My Epidemic

One of the main reasons I'm a Religion major is due to the fact that I brutally lost my own faith during the one time in my life I needed it the most. I don't usually tell the story to strangers, or friends for that matter, but every once in awhile I'll find myself reciting the whole bloody story like I had absolutely no choice but to do so.
A week ago I had my first Senior Seminar class. We were discussing topics for grad papers and all that when the teacher ordered us to jump up, announce our names, main area of interest and what propelled us into our fields. I listened to everyone's half-ass, "Yeah, and then I just sort of ended up here and now I'll graduate blah blah blah," and when it was my turn I found myself sharing the fact that my brother's deaths had more to do with my educational decisions than I'd care to acknowledge most days.
Suprisingly, I almost cried. I don't usually tear up when talking about it. It's been 5 years and I'm able to relive the details of that night and the ones that followed without breaking down or screaming, but the progress was hard won. But through the whole shitty ordeal my faith lingured some how. It hung on my a string until a pastor came to me while I paced the hall outside my brother's hospital room and told me that they were burning in hell. All of them. My brothers, my buddhist grandmother. They were suffering eternally. My faith snapped and so did I. The pastor was lucky I recognized his face was not the one that had stabbed my brother.
Today, in the same class, I noticed a girl obviously waiting for someone at the door as I got up to leave. She was waiting for me. I'd had her in other classes before and thought of her as one of the few that actually knew what the hell she was talking about and therefore was even more curious when she held the door open for me and followed me out.
"Can I ask you a question?"
I smiled at her, "Sure."
"You're the one that lost your brothers, right?"
"Yeah." My smile deflated.
"Can I ask when it stops hurting?"
I stopped. "You lost someone?"
She nodded but wouldn't meet my eyes. "My brother. Two years now."
We started to walk again and now I couldn't meet her eyes either. "It doesn't. They say it does but it really doesn't."
She nodded again as if she already knew that. "I thought so."
"I mean it took me 3-years just to be able to deal with it and still even now I find myself dealing with bouts of depression."
She nodded still but managed to meet my eyes. "I was hoping it just wasn't me."
"No. It's not. It's been 5 years and I sometimes can't get out of bed. If it weren't for my nephew I don't know what'd I do."
She nodded some more. "Thanks. I apologize for what the pastor said to you. My father is a pastor and he's not like that. Some of us aren't like that."
"I know. People are people."
"Good. I just wanted you to know."
"Okay."
"Thanks."
"You too."

Labels: Scholarly Articles of Interest

Today was officially my last Women of Islam class. Hooray! No more Vagina Monger!
Here's basically how it all went:

Prof: "Jess, what did you take from the class?"
Me: "This is my first women's studies class...(yadayadayada) I've learned that the path to feminine sovereignty isn't always linear...(blahblahblah insert something ruthlessly intelligent) and we can't color global struggles for feminism with our own experiences of bias." Tadah!
Prof: "Very, very good point. What about you, Vagina Monger? What have you learned?"
Vagina Monger: "Well, I've learned that Islam is pretty."
Crickets.
Vagina Monger: "Just so...pretty."
Crickets slit their own wrists.
Professor clears his throat. "Well! I'd just like to say that I have enjoyed you all." (By which I'm sure he meant, "I hate you Vagina Monger. Hate you like the plague.")
The End.

Labels: Scholarly Articles of Interest

Yes. I'm taking a quick break from typing up notes for my crazy huge final tomorrow, to bitch.

I just checked my school email account and found that a teacher from a class I'm registered for next semester just sent out our reading list. Yes. Our reading list for fucking January in the middle of fucking finals. I hate her already. What a crazy, psycho bitch! Urgh!

AND (Yes. There's more.) she has chosen to break from the recent literary tradition and assign less than 13 books. Practically a saint! (Though technically she's not dead in keeping with the Catholic faith...hmmm) I have only to buy 12 books this semester for my 1 English class. 12 to 1. (Never good odds...unless of course we're talking twelve muscle-bound kilted men dancing in an erotic fashion around me. The 1 chick. With 1 pretty paper umbrella in my 1 fruity drink. Yeah. See how that works out. Now those are some good odds. But unfortunetly has absolutely nothing to do with my 20th century english novel class....but I can dream...yeah....anyway) Fucking bitch!

School blows. Hard.

Labels: Scholarly Articles of Interest

I just realized that my little gnome of a professor, the one I've literally been calling "THE GNOME!" His first name is David! (Pause for dramatic effect.) Get it? David the Gnome! Oh the irony!

Labels: Completely Unrelated Rantings, Scholarly Articles of Interest

My little gnome professor narrated the story of Genesis the other day. It cracked me up. Considering it wasn't a religion class and we were discussing Christian tradition, I was basically the only person who knew the story as well as the Prof. So here was our discussion.

P: "So God created the earth and..." (He paused)
M: "And he saw that it was good."
P: "Then he created man and when he saw that Adam was alone he..." (Pause)
M: "Saw that it was not good."
P: "So what did he do next?"
Someother student: "He made Eve?"
P: "Nope."
M: "He made beasts for Adam."
P: "Good! And when he marched his menagerie of beasts in front of Adam, the man named and appreciated the animals but was still not happy. Adam was all like, 'Yeah, that's cool and all, I like the giraffe, but I'm not really into fleas...got anything else?' And God said, 'Seriously? Not even the elephant? You're not into that? A little extra cushion for the pushin'?' And Adam shook his head at God until the great Lord created Eve from the rib of his greatest creation!" He finished with a great flourish of his hands.
M: "Bwah?"
Someother student: "Did he just imply that God likes fat chicks?"
M: "Bwah?!"

There were no words for the expression on my face at that moment.

Labels: Scholarly Articles of Interest

There's this chick in my class. I can't stand her. Seriously. She's one of those people who make you want to do one of three things:

1. Punch her in the fucking vagina.

2. Shove pointy objects into your ears until you can't hear anymore. (Which just leaves you staring at her.)

or

3. Paying a dark, international mercenary to abduct her in the night and sell her to some burly eskimos to gut fish for the rest of her life in fucking Antartica.

Yes, friends. She is one of those people. It's probably her "quirky attitude" that gets to me. Or her overall perkiness no matter the day, time or situation. No. Wait, I know why I can't stand the girl. She won't fucking shut her mouth. Ever. Her jaw is continually flapping no matter if someone is listening or not.

This is my 2nd class with the girl and she's managed to talk over the Prof both times. The first class was fortunetly a music class I didn't really care for and so I skipped. Actually I think I went to it three times for three tests. Ta dah! A's all around.

But this class is all discussion and everything that comes out of her mouth has some weird catch phrase. It's not as it she's some perky blond. I'm immune to them having grown up in Omaha, but this one...no...I could never get used to her.

She's a hippie. Now, I'm not Cartman. I don't hate all hippies. But this one. This one I hate.

She's always wearing some knit scarf that looks like she pulled it out of the garbage and drinking coffee out of a little foam cup, arguing about women's rights and quoting alternative music. Normally, I'd have no problem with these things. (I'm all for women's rights but Femi-Nazi's like her make me want to take away their Vagina-Cards.)

Plus. Plus! She never shuts up! (I said this already didn't I...) The second week of class I was sucessfully tuning her out when she suddenly jumped up, marched to the front of the class and demanded that our 70-year-old Santa-looking Prof give her a high-five. He just sort of stared at her for a few moments as she kept repeating, "Don't leave me hangin'. Don't leave me hangin'." And then eventually gave her what she so desperately wanted, the attention of the entire class.

Then the other day we were discussing the sovereign rights of women in Islam and whether they should veil or not veil, when someone said, "If it's hot they should be allowed to take off whatever they need to." (Not the brightest point of the discussion but whatever.) When she started singing, "It's gettin' hot in here. So take off all your clothes." Then she did this little shimmy. ...ahem... And then I fought back the vomit.

Never mind that the chick was wearing a shirt that said, "Would Jesus use nuclear weapons?" (That was enough to irritate me) but she was singing Nelly and gyrating in her chair. The whole class again paused momentarily to stare slack-jawed at her.

Today, wasn't so bad. She only used her Razor phone to mock shave her face for a few minutes until she could rally up a forced laugh from her lackey. And then told some kid he should know what something costs because he's Jewish.

Right now...I'd say I'm leaning towards just hauling off and decking her in her vagina to teach her a lesson about being one of those women who need attention to validate themselves but are more than willing to offer advise to others on how to improve their lives.

Vagina punching. The next Olympic sport.

Stay tuned for more vagina-punching details!

Labels: All things Vagina, Scholarly Articles of Interest

1. While I was sitting next to EXTRA-Creepy-Guy in my Sociology class (You remember. The one with the pirate?) I was catching up on some reading for my next class. The text I'd been assigned was the memoirs of a Spanish Conquistador recalling his adventures in the Yucatan.

I was dutifully reading when suddenly EXTRA-Creepy-Guy turns around to me (For about the 5th time this class period. He's got this thing about turning in his seat and staring at me for minutes at a time. Up until now I've opted to just ignore him.) and says in a conversational tone while the entire class is completely silent, "You into torture?"

At this point every single student in the class turned and stared at us. My mouth was hanging open, which I'm sure only furthered my expression of complete horror as my eyes neraly popped out of my head.

"What," I gasped.

"You into torture? You're reading about it aren't you?"

I looked numbly down at the text in my lap. "Not really."

"Well that's what the Conquistadors did. Torture."

"Okay."

"So you into it?"

"No."

"Okay." And then he turned back around and resumed listening to the lecture.

The class had been collectively watching the entire episode play out and were now blinking at me as if waiting for some sort of encore. I had none to give. I blinked back. And eventually the class got back to that thing we were supposed to be doing in the first place...that learning thing or whatever.

2. A little after the Creepy-Guy episode, my pirate was lecturing on something about how we all have split personalities and become different people in different settings. He said, "We act different, speak different, dress different. I mean," he smiled that sexy roguish smile, "I don't dress like this on the weekends."

I distinctly remember being dissapointed. "What?!" My mind screamed, "You don't always dress like a pirate!" It was such a let down.

3. I'm not obsessing, I promise, but while I was wandering the mall between classes and relaying my Sociology adventures to Chris over the phone, I stumbled across a t-shirt that had a female pirate one it.

It said, "Aye, ye can have me booty..." I laughed outloud and immediately bought the shirt and walked out. It was only after I looked at it a little more closely that I realized there was more to the tshirt slogan. The unabridged version is this: "Aye, ye can have me booty....but don't be touchin' me cheese."

I have no idea what it means. And honestly, I don't care. It's got a hot chick pirate with the word booty on it. I'm wearing it to class on Tuesday.

Labels: Scholarly Articles of Interest

Stop me if you've heard this before but I am in love with my sociology teacher.

It all started the second day of school when I made the incredible mistake of letting Sam sit in on my class with me. The entire first half she sat quietly (a miracle in itself) with her eyebrows wrinkled in concentration, staring very seriously at my new professor. Not one to complain, because undoubtedly the view was great from where we were sitting, but it seemed very out of character for loud, obnoxious, absolutely no quiet voice at all, Sam.

Then suddenly the mysterious magic of the moment was ruined when she started to grin wildly. "Hey," she said in a normal conversation tone while the rest of the silent room was listening patiently to the usual 1st day of class schpiel. "Does he look like a pirate to you?"

Now, if it hasn't become obvious already, I've known Sam since the uterus and have learned to adapt to her complete lack of inner filter and respect for strangers. But even as I started apologizing to the shocked freshmen staring at us from every angle, I burst out laughing. Which only interupted the class further as even my sexy professor turned to give me an odd look.

Holy shit! He really did look like a pirate!

This is the part where I moonishly describe my hot pirate professor. Brace yourselves, people. He has long dark hair always swept back in a sort of loose ponytail at the nape of his neck. He has a sort of Johnny Depp look to him and is always wearing a close-fitting white Oxford thats roguishly unbuttoned at the neck and cuffs and has got this sort of cronic sexy 5 o'clock shadow going on. It's scruffy and so sexy and who wouldn't want to have a sociology professor that you could stare at for the rest of your life?!

So it's almost two weeks in and I can't stop imagining him in hot little pirate outfits during class. It's kind of disturbing but has made the whole subject of sociology vastly more entertaining. Tomorrow I've decided to move on to kilts. I'm going to completely ignore whatever gibberish he's lecturing on and sit contently picturing him shirtless and kilted. That is my entire agenda for class tomorrow. A good agenda if I do say so myself.

The BOSS says I should pull an Indiana Jones and write I love you on my eyelids before I go to class. While seriously considering going in for extra help in some area or another, I highly doubt I'll resort to this. Sam on the otherhand wants to leave a sexy message on his answering machine at school about pirates and their "sabers."

Either way, sociology has become my new favorite subject.

I may have to see what he'll accept for extra credit...

Labels: Scholarly Articles of Interest

Have I mentioned my parents are fucking crazy? They are. They're suffocatingly over-protective, which may stem from the fact that they both work for the very same Police Department I do. I'm like the fucking golden child down there. Everyone knows my parents. They remember when I was this tall. They remember when my mom got pregnant. They remember when my Dad oh-so-suavely walked up to her for the first time and asked if she was Filipino. (Which she isn't. She's Japanese for God's sake.) Everyone downtown knows everything about me, my parents, and everyone of my embarrassing toddler stories. So of course, my parent's manipulated my sort of twisted celebrity status to their advantage and have set up an elaborate network of spies to keep an eye on me. That’s how crazy protective they are.
Don't get me wrong. I love my parents. And I fully recognize that:
A.) I'm their only daughter.
B.) They can’t stand the thought of losing another child
C.) That having cops for parents is never an easy thing anyway
But what I don't understand is why my parents have to be fucking crazy on top of everything else! Shouldn’t the rest of the stuff be enough without my parents being clinically psychotic!
For example, I'm about to graduate with four years of a good full-ride scholarship under my belt. Granted, my degree isn't in what I'd initially planned, but I'm happy with it. It's not a boring bachelors in business where you can go right out and find a job, but it's something I enjoy and doesn't make me want to scratch my own eyes out just to get out of class. AND THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO PAY A FUCKING DIME FOR ME TO GET IT! That small fact seems to constantly elude them when they’re critiquing my life choices.
But for awhile now I’ve just felt this itch to run away. My odd degree gives me the chance to either continue my study with a well-known program here, or study abroad in programs not as well known. I would love to study abroad except for the fact that I just don’t want to study anymore. I’m sick of it. I’m over the whole college thing.
I love my friends and family more than anything but if I have to stay in this city with them for one more year, I’m going to hurt someone. I’m glad I stayed to get my degree but I’m slowly going crazy. And not like regular stir-crazy. Oh no. I’ve skipped that stage and jumped directly to the ax-wielding, "Here’s Johnny!" crazy-cabin-fever-mother-fucker stage.
So when I stumbled across some info about Work Exchanges for college students, a light bulb went on in my head. Hell yeah! I could go work in a restaurant or pub for a couple months while exploring the UK. That would be fantastic.
Of course when I ran this past my mother the first thing she said was, "I thought you were getting your Masters?"
"I was thinking about it but this is the first thing I’ve been really excited about in a long time."
"But it could be a gimmick. A scam."
"I realize that, I’d do all my homework but I think doing this could be so much fun. I’d get to explore without worrying about my grades."
"You need to speak to your father about this. I don’t think it’s a good idea. They could sell you into white slavery."
At that point I walked out. I was on the verge of throwing something or crying. I couldn’t decide which. For the first time in four years I really saw something I wanted. Something that looked exciting and fun. Something that I wasn’t completely ambivalent to.
I want this.
So now what to do about it…I could go of course without considering my family’s feelings on the topic, but frankly I’d pay for it as soon as I got back. They’d never let it go. That’s how our family works. Especially regarding their little girl.
On the other hand if I do end up going to get my Masters over seas, I’m not sure I’d have the will to actually follow through and finish. But if I stay here for another three years to get my Masters in the Midwest, I’d have wasted the opportunity. If I stayed I’d buy a house and get a full-time job while I finished school and never again be able to just pick up and go to another country for 6-months.
I’m at an impasse. But the truth is. I want this. And that’s all there is to it. I want this. Maybe if I keep repeating it they won’t be able to talk me out of it. I want this. White slavery be damned.

Labels: Scholarly Articles of Interest