Wednesday, October 17, 2007

an embarasment to humanity


so i forgot to expand a little on san francisco in the sense of what went down in berkeley. I've already had my mind set on not going to berkeley anymore for several reasons but this past weekend i got a few more and also why i'll never go to ohio state.
so we all know about the tree sitters right? most people don't know though that the people aren't just there to protect the trees, they're citizens of berkeley who are tired of being run down by the university. there's a lot more controversy than people think. the surrounding city is dirt poor because the university takes all the money, good property, and everything else. right now they even charge for parking on pedestrian streets which they do not own. the same thing that's happening with the trees is the same as what happened at people's park, if anyone knows anything about that.
so, we were walking past and we stopped to watch, if you haven't been there, it's something worth seeing. there's the people in trees, all masked of course, they have houses and bridges and pulleys, there's a gate around them, and of course cops, to make sure that people don't attack the people in the trees.
A woman from ohio state (they were playing against berkley that day) was shouting at a police officer saying "what kind of university lets this happen" another person commented on the wasted tax dollars he police were spending by standing there.
I was dumbfounded because there are HUGE and elaborate frat houses just down the street with inebriated college kids our in the yard. There are numerous rapes and molestation as well as sexual harassment that happens at campus due to the allowance of this part of the "college experience". These guys are also the ones with top marks in their class that get petted on the head by professors because their parents donate money to the university, even if they do only show up less than half of the time. What kind of university allows that?
By the frat houses there was a HUGE multimillion dollar RV sitting in a drive way with "Go Army" posted all over it. It was a little more than extravagant. There were officers sitting around doing nothing, smoking and drinking. THAT my friends, is a waste of tax dollars.
I don't understand the mentality behind most people's thinking. I'm ashamed that people can live like this and not be upset or enraged.

Monday, October 15, 2007

The place we call home...


So everything is just coming on so fast.
I have my classes which are fine except my stupid statistics class which will certainly be the death of me. Seriously, it brings me down, I can hardly stay the whole hour its so depressing.
I have work which is starting to look like a great obstacle, but at least I usually go to work after stats and it always makes me feel better. It may also mean that I don't get to go home for thanksgiving or for christmas and I don't know what i'm going to do when next semester comes around and i'll have at least six classes which will defiantly cut into my hours, which may mean i'll have to leave my job since i'm suppose to work from opening to closing. maybe i'll just take night classes and two morning classes, even though i promised myself i'd never take an 8 o'clock class again, seriously....it's probably the worst choice i've ever made, but at least i love the class.
I only have $83 left for food for the rest of the semester which means that I have to work more so that i can apply for food stamps and hopefully get an ebt card. did you know that you can be unemployed and not going to school and get food stamps? you can go to school part time and have no job and get food stamps? but if you go full time you have to be working at least 20 hours a week. This also may be a problem since i think my bosses are a little shifty and may not actually be sending the "taxes" they take out of my paycheck to the government, and i need my social security card which i do not have.


Other than that things have been swell,
I got a letter from my grandma joan today where she said rhonda sent me a letter with part of a letter i had sent to rhonda saying that i loved rhonda and all that jazz which i thought was funny because i write that stuff to make her feel better but now she's sending it to grams like "in yo' face!" and it's sad but grandma thought it was funny so its all good.

I did go to san francisco this weekend to have a wonderful adventure

it all started with five people in a five person car each with two backpacks on a five hour drive. It would have worked out except the girl who was driving us had a mother who insisted on carrying a years supply of food and water in the back of the car. Plus one of the girls had a grandfather who was dying as we drove and she would randomly start crying and ivan and i didn't understand why. it wasn't until about ten minutes before we dropped her off that we connected all the dots. Thankfully she made it in time. Sadly it made our trip two hours longer.
After that excitement we finally made it to Oakland/Berkley, where ever you would say sean and jocie's building falls in. One of the guys from genghis tron broke his foot so we couldn't go to the show on jocie's birthday, we went to a delicious vegan restaurant instead, but it was already 8 by the time we got there so that's all there was time for. Saturday Sean took us to Maggie Muds which sits atop a GIGANTIC hill, they were the demise of my calves. But the vegan ice cream was amazing. Best sunday ever, i just wish i had been able to eat it all, there was just so much.
Then we went to jocie's and elise's birthday party which was located in scenic paul and cory's studio. it wasn't half bad. ivan and i fell asleep on the couch at about 1 45 am and we all left finally at about 2 30.
next day we ate yummy vegan food then we had to go home : (

So now i sit here waiting for either my work to call me or for ivan to get off of work so i can go over to his house. I should probably be working on my zine that's due out november 1st. we have a meeting tomorrow i'll tell you how it goes.

okay i'm done making you bored