iObsession
So yes. I neglected to write about the other news of my otherwise mundane life. The writing of this post is related to that news.
You see, I have now officially turned into one of those annoying bloggers who insist upon their posting to their blogs from their iPod touch / iPhone. I feel pained just trying to type into this tiny ads keyboard thing with two thumbs. Dammit Wordpress for iPhone, why don’t you have landscape mode???
This thing, although very cool is painful to type on because the virtual keys are so small. Or maybe I’m just not used to this yet. It is like a game this tapping of keys and making typing sounds. I am trying to practice typing by typing out this post entirely on my gadget thing.
Hallo, perhaps I will rest my poor thumbs now.
11.8.08Been awhile
It’s funny that my “creativity” seems to sap just around high stress periods at school, one of which I’ve just managed to endure. After a torrent of papers, papers, papers, extended papers, papers, orals, exams, exams, and stress I finally have time now to reflect on it all and look at the brighter side of life…especially since this is my first foray into the real world after a self-imposed isolation in which I saw no light but that of my computer monitor. I kid, I kid. I only did that once every 6 hours of each day for the past two months.
In the meantime, American author Tim O’Brien and British actress Julie Andrews’ birthdays have passed along with mine, Plath and Thomas’ birthdays have passed, and November is here. AND….THE ELECTION HAS PASSED AND I FAILED TO POST ABOUT IT.
ELECTION DAY RECAP
November 4th: Me=nervous, jumpy, excited.
November 4th, 8 pm: *Constantly refreshing the Election Map and anxiously hovering mouse over Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Florida, and Indiana. Screaming at ABCNEWS.com to update faster.*
November 4th, 10 pm: 207 to 134–DAFKLS? WHAT? 334 TO 135?
November 4th, 11 pm: Bleary-eyed, touched, joyous. *Index finger cramping after repeated clicking of refresh button*.
POST-ELECTION DAY RECAP
November 5th, 12 am: Still bleary-eyed, touched, joyous. *Unable to sleep*
November 5th, 10 am: *Feels hung over by election day excitabilities.*
POST-POST ELECTION DAY RECAP
November 6th-Now: *Wonders why she feels so empty, and then realizes that throughout the entire year she has read nothing but election news in the media.*
09.27.08A bad day that turned good
Yesterday, this thing we call Life seemed to suck for about the first 6 hours of my day. Then it changed.
After a terrible morning, the mood of the day began to change after 11 am. I thought the entire day would be terrible, and that instead of going out with friends as I’d planned after school I would be at home sleeping or sulking. I’d been overwhelmed with a lot of issues, and of course, I was attempting to function on three hours of sleep. It’s amazing how a few hours of sleep begins to change the way I perceive the world.
But bad days are never truly bad for all 24 hours. My day ended on a good note.
I’ve decided that I will never call a whole day bad, because only a fraction of the day can be considered “bad”. Often it is our own malformed perceptions that define the mood of the day. A few bad experiences can taint the mood of an entire day, but only if we let those experiences do so.
Where I have been
I disappeared momentarily from the web because this site quite unexpectedly received a server move. I was, meanwhile, in the process of moving to another apartment, hence the lack of updates.
So what else is there to say?
The academic year has commenced in an unpleasant fashion, but I shall expound upon that later.
I’d like some overpriced biscotti with my overpriced coffee, please
Where I live, you cannot escape them. They have overtaken possibly every corner of my neighborhood. For some this is a mark of pride; the presence of these places is a status symbol. When they arrive in your neighborhood, it is a sign that your neighborhood matters. Or at least, that is what some will have you believe.
I am sure that you have heard of such a place and may even frequent them. They are characterized by their cosy interiors, background jazz music, green colour schemes, and most of all, their overpriced coffee/tea/snacks/sandwiches. Why spend $1 for a brownie at the convenience store when you can spend $3.50 extra on it at that certain hangout of a stereotypical, upper-middle class urbanite?
Fascinating how I continue to insist upon buying items from these Overpriced Coffee Stations. I really taste no difference between their Fancy French Coffee and their Fancy Italian-French-Colombian-Pumpkin-Crap-Grapes-Potato-Caramel coffee Iced special drink with the exotic-sounding name. And yet, I continue to splurge on what I can make on my own at home for about $4.50 less.
In addition to my overpriced coffee, I am of course obliged to spend another $3.00 on some biscotti. But then, I am hungry. The pseudo-healthy sandwich at $6.95 sounds pretty good. Here, cashier/person working behind the counter with the fancy name; that’s my wallet. Might as well as you’ve just made me broke. No, no, really. Just take my wallet!
08.12.08Attempting to be Satirical
I live in a part of Some Big American City That’s Not NYC or LA in which the predominant demographic is the Affluent, Liberal, Young/Hip, Well-Educated, Animal-Loving, Vegetarian (or maybe even Vegan), Therapy-attending, Hybrid car-driving, Public Radio-listening “type”; you know, the ones who keep vaguely anonymous blogs in the attempt to show off their writing prowess while maintaining a sense of irony because of the fact that they write about themselves in the driest humour possible. Some may know this demographic as the Stereotypical Upper Middle Class Urbanite (or SUMCU for short).
My efforts to combat my transition into the class of the SUMCU have ultimately been futile. You see, I am attempting to be witty and ironic at the same time by showing how much of a conformist I really am by attempting to not conform to certain stereotypes. I will attempt, multiple times throughout this post, to detach myself from the SUMCU by referring to them as “They” in spite of the fact that I am fully aware that I, too, am a SUMCU.
Like the SUMCU, I am politically liberal, young/hip, an animal-lover, a Public Radio listener, haughty without realizing it, and I’m just awesome. Never mind the fact that I am not even in college yet. But I will be, and like all SUMCUs I will attend a college that is the Harvard-Princeton-Yale-Brown-Cornell-Columbia of my region. Oh sorry, I meant, they are politically liberal, young/hip, animal loving, Public Radio listening, vegetarian or vegan, environmentally conscious, socially aware, protest-leading, organic grocery store-shopping people who make friends with people of other ethnicities so they will be guaranteed to be non-racists and have cool bumper stickers on their cars that say “GOBAMA” on them.
I post this in the hopes that my hifalutin, verbose, and grammatically incorrect attempts to satirise the society in which I live in will strike a nerve in equally intelligent, always ironic, witty, and completely stereotypical SUMCUs out there. Perhaps I will even dedicate an entire site to how SUMCUs live their lives, what they like, what they don’t like and call it “stuffstereotypicaluppermiddleclassurbanitelike.wordpress.com.” Or perhaps that is much too lengthy a name. The “stereotypicaluppermiddleclassurbanite” will be renamed to “white.”
Immediately, I balk at the renaming because I know for a fact that you do not have to be of a certain ethnicity to fall under the characteristics of the SUMCU. But I will do it anyway because gosh, it’s funny and edgy, and ironic, just like I want it to be. And possibly offensive, but that’s the entire point, right? Cuz it’s ironic.
But then I do a search on the internet and find that this practice of poking fun at one’s own “herd” (even though I am not actually white) has already been done. See the disappointment on my face. So instead I have elected to write a rambly, cryptic post such as this because the glory has been taken. Damn!
08.7.08The Secret Writers
I imagine that there are hordes of people around the world who fancy themselves to be writers, but are not open about it for various reasons. They write in secret, perhaps out of embarassment, self-criticism, modesty, or even quite possibly oppression. Never once have their stories, their written words, been met by outside eyes (or at least, that is their preference).
For some of these secret writers, it is a therapeutic exercise to express the deepest stirrings of the heart, the prejudices of the mind to a private audience. But is it enough? Is it enough to confide one’s darkest emotions to an unresponsive audience, a journal or a diary? Maybe there are some things best kept to ourselves…
There may be writers as well who write in secret because they do not believe their creations shall ever be worthy of being read by a more public audience. Their worst obstacles are not rejection slips from publishers, but instead are the discouraging voices of their own mind, pushing them into surrender.
It is tragic to think how some of the greatest stories may never be told because of one terrible phrase: “You can’t do it!”
Then there are those for whom writing is a possible career, and while these people do have their work out in the open, they hide behind fabricated identities. There are many such secret writers existing on the internet, showcasing their works from the veil of perceived anonymity. But why do they hide? What is there to hide?
Among the secret writers of the world, those whose lives are hardest are the unfortunate ones who live under the tyrannical threat of oppression. They write in secret because the discovery of their works is to entail ostracisation, severe punishment, or perhaps even death. But they write even at the behest of their superiors to stop, though they conceal as much as possible their written expressions.
What will happen to these stories, the words of which may never be contemplated upon by outsiders?
Who are the Secret Writers in our own lives?
Struggling to…
Fish out topics for blogging, Ally decides to improvise and instead write about herself in the third person narrative. She has a pulled a crazy once again! EXCLAMATION POINTS AND ALL CAPS!!!
An excerpt from the About page
There are times when she switches to the third person narrative style. In such moments, the extent of Ally’s lack of sanity is most apparent, and you, dearest Web Person, should run, run away as fast as possible.
[When I warned you of the possible damage incurred upon your mental health as a result of reading this blog, I was serious.]
She really must lay off the modernist novels for a bit, but as with all habits ending them is a torturous journey in itself.
Amid the imminent storm of due dates for university applications, she is a rock, steady and strong at the face of disaster. She will tremble a bit in the wind of her friends’ anxieties, but nothing will topple her over. Except perhaps the most important paper of her academic life, which is, incidentally, due in just a few weeks. Oh anxieties!
Ally has had too much caffeine intake today, and that is evident by the lack of coherence in this blog post. There is really no point or order to such a post, it is all just filler. But she continues to write it anyway because she is too hyped up on carbohydrates, which are macromolecules that are digested faster than lipids.
“LIGHTNING!KABOOM!KABOOOOOOM!LIGHTNING!TREEFALLS!
REALLYREALLYLOUDKABOOMAGAINTHATSCAREDTHECRAPOUTOFME!!” <–What caused Ally to be extremely sleep deprived last night.
And this, children, is why you should not mix extreme sleep deprivation with excessive caffeine intake.
And severe thunderstorms suck.
08.1.08Respect for the Dead
Note: Don’t read on if you’re squemish.
07.26.08My Music Library on Shuffle
While I’d love to write about profound, thought-provoking subjects like the meaning of life, fate vs. free will, politics, social issues almost everytime I’m given the opportunity to publish something, I like to segway into the most random topics swimming around in my brain fluids. Today, the topic that has been fished out of my chaotic cognitions is the eclectic nature of my music library.
When people try to pigeon-hole me into certain music-based subcultures, I react mainly with amusement because I don’t stick to one genre/style of music, or even one band or artist (and that rarely happens). (Well there is that whole show tunes thing; I have a lot of cast recordings of musicals. Lulz.)
Going through my music library is like travelling through time; you will be greeted at first by modern music, and then you’ll be whisked away to another era, often one with completely different characteristics than the previous. Either that or you’ll find yourself in a tragic, depressing musical in one turn and then be forced to dance in an upbeat musical set in the 60s.
An example list of songs played when I put my music player on shuffle:
- Jesus Christ Superstar Theme(!)
- P.S. I Love You-The Hilltoppers
- Isolate-Bender
- Suitcase Song-Nellie McKay
- Red and Black [Les Miserables]-Original London Cast
- The Unforgettable Fire-U2
- My Moon, My Man-Feist
- What is This Thing Called Love-Laksar Reese Quintet
- The Face of Voldemort-John Williams
- La Vie en Rose-Edith Piaf
Mind you, that’s merely a sampling of my music tastes. I just hope my taste in men doesn’t turn out to be quite as eclectic.
So what the hell does my music library say about me, anyway? If people were categorised mainly by their music tastes, society would have trouble putting me in a category. And yet, that is exactly what we do; we categorise people based on some pretty silly characteristics. 
A very silly generalisation to makeAh yes! You have an abundance of black garments in your wardrobe. You listen to depressing music. You were diagnosed with clinical depression at some point in your life. You must be emo!
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