many things to cover

I have many topics on my mind.

One being the reasons for being a vegetarian. Another, the process meat undergoes so it stays bright red. And yet another, wax on apples and salmon genes in my corn. Monsanto. “Everybody hates them.” The reality of <<free range>>. All the back and forth destruction and devastation between Israel and the Gaza Strip. What is it like to be a ten-year-old child living through that every single day? Every day. It’s terrifying. And there is certainly where the room is made for a deep, deep animosity to brew against the nemesis. And if some, or the majority (keep in mind, this is purely conjecture, but not that far-fetched I’m sadly assuming), of the younger generation feels this way, than what hope is there for the future with so much hatred? Perhaps I shouldn’t even act as if such negativity exists, but again that’s like pretending the palm oil plantations don’t exist on Borneo, or that the milk I’m drinking didn’t come from a cow living out an awful existence with udders about to explode from all the hormones and antibiotics…and then my pancakes with the saltiest butter I’ve ever consumed in my life came, and he poured more half and half into his coffee.

I must admit, I cannot handle it; and that is why I don’t eat them. But, no, no, no, I still allow myself to consume milk because although they suffer immensely for it, they don’t die. And that’s more ethical, in my twisted logic. I’ve created this other world where I need to justify eating dairy- and I’m okay with it. Why do most people not feel this guilt- if not for the animal, than why not for their planet? Why pretend like it doesn’t exist? And last night jolted me awake again. Veganism is tough without any support, and even more so without any other vegans around to live that lifestyle with you. I know this because every time I’ve had my diet get in the way of some plans, or something probably miniscule, I think, <<Well, this would probably go even worse if I didn’t drink milk or eat eggs.>> And why does it have to be this way? Making that switch over will happen one day if conditions don’t improve (and they might, but I’m more uncertain than positive).

Packing. I must continue packing. All I do is that. Move from place to place. Unpack, pack again, unpack. On and on. I’ll come back to these concerns later. That’s another problem; I have the privilege to push these issues aside for the moment because they are too difficult for me to bear every moment of the day. What a privilege, huh?

the Sunday trib

I really don’t like the new look of the Chicago Tribune. I don’t like how the magazine is now only the <<Trib>>. On the front page, the name of the paper is smooshed all the way to the left whereas before it rested beautifully across the top portion. Perfectly. The redesign is meant to allow easy browsing and reading. Whatever. I think it’s ugly and looks more like the local Waukegan newspaper. It’s the ChiTrib. Come on! It has lots of prestige and should look that way. Is the newspaper attempting to look less sophisticated to attract those who read the dinky News Sun or the Chicago Sun-Times? Blegh, il mio padre brought home a copy of the Sun-Times and they don’t even have an international section. What the heck!

I have/had this friend whose name is Jake-ub. Jacob. Corn on the cob, except he’s not that good, not like Illinois corn even though he goes to a school that’s probably surrounded by good ol’ Illinois cornfields. And we haven’t spoken in a really long time. I happen to still have his copy of The Shins <<Wincing the Night Away>> which was given to him by his ex-girlfriend who always reminded me of a twig boy. And he gave me the CD, or let me borrow it, after picking strawberries in Wisconsin right before he thought his conversation about going to a strip club afterwards was conducted rather stealthily, but no sir. I heard every bit of it and thought him unbearably silly for whispering about having dollar bills.

He just turned eighteen.

Darn. I’m going to write a story about picking strawberries with him, and perhaps if I work up the courage, let Sir Sanz know, in order to perform it during an Open Mic night in the pub. Hmmm…that’s a possiblity.

Oh, relational aesthetics. You are not the bane of my existence, but planning is a killer- which is why I have not been planning since I left Florence. Florence Nightengale. That’s a beautiful name.

And the regulations the Bush adminastration is trying to pass concerning the Endangered Species Act makes me want to vomit! It concerns global warming and intends to make a situation in which regulators cannot evaluate and observe for posterity or future action the effects of global warming on endangered species. Because that makes ever so much sense. DARN! Curse the writer of such idiocy. Imbecile. Putain. C’est penible ca- et pas d’accents which makes it even more unbearable.

There is an article in the December 2008 issue of National Geographic about palm oil plantations. I wish I could show it to all the folks who saw my palm oil commercial during the video show at SACI. It would make the commercial mean a whole lot more to them. I have yet to read it because it’ll be a major downer, and I’m not quite ready for such depression. But see. That’s so idiotic. It’s happening. Why should I turn a blind eye to what’s happening in Borneo? It won’t quit if I ignore it.

Dear.

I cleaned my orange yoga mat tonight. Both yoga mats are stained with my blood. That’s really odd now that I think of it. I seem to do yoga right after incurring a cut on my foot or on my hand. Bizarre.

the website

Building my personal website has taken a hiatus of a good 7 to 8 months.

Just like many things in my life, it’ll come around.

I’m in the process of bracing myself for the whirlwind- not actual a whirlwind because those don’t pack a burdensome load and they’re immaterial at that- I’m talking bulk. The preparation begins now for the bulk of work which will be tossed at me by my professors as if it is a cupcake or a skin cell. Oh, RNA nucleotides don’t float in the cytoplasm, they float in whatever substance exists within the nucleus. Ever so nice to get that one straight. Well, anyways, back to this process. At the current moment, I can’t even begin to understand how my life could so drammatically change to where I have to make lots of sacrifices in what to do. Certainly, I can’t do everything. I can’t quite fathom right now how much time it will consume because I have this idea that it’s impossible for that to occur although I know damn well it’s not an impossibility.

Lissa Schneckenburger- whew, I think I spelled that right. I wish she would record “Silver Dagger”. I remember hearing that tune in high school, and I fell in love right there with the song. Then, my roommate reintroduced it into my life when we were trading music except this time Joan Baez replaced Lissa S. as the artist. I do prefer Lissa’s instrument of choice [the fiddle- I've always loved the sound of it] to that of Joan Baez.

I frothed some milk today, and the white of one egg. Aside from my frothing activities on this gray day in Illinois, I’ve finished my text design for Threadless- the “DESIGN CHALLENGE!!!” I like it.

Falling behind on studying genetics. I was supposed to be on the second half of my notes by Wednesday, and I’m still finishing up lectures 6-8. I knew all of my amazing note-taking would come in handy in the future. It’s like taking my evolution class all over again. I keep on running across things that relate back to what I learned a year ago, and that’s why I’ve taken such an interest in it- it’s everywhere! And not only is it “ubiquitous” as my high school advanced chem teacher would squeeze into every one of his senteces, it’s enlightening to finally learn what’s going on inside of my body besides what is most noticeable- my stomach singing, my heart beating, my lungs filling up with air. I should get myself a geneticist friend. Radio Lab- the last two episodes about Race and Sperm have largely been about genetics. And in the December 2008 issue of National Geographic- okay, this has more to do with evolution- but evolution really occurs on the level of the individual gene (microevolution)- there is an article written by David Quammen (author of The Reluctant Mr. Darwin) about Alfred Russel Wallace- although I much prefer the version of Wallace’s relationship with Charles Darwin in Quammen’s book. But, the article is still worth a look because as usual the photographs in this NG article are stunning. I especially like the one of the large flightless bird whose name beings with a C. A cassowary. Even the name is beautiful- CASSOWARY. CASSOWARIES.

_________________

An addendum:

Holy moly! I’m going to urinate in my britches for I cannot believe I’ve come across this website Scitable under the direction of Nature. Oh dear. This is what I’ve been waiting for but didn’t know I was even waiting for something. Yes, I do feel overwhelmed with this bountiful and beautiful wealth of information and resources at my disposal in the field of genetics. I’m ever so thankful for it. WOW! This is certainly the best Christmas gift of all. I’m not quite sure where to begin, but have read the first paragraph of the article titled Isolating Hereditary Material. This website is what it looks like when I dream at night about genetics. I don’t understand where my career path is going. Am I veering away from being an artist and deciding to become a geneticist? I’m certainly “amped” as my Mormon neighbor would say about genetics to the point that I’ve put art on the back burner temporarily (well, not necessarily in light of the Threadless design). Nevermind, just like one side of my brain does not dominate, but both are co-dominant just like A and B blood type alleles (yes!), I will continue to exist as an artist/budding scientist.

Gosh, I love genetics.

the ever mischievous banana chip

So, I ate a banana chip. Darn!!! I haven’t eaten bananers in maybe over a month? It just happened, and I didn’t realize it until afterwards. The thought of spitting it out even came to me. I realize now I treat bananas like they’re meat, and they don’t belong in my body.

Why are RNA nucleotides just floating around in my cells? That seems weird to me although I know for certain it’s perfectly normal. In my head though I have this image of RNA nucleotides floating around in the cytoplasm in innertubes. Perhaps that explains the absurdity of this all. Surely it does.

All hospitals smell the same- stale. And it even is a <<yellow stale>>- it has a color to it.

Ever since coming home, I’ve become an expert snow shoveler. Man, I can shovel the driveway in a good twenty to thirty minutes now like a pro. It’s all in the system. Down and over. Once the pattern and the system is set in place, it opens the door for efficiency.

Stretching out my right ankle each day is nothing in comparison to giving up all material items during this season of heightened material consumption. Although I’ve vowed to set my right caviglia back into proper shape, surely that pales far past white when observed alongside the likes of that couple I read about whose mission it was to live off a dollar or less a day. They starved. And then there is No Impact Man whose blog I will surely follow from this day forward.

Absolutely brilliant-

Colin Beavan

The one person or action that breaks the back is often the one that history recognizes. But the domino that begins the domino effect requires all of us to be in line in order for the chain reaction to take place.

—When I finished up my junior year in high school, a literature teacher I don’t think too highly of anymore, but I nonetheless respect for this one deed, gave to me a quote of Igor Sikorsky’s:

“The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind forward.”

So, little things do matter after all, and maybe stretching out my right ankle, although a small exercise done each day will help me realize that effort here and there is still at the end of the day a stab at progress. Obviously, I will apply this lesson to more than my ankle- to more than selfish undertakings. Will I try to live on less than a dollar a day?

In order to move forward, I joined Colorado District 1 on Focus the Nation to see what I can do when joining a group- to see what collective action can do. There are three of us in District 1. That made me sad, but brought to mind again the words of Mister Beavan and Sikorsky. Individuals matter- they are the foundation for the individuals/groups to come in the future.

Happy Eve! I’m going to hang out with my mom now.

on laziness

So, if my .gif were not on my external harddrive, it surely would be on my blog by now. That is disgusting laziness for sure.

I met up with people I went to high school with today. Wow. I haven’t seen them in three years.

I’m sewing the missing patch in the awesome shirt jacket I found lying in front of the fake opera house/English Church of Saint Mark’s in Florence. I’m so bitter still about Le Nozze di Figaro. Stupid, stupid. Opera has no narration!!! Anyways, I wonder what the owner did with the patch she cut out. It’s really an odd part of the jacket to snip away seeing as the owner surely could have gone for the pretty embroidered flowers.

My actions have completely changed now that I’m home. Gosh, I’m a dancer. I dance all over the place accompanied by my mediocre singing. In the city covered in dog excrement, I admitted to my roommates I danced all over our apartment when they were all gone to the Yael Naim (pardon the missing accent, even so important accent) “I’m A New Soul”. Dear, that’s a good song.

I was studying French tonight. My mom asked me why, so I told her I want to be bilingual, so now I speak to her in Tagalog, French, English and Italian. Quartralingual. Quatrilingual. Multilingual- that’s so much easier to say.

And Sarah chopped a good eight or nine inches of my hair off. I should’ve kept it to make a teacup. Darn!

In the library, I was browsing the fiction books. Found one with hobo typeface. Had to check it out because of the ridiculous cover and because hobo looks like the Metropolitain signs in Paris. Well, it’s not an attractive book at all. My junior year high school teacher told me as a general rule, read to page 20. Should I go to 40? I hate giving up so early, and I really despise giving up at all. I used to never and suffered through some awful books like…see I don’t even remember what the titles I’ve subjected myself to. That’s because during the entire reading of them I was pulling off that amazing, awe-inspiring human feat of reading while simultaneously thinking of other things- reading with an absent mind. Then, before you come back to the book, five pages have gone by, and you’ve comprehended squat.

And ugly word- precocious. Also- erudite. Oh, that’s even worse. Blegh. It just rests uncomfortably in my mouth. Same with prostrate. I refuse to use those words in poetry. Or I might if that’s my intention- to make the reader feel discomfort. Words with lots of awkwardly positioned rs. Rs.

worrisome matter

Oh dear, Ken Salazar.

From Democracy Now:

But I think more than that. I think Ken actually, in his quest to be bipartisan, very often will go out and support just demonstrably bad, demonstrably inappropriate Republican candidates for these positions. Later, he supported, at least at one point in time, Myers for the federal bench, even though he was very controversial at the time. Now, Salazar did later flip-flop and change his position on that. And then, when Alberto Gonzales was up, Salazar not only supported him, he introduced him to the Senate. And I think what we saw there was, this desire to be seen as reaching across the aisles, being nonpartisan, was so strong that he was willing to take demonstrably bad positions to get there. And that’s what I really worry about in terms of the Secretary of Interior. His job is going to be to help select very important people: head of the Park Service, head of Bureau of Land Management, head of Mineral Management Services, head of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And if he shows the same inclination he has in the past, we could end up with some very bad appointees. And as he attempts to resolve a lot of the conflicts that every Secretary of Interior is going to be faced with, if he views his job as fundamentally to be bipartisan, not fundamentally to protect the environment, I think we can expect to see some dangerous decisions, based on this past record. So that is a—it’s very disturbing to me, because this position is a position of power and of judgment. And if you can’t trust the judgment, you shouldn’t give the power.

___

The wise and informative words of Kieran Suckling on Ken Salazar. This makes me worry about Obama’s ability to create the “change [we] can believe in.” Yes, Obama, yes, I believe in this country’s mission under your presidency, but Kieran’s words make me worry about how well you can stick to your plan with all of these loonies on your team. We’ll see what happens.

Snow storm 2008!!! Definitely.

I’m getting my hair chopped off soon. That’ll be a change, a good one. Perhaps Obama’s administration can follow suit in terms of progressive policies.

Basta cosi.

disseminating information

An e-mail from Greenpeace:

December 17, 2008
Dear Jen, I wrote you earlier this month with urgent news that both the Bering Sea and Amazon rainforest ecosystems are in serious danger. Already, the situation in the Amazon has gone from bad to worse, and I’m outraged by what’s happening now. The stakes are high. The Amazon is one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth. Losing the Amazon would mean losing some of the best habitat for remaining populations – from jaguars and ocelots to spider monkeys and sloths. In fact, scientists assume we have yet to discover many important species, including medicinal plants, in the rainforest and its canopy. But rainforest destruction is worth large sums of money to powerful forces within Brazil. Large agribusiness interests in the Amazon are stopping at nothing to seriously weaken the Brazilian Forest Code. They are now pushing for not one,	Our activists in the Amazon need your support today.
but two, terrible new proposals that would destroy the health of the Amazon. Now business interests are attempting to weaken or remove protections for areas of the rainforest that are currently considered “permanently” protected – like watersheds, mountain tops, and buffers along the Amazon River and its tributaries. Since rivers are like transportation highways in the Amazon, this could dramatically increase access to pristine rainforest and speed up illegal logging. Help Now >> Your immediate support will help us protect the Amazon! Business interests are also attempting to put Brazilian states, rather than the Brazilian federal government, in charge of creating and enforcing forest laws. Because state authorities often profit from the agribusiness sector, this could lead to considerably more destruction. And as if all of that weren’t bad enough, these proposals are attempting to change current laws that push for reforestation of illegally deforested areas. Under one of the new proposals, palm plants could be classified as native species. That might not sound like much, but what it means is that agribusiness could plant non-native palm trees in place of native rainforest species and then push to use them for the production of palm oil – the same lucrative and destructive business we see wiping out the Indonesian rainforest. All in all, this translates to government-supported destruction of the Amazon rainforest on a scale and with a speed the likes of which we’ve never seen. The only thing that’s stopping this from becoming reality is worldwide pressure – you’ve already helped send more than 200,000 letters to pressure the Brazilian government – and Greenpeace is on the ground in Brazil and in the Amazon delivering that pressure. So far, we’ve managed to stop the proposals from coming up for a vote at the Brazilian Environmental Commission – so far. As one of the largest and most experienced environmental groups fighting against the powerful agribusiness sectors in Brazil, Greenpeace is able to analyze the politics, build and amplify public attention worldwide, and defend the biodiversity of the Amazon. Thanks to your support we have one of the few permanent offices in the Brazilian Amazon, which allows us to monitor and fight rainforest destruction first hand. This is an issue of global importance. Destruction of the Amazon rainforest not only ruins wildlife habitats and biodiversity, but also releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases, giving us less time to stop global warming. Please, help us in our fight to save ecosystems like the Amazon and Bering. We can’t do it without YOU. Thank you, Lisa Finaldi Campaigns Director __________________________ Later, I’ll post my .gif animation I made as a sophomore in college [just last year actually that speaks of this same issue but using a different method].

learning tagalog

There are so many languages to learn. Need I be redudant and proclaim that.

I promised myself fluency in French, but here I am learning something I’ve heard my entire life. What’s more is, I declared if I were to learn anything new it would be Portuguese, maybe Spanish. But here I am, at Christmas learning Maligayang Pasko sa iyo. This is my first day (officially, I’m erasing all the past times I’ve tried to learn Tagalog), and man is it tough. But I bet- well, this is what I went through with French and Italian. Stick with it, and I’ll actually learn something. One day, if I learn Tagalog I may actually be able to communicate with my family. But really, I need to learn Visaya, and I don’t know how that’s going to happen unless I get a tutor.

Oh dear. And to add to all of this, I’ve tried learning a bit of Vietnamese. Complicating my life is certainly something I excel in, no doubt. This is what I learned phonetically {gam ung} or <<thank you>> in Vietnamese. Now I can say that all over Denver. Yay.