think that the companies are going to increase or decrease the wages, working conditions, and hours that they offer the workers? If you are unsure about what the answer to that is open your nearest “help wanted” section of the newspaper.
Since this blog is already WAY too long, I’m not going to describe what this system has done to economies in developing countries (spoiler alert: they’re fucked too) but I am going to leave you with this one thought. If you were a huge corporation, would you want desperate workers willing to do whatever you told them or would you want workers who knew that if you provided a shitty job they could reasonably expect to find a better one somewhere else? Remember that the next time you vote Republican or Democrat or any other candidate that is sponsored by a big business or the next time you want to run your mouth off about how the government should not be able to tell companies what to do.
But now that we have looked at the big picture and I have written this eloquent and intellectual post, is anyone out there interested in hiring me? Please? Pretty please? Pretty, pretty please??
Saturday, June 19, 2010
The Nerdiest Crime in Recorded History: books I’ve read so many times the covers are falling off.
Yeah, since this is my blog and I doubt many people are ever going to actually read it anyway, I figured I would do a super long post about my five favorite books. If you aren't a huge fan of reading, but are just DYING to know what else I think about, skip head to the other posts because thats basically all that this one is about. I love to read and have no idea what people do with their time if they never read. I don’t mean that in a "oh wow, look at me, I’m a literary genius" kind of way, I just mean I seriously can’t picture how you would pass the time if you never picked up a book. If you like to read here are some suggestions and if you don’t, well, you’re weird.
5. We the Living by Ayn Rand.
OK, lefty friends don’t freak out. I KNOW Ayn Rand is Spongebob Psychopants and that all the crazies in this country have picked her as their leader, but hear me out on this one. This was her first book, she said it is the closest to an autobiography that she would ever come. The plot line is kind of like a Soviet Union Gone with the Wind (minus the slavery and racism…and the hoop skirts). Oddly enough, the hero in this book is a man named Andre and he is the most devout socialist featured in any of Rand’s fiction, and he holds onto his ideals until the end.
Out of all her writing, this book has the fewest references to her nutjob politics, at the time of the writing she wasn’t such an extreme fanatic of capitalism. Unlike The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, the characters in this book are very relatable and human. It reads more like a memoir than propaganda (which is basically what I consider her other works).
Overall as a writer, I have to give her credit for being able to present her theories/philosophies in a clear manner but this book is a real story, whereas her other novels are very two dimensional backdrops that she projects her nuttiness onto. But back to my original point, We the Living, is a really good book, lots of really vivid details and I would recommend it to everyone.
4. Any short story by Steven King, in particular, The Moving Finger.
Kind of a big jump from Rand to King, but to anyone that thinks King is just a paperback, bestseller lowest common denominator kind of author you are wrong. Personally, I think that King uses dialogue and voice better than any other writer I’ve ever read does. I don’t just mean his use of dialect (i.e. all the old men from Maine in his books that say a-yuh all the time) but the way that he is able to give each character, even in some of his huge novels like The Stand or The Dome, unique personalities and characteristics.
The Moving Finger is a story about a guy who hears a tapping noise in his bathroom. When he goes to investigate, he sees a finger poking out of his sink drain and it is moving around. He thinks he is going crazy and every time he tries to show someone the finger, it disappears but when he is alone the finger just keeps getting longer and longer with more and more knuckles. The end of this story is pretty gristly but you’ll have to read it yourself to find out what it is.
Doesn’t exactly sound like the best plot ever, but the way he wrote this story made this weird little idea of a finger poking up out of the sink drain scare the hell out of me. I’m twenty-four years old and I am not going to lie, sometimes when I take a bath or do the dishes I still push the bubbles out of the way so I can see the drain…you know, just in case. My point is, anyone that can make a grown adult afraid of a finger coming out of a drain is probably a pretty damn good writer.
3. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
This story is one of the saddest and most beautiful stories that I have ever read. The story is about an immigrant family that moves to Chicago in the meatpacking district in the early 1900s. They really trust the system and think that if they work hard they will get the "American Dream". I guess when it came out Sinclair was hoping to show the American public how flawed the capitalist system was by showing how this industrious, immigrant family came to the US and got screwed over no matter how hard they tried to make it. The reaction he got though was that everyone learned how disgusting the meatpacking industry was and there were a lot of reforms made in order to make the food that was coming out of Chicago more safe for consumption. The meat stuff is pretty gross, but so is the meat industry today. What I loved about the book was the story of the family and this is one of the first books I ever read that made me really realize that I was a socialist.
2. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
For anyone that thinks they know this story based on the James Dean movie, the plot is so much bigger in the book. The first time I read this book I literally finished it and started it over immediately because it was that good. It is the story of two families and goes through multiple generations for both of them. There is such a intricate plot that there is no way that I could attempt to explain it in a blog post that is already getting to be too long. The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, like The Jungle, was another of the first books I read that made me start to really care about politics, but East of Eden is his best book if you are looking at it in terms of how enjoyable it is to read. It has a lot of biblical allegories in it, particularly Cain and Abel. If you haven’t read it and you like to read at all, you should definitely go read it.
So, my very favorite book ever is…
1.A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Francie Nolan, the main character, is a little girl that is born in Brooklyn around the turn of the century. The book details her life from her birth until she is about to go off to college. This book is the best example of American realism I’ve ever read. Smith doesn’t have any unexpected plot twists and the characters in the novel all lead regular lives and have regular jobs. It is just the story of a girl who is born poor, has a difficult but sometimes happy childhood, and then grows up. But it’s a beautiful story.
There is one part in the book where Francie and her brother Neely are talking about how Neely got drunk for the first time. I can’t remember the exact wording but Francie asks how he felt and he says something like it made me dizzy and like the world was spinning around me. Francie replies that if that is what drunk feels like, she got drunk once when she saw a tulip for the first time in a park down the street from her apartment. I mean, she says that the flower was so beautiful it made her feel drunk. Yeah, so that’s why this book is my all time favorite, that scene alone is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read in my life.
I’m actually on my second copy of this book because the first one had been read so many times that the whole middle section would fall out every time you picked it. Side note, anyone who went to my high school after 2001 (the year I was in 9th grade) may not have gotten the opportunity to read this book. I liked it so much I literally stole it from the school library. Only time I have ever stolen anything in my life. I think that might be the nerdiest crime in all of recorded history.
5. We the Living by Ayn Rand.
OK, lefty friends don’t freak out. I KNOW Ayn Rand is Spongebob Psychopants and that all the crazies in this country have picked her as their leader, but hear me out on this one. This was her first book, she said it is the closest to an autobiography that she would ever come. The plot line is kind of like a Soviet Union Gone with the Wind (minus the slavery and racism…and the hoop skirts). Oddly enough, the hero in this book is a man named Andre and he is the most devout socialist featured in any of Rand’s fiction, and he holds onto his ideals until the end.
Out of all her writing, this book has the fewest references to her nutjob politics, at the time of the writing she wasn’t such an extreme fanatic of capitalism. Unlike The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, the characters in this book are very relatable and human. It reads more like a memoir than propaganda (which is basically what I consider her other works).
Overall as a writer, I have to give her credit for being able to present her theories/philosophies in a clear manner but this book is a real story, whereas her other novels are very two dimensional backdrops that she projects her nuttiness onto. But back to my original point, We the Living, is a really good book, lots of really vivid details and I would recommend it to everyone.
4. Any short story by Steven King, in particular, The Moving Finger.
Kind of a big jump from Rand to King, but to anyone that thinks King is just a paperback, bestseller lowest common denominator kind of author you are wrong. Personally, I think that King uses dialogue and voice better than any other writer I’ve ever read does. I don’t just mean his use of dialect (i.e. all the old men from Maine in his books that say a-yuh all the time) but the way that he is able to give each character, even in some of his huge novels like The Stand or The Dome, unique personalities and characteristics.
The Moving Finger is a story about a guy who hears a tapping noise in his bathroom. When he goes to investigate, he sees a finger poking out of his sink drain and it is moving around. He thinks he is going crazy and every time he tries to show someone the finger, it disappears but when he is alone the finger just keeps getting longer and longer with more and more knuckles. The end of this story is pretty gristly but you’ll have to read it yourself to find out what it is.
Doesn’t exactly sound like the best plot ever, but the way he wrote this story made this weird little idea of a finger poking up out of the sink drain scare the hell out of me. I’m twenty-four years old and I am not going to lie, sometimes when I take a bath or do the dishes I still push the bubbles out of the way so I can see the drain…you know, just in case. My point is, anyone that can make a grown adult afraid of a finger coming out of a drain is probably a pretty damn good writer.
3. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
This story is one of the saddest and most beautiful stories that I have ever read. The story is about an immigrant family that moves to Chicago in the meatpacking district in the early 1900s. They really trust the system and think that if they work hard they will get the "American Dream". I guess when it came out Sinclair was hoping to show the American public how flawed the capitalist system was by showing how this industrious, immigrant family came to the US and got screwed over no matter how hard they tried to make it. The reaction he got though was that everyone learned how disgusting the meatpacking industry was and there were a lot of reforms made in order to make the food that was coming out of Chicago more safe for consumption. The meat stuff is pretty gross, but so is the meat industry today. What I loved about the book was the story of the family and this is one of the first books I ever read that made me really realize that I was a socialist.
2. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
For anyone that thinks they know this story based on the James Dean movie, the plot is so much bigger in the book. The first time I read this book I literally finished it and started it over immediately because it was that good. It is the story of two families and goes through multiple generations for both of them. There is such a intricate plot that there is no way that I could attempt to explain it in a blog post that is already getting to be too long. The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, like The Jungle, was another of the first books I read that made me start to really care about politics, but East of Eden is his best book if you are looking at it in terms of how enjoyable it is to read. It has a lot of biblical allegories in it, particularly Cain and Abel. If you haven’t read it and you like to read at all, you should definitely go read it.
So, my very favorite book ever is…
1.A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Francie Nolan, the main character, is a little girl that is born in Brooklyn around the turn of the century. The book details her life from her birth until she is about to go off to college. This book is the best example of American realism I’ve ever read. Smith doesn’t have any unexpected plot twists and the characters in the novel all lead regular lives and have regular jobs. It is just the story of a girl who is born poor, has a difficult but sometimes happy childhood, and then grows up. But it’s a beautiful story.
There is one part in the book where Francie and her brother Neely are talking about how Neely got drunk for the first time. I can’t remember the exact wording but Francie asks how he felt and he says something like it made me dizzy and like the world was spinning around me. Francie replies that if that is what drunk feels like, she got drunk once when she saw a tulip for the first time in a park down the street from her apartment. I mean, she says that the flower was so beautiful it made her feel drunk. Yeah, so that’s why this book is my all time favorite, that scene alone is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read in my life.
I’m actually on my second copy of this book because the first one had been read so many times that the whole middle section would fall out every time you picked it. Side note, anyone who went to my high school after 2001 (the year I was in 9th grade) may not have gotten the opportunity to read this book. I liked it so much I literally stole it from the school library. Only time I have ever stolen anything in my life. I think that might be the nerdiest crime in all of recorded history.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Dear Sir or Madame, I would be pretty eff-ing stoked to attend your fine institute of learning.
So I think I have finally found the program that I want to go into. It’s a Mental Health counseling masters program at UW Stout and I am pretty eff-ing stoked about it. (That’s what I am going to put on the application too, "Dear Sir or Madame, I would be pretty eff-ing stoked to attend your fine institute of learning…")
The program lasts for two years and afterwards I would be licensed to be a therapist in Wisconsin…which would be pretty sweet. The program also doesn’t require a GRE, which is a pretty big bonus for me because my math skills are fairly nonexistent. Which isn’t fair because all of my family is like insanely brilliant about math. You know the whole Irish American family stereotype about people getting drunk and then fighting? That’s how thanksgivings are at my grandma except the drunken argument will be about something like how the imaginary number E factors into an equation. (Not joking about this, it happened. There was actual yelling and swearing) So yeah, my grandfather was an engineer for NASA, a literal rocket scientist and my grandmother was a professor at Milwaukee School of Engineering but I still get confused about fractions. Not cool, DNA, not cool at all.
Anyway, point being, I am glad that my admittance will be based off my GPA and work/volunteer experience and not anything to do with a math test. Plus I have been looking at all the UW schools for a program for counseling that is practice based and not research based (UW Madison is primarily research based) and this is the only one that I found.
This is a rare, totally serious thought from me, but I really am excited I found this program because I have wanted to work in this field for a long time. My older sister suffers from a mental illness and I have spent my whole life seeing her and other people with similar illnesses shoved through a system that doesn’t have a whole lot of empathy for them.
I know that there are some people out there that honestly care and advocate for disability rights, but I feel like mental illness somehow is treated differently than other disabilities. Maybe its because it isn’t one that you can see right away, like when someone is in a wheelchair, or maybe it is because society has everyone convinced that anyone that suffers from a mental illness could snap at any moment and go on a murder rampage. And news flash to people (like some people I am friends with hint hint) "bipolar" is not a personality trait, when you use that word to describe someone that you think has a bad temper or is annoying or THE DAMN WEATHER, you sound like a eff-ing prick. Its a disease, one that puts people into the hospital and that the people who have it cannot control.... ugh, the whole thing just disgusts me.
Its like, if someone had cancer or a broken leg, you wouldn’t be weird about it or embarrassed or whatever but whenever I mention to someone that my sister has bipolar disorder they change the subject real quick like I’ve made them awkward by bringing it up. So I figure the best thing I can do is go to school, learn more about and work within the system to help people. Not that I am like some holy martyr or anything like that, but it would be nice to be able to make a difference in someone’s life. And lets face it, NASA and Milwaukee School of Engineering aren't exactly knocking down the door asking me to come work for them so I better find some kind of career. N. still has a year left of school though so it wouldn’t be until fall of 2011, so I still have some time to figure everything out.
It would mean that we would have to move again though. I just counted the number of times I have moved in my life and the answer is 24. I am only 24 years old (to be fair my parents got divorced when I was a kid but lived in the same town so I’m counting every time either of them moved). But seriously, that is a lot of times to move. But one more won’t hurt me, plus who else can say that they have lived in that many houses?
The program lasts for two years and afterwards I would be licensed to be a therapist in Wisconsin…which would be pretty sweet. The program also doesn’t require a GRE, which is a pretty big bonus for me because my math skills are fairly nonexistent. Which isn’t fair because all of my family is like insanely brilliant about math. You know the whole Irish American family stereotype about people getting drunk and then fighting? That’s how thanksgivings are at my grandma except the drunken argument will be about something like how the imaginary number E factors into an equation. (Not joking about this, it happened. There was actual yelling and swearing) So yeah, my grandfather was an engineer for NASA, a literal rocket scientist and my grandmother was a professor at Milwaukee School of Engineering but I still get confused about fractions. Not cool, DNA, not cool at all.
Anyway, point being, I am glad that my admittance will be based off my GPA and work/volunteer experience and not anything to do with a math test. Plus I have been looking at all the UW schools for a program for counseling that is practice based and not research based (UW Madison is primarily research based) and this is the only one that I found.
This is a rare, totally serious thought from me, but I really am excited I found this program because I have wanted to work in this field for a long time. My older sister suffers from a mental illness and I have spent my whole life seeing her and other people with similar illnesses shoved through a system that doesn’t have a whole lot of empathy for them.
I know that there are some people out there that honestly care and advocate for disability rights, but I feel like mental illness somehow is treated differently than other disabilities. Maybe its because it isn’t one that you can see right away, like when someone is in a wheelchair, or maybe it is because society has everyone convinced that anyone that suffers from a mental illness could snap at any moment and go on a murder rampage. And news flash to people (like some people I am friends with hint hint) "bipolar" is not a personality trait, when you use that word to describe someone that you think has a bad temper or is annoying or THE DAMN WEATHER, you sound like a eff-ing prick. Its a disease, one that puts people into the hospital and that the people who have it cannot control.... ugh, the whole thing just disgusts me.
Its like, if someone had cancer or a broken leg, you wouldn’t be weird about it or embarrassed or whatever but whenever I mention to someone that my sister has bipolar disorder they change the subject real quick like I’ve made them awkward by bringing it up. So I figure the best thing I can do is go to school, learn more about and work within the system to help people. Not that I am like some holy martyr or anything like that, but it would be nice to be able to make a difference in someone’s life. And lets face it, NASA and Milwaukee School of Engineering aren't exactly knocking down the door asking me to come work for them so I better find some kind of career. N. still has a year left of school though so it wouldn’t be until fall of 2011, so I still have some time to figure everything out.
It would mean that we would have to move again though. I just counted the number of times I have moved in my life and the answer is 24. I am only 24 years old (to be fair my parents got divorced when I was a kid but lived in the same town so I’m counting every time either of them moved). But seriously, that is a lot of times to move. But one more won’t hurt me, plus who else can say that they have lived in that many houses?
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