he who hears not the music thinks the dancer mad

Day 23 - Give pictures of 5 guys who are famous who you find attractive.

ugh, really? this is gonna take a while...


(in no particular order)
1. layne staley. yes i'm aware of the resemblance to my husband. while i won't lie and say that had nothing to do with why i was so attracted to him in high school, i will say that wasn't the only reason...





2. crispin glover. if you don't get it, you never will.





3. michael pitt. bears a slight resemblance to my husband in this pic. i guess what i'm trying to say is that i find my husband incredibly attractive...





4. david krumholtz. no explanation on this one, he's just amazingly fun to look at.





5. and my first celebrity crush ever - mike ness

Day 21 - One of your favorite shows.

i'm going to be sad when this is over. imma have to find a new one to keep me writing.

favorite show... right now i'm really into the early episodes of anthony bordain's no reservations. i know that might sound weird, a food show on the travel channel, but bear with me.

the shows are not only about the food of people all over the nation and the world, but culture, traditions and history. strange things you never think of, like how some places its impolite to make eye contact, or in some places its customary for royalty to cook for you themselves when visiting them as an honored guest. the commentary is pretty funny too. lets just say tony didn't go to any etiquette training. you can tell he truly loves doing this, and sometimes i've found myself welling up when he gets all retrospective about where he is. the first beruit show had me really awed. the second one was really cool because you got to see how they bounced back from all of that in a matter of 3 or 4 years. i think it was thailand that was another one that really got me. i'm seeing that the later shows seem to loose the raw quality and he spends a lot of time in fancy restaurants, but i might have just watched shitty ones. i really hope it doesn't lose the honesty it had early on, its really made me want to be more world-aware.

plus you get to see him eat brains, dong and balls, which the teenager in me finds endlessly amusing. there's one that he's in namibia that the food was particularly amusing, but i won't ruin it for those of you that want to watch it on your own. suffice it to say, it was quite interesting.

Day 19 - Disrespecting your parents.

i feel like everyone has disrespected their parents in some form or another be it consciously or not. in my teen years, i disrespected pretty much everyone in some way. i was angry, awkward and depressed, what do you expect? even still, i don't remember actually outwardly being disrespectful to my mom amidst the books flying at my head, fists of fury and full beer can black eyes. i do remember hitting her back once, and i dropped the broad. probably not one of my most sparkling moments, and to this day i feel really bad about it knowing what addict behaviour is, and that the person hitting me wasn't really her. I go through phases where i'm incredibly spiteful of her for many things, mostly being too selfish to raise a child and keeping me from my father, but the older i get the more i see a scared little woman with social anxiety that would make any of you look like social butterflies (even you two, back_in_blackand shadowsound. oh and you guys should totally hook up because i think you'd get along famously. just putting it out there). the more i learn about the psychology of addicts, and the psychology of people in society, the more i understand her decisions. not condone, but understand. recently she's reached out to me in a "what about me? do you still like me?" kind of way, and she is so awkward around me. i feel i've got enough social anxiety and know enough people with massive scale social anxiety that i try to facilitate the conversations to keep her comfortable. i know i've spouted off many times about how much i hate her, but the truth is - i don't. i feel sorry for her, and not in that condescending way, but in that "i want to be there for her" way. she recently got an eyeful of what has become of my dad, and i think she was humbled. she actually teared up when she watched justin help him up some stairs to use the bathroom at my nephew's birthday party, and this was before he was 100% wheelchair bound. the dad thing is why i have held such a grudge against her for so long, and i think she sees why now.

wow, totally off topic.

it seems to me that our generation was the last generation with any respect for our parents. i hear shit out of kids mouths these days that would have gotten me smacked into next week. seriously, you'd come over looking for me and my mom would be all like "you'll have to come back next friday where her smart ass got put." and you'd be all like oO. it seems that children are increasingly running households, and that ain't right. parents are afraid to discipline their children for fear of repercussions, but it has created a generation of self-important fucktards that have no respect for elders or authority. like holding doors open for people, or saying sir and ma'am. that shit is dead with the younger generations. i'm sure there's exceptions, but not many.

me personally, i've learned a certain amount of respect for my parents, like not talking over them, not yelling at them, yanno, the basics. especially my father, as he's been disrespected his whole life, he deserves a little goddamn common decency. its sad that being treated like a human confuses him so much because he's been treated like a monster or a wallet all these years. and now that he's not got many years left, he just fucking deserves better.

Day 17 - Your highs and lows of this past year.

oh man... where to start...

( tl;dr )

Day 15 - Your favorite tumblrs.

wow, the halfway mark! well, to be quite honest, i had to do a google search to find out what a tumblr was. from what i can gather, its kind of like twitter and basically aimed at cell phones and things of the like. obviously i don't follow any or i'd have known what the hell it is, but here's some things i *do* follow:

* rahm emanuel's fake twitter page. it's just too fucking funny to *not* follow. plus, you gotta have respect for a guy who yelled "don't fuck this up" in tony blair's face, even if it *is* a fake blog.

* the consumerist. what can i say, old retail habits die hard.

* weebl's stuff. i shouldn't even have to explain. if you've hung around me for any large amount of time, you'd know my sense of humor makes absolutely no sense. i mean, who laughs uncontrollably at cows? (side note: today we found that i have the same reaction to camels...)

* the international edition of cnn. mostly because, yanno, its good to know whats going on in the world.

* paul ekman's site. he's a pretty interesting guy, a bit full of himself though. definitely a rock star in the behavioral science community.

* social psychology news on science daily. yeah, i'm *that* big of a nerd.


those are just my regular haunts, i have quite a few i check in on periodically, but i felt that might be a bit too much linkage and an information overload.

Day 13 - Somewhere you’d like to move or visit.

i don't really know. lately i've just wanted to leave. i'm becoming more and more disgusted by the american sense of entitlement, the "gimmie gimmie" mentality and the firm belief that you're right no matter what, and you'll fight to the death to back your belief (even if proven completely wrong). i'm not saying there aren't good people here, they're just hideously outnumbered.

i guess given the option, i'd want to go someplace anthropologically interesting, something completely out of my social realm (and not in the autistic way). justin and i have been watching anthony bourdain's "no reservations" because he is a confessed food addict and i really have no opinion as to what we watch for the most part. while justin is oooing and aaaahing at the food, i've actually been really amazed and interested in the cultural aspects of the show. we watched one last night where tony went to malaysia and had to hike up a mountain to a small village. he did this because he didn't want to see the commercial/tourist side of things, but the actual people and culture. when he got to the village it was customary that the visitor to the tribe had to slaughter the pig for their feast by running it through with a spear. while this was really disturbing (they didn't show it, but you heard it), i thought it enunciated the cultural aspect of the show and i found that endlessly interesting. there was also an episode where he was in beirut in july 2006. if you recall, this is when hezbollah took two israeli soldiers hostage and killed 3 more sparking one hell of a firestorm. just before this happened, he was walking down the street with his guide who's talking about how lebanon was in a sort of renaissance and so full of life. then, almost like it was planned, hezbollah supporters begin to flood down the street out of seemingly nowhere, screaming and cheering about the capture of the israeli soldiers. tony turns to the guide at some point afterward and his face had totally dropped, then he said that he knew war was coming next. i can't imagine living like that, knowing that at any given moment war could break out in my country, and the rest of the episode isn't so much about food, but about the shocked point of view of tony and his staff after israel bombs the airport, leaving anyone who was a visitor stranded.

its not that i want to experience a war-torn nation or crippling poverty looking for a novel experience to write home about, i just feel that we as americans are culturally deprived. we're so busy with our McThis and microsoft that, i feel that we lost sight of what is important in life. we're so busy getting into petty political arguments and filibustering whatever we don't agree with because we MUST win, that we've lost sight of the fact that its a pretty awesome thing that we're even allowed to do so. that we can sleep at night knowing we won't be awaken by air raid sirens, or that our nation isn't constantly teetering on the brink of invasion - hell - even having clean, running water are all things that i think are taken for granted. i guess what this all boils down to is that wherever i visit, wherever my travels hypothetically take me, i'd want to construct a more accurate world view, and understand life from a completely abstract (comparatively) viewpoint.

but i'm also on 3 hours sleep, so who knows.

Day 11 - Put your music player on shuffle and write 10 songs that pop up.

finally, one that doesn't tear my soul out to write. i'm still kind of reeling from that last one...

1. acidbath - bleed me an ocean
2. jill tracy - just the other side of pain
3. terrorfakt - A.L.F.
4. babes in toyland - he's my thing
5. dean martin - ain't that a kick in the head
6. nick cave and the bad seeds (featuring kylie minogue) - where the wild roses grow
7. szeki kurva - sylvanian families
8. U2 - original of the species
9. deadboy and the elephantmen - blood music
10. cubanate - body burn

Day 08 - A moment you felt the most satisfied with your life.

i don't think i've ever felt totally satisfied with my life. i always think "i could be doing better..." its a curse and a driving force at the same time. a curse because it sucks to think you could always be doing better, but a driving force because you *want* to do better. i feel like i'm always looking toward that next step, i can't be happy just staying complacent and floating along, i've always got to be pushing forward to something. there's always the next level, and until i reach it, i won't be satisfied. and when i do reach it, the satisfaction is fleeting at best because i'm already strategically plotting my next plan of attack. the wheels are always turning i guess. maybe that's what satisfies me? constantly moving forward?

meh, i don't really have a lot to say on this one...

Day 04 - Your views on religion.

my mother once told me that religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell, and spirituality is for those of us who have been there. i see the point in that, that being introspective as far as the meaning of life is more of an acquired skill than just blindly following what you're told. religion is something that personally frightens me. and i don't mean "oooh, look how cool and anti-establishment i am! fuck religion! hail satan!!" kind of fright, but panic attack when i thought i had to go to church kind of frightened.

early on, my mother was really cool about religion. she's pagan, but she wanted me to learn as much as i could about every religion so that i could make an informed decision as to which way to go. seeing how i was reading shakespeare in the third grade, the bible wasn't a far stretch for me. what was strange to me was that people dedicate their lives to these fables, and some of the things i read were so bigoted and arcane that i couldn't believe anyone with any intellect would believe this nonsense, let alone live their lives around it, word for word. i should probably take this moment to remind my faithful readers of my asperger's and uber literal sense of the world growing up.

i always found myself far more fascinated by things that could be proven, tangible evidence of life. when i was probably about 4 or 5 my dad started teaching me about chemistry. he explained to me what an atom was, said that they're like little solar systems that make up everything in the world. that night he found me huddled up in my room bawling my eyes out. when he asked me what was wrong, i apparently told him that i was scared we were all going to die. if everything in our world was made up of tiny solar systems, what's to say our solar system isn't an atom in a giant's toenail? if he clips it we'll all die! so yeah, having an existential crisis at 4 or 5 years old (you should have seen when he taught me about heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the observer effect... i was afraid to move or look at anything for about a week).

things like that seem quite a bit more plausible to me than some entity like in revelations. i'm not too sure i'd be down with a god who's got a sword coming out of his mouth...

i mean, i'd like to believe there's a higher power, some driving force behind us all, but i just cannot force myself to believe this. i've gone rounds with people over this and have learned its better to just not say anything and let them live on their happy cloud. i don't believe in a soul, i don't believe in ghosts, i don't believe that god has a plan for us all. i feel like its all just justification for shitty things that happen, an external locus of control, and that's fine for people who want to live that way. i prefer to take a more realistic approach. instead of "oh, i have AS and will probably die before most of the people i know, but that's just god's way of telling me i need to buckle down and get stuff done while i still can!" i'm more of a "i have AS because of shitty genetics and rampant autoimmune disorders in my family on both sides. whooptie shit. now where's my beer?" i guess i just take more comfort in knowing the real and logical explanations instead of the convoluted fairy tales that build up religion.

but you know, for those who are into it, its comforting, and i'm cool with that. its like a security blanket, and i totally respect that. if someone is really and truly convinced that god has a plan for them, then keep on believing that, especially if its saving you from crippling depression or something similarly difficult. sometimes i wish that i could be like that, but then my mind kicks in and i analyze and tear apart everything until i get an explanation. its exhausting, depressing and sometimes i wish i could just turn it off. but i have this pet peeve about half-assing things, so saying "oh, i didn't get the job because god has other plans" makes me want to rip my eyeballs out and feed them to badgers.

Day 02 - Where you’d like to be in 10 years.

finished with school finally? i'd like to be a giant step down my chosen career path instead of one i was forced into out of necessity. i started working at CVS as a cashier because it was the only place that would hire me so close to christmas, and i was forced to stay there because it seemed that i had to support people who couldn't or wouldn't pay their share of things. at one point i was offered a fellowship in a schizophrenia research project at the cleveland clinic that could have padded my CV so nicely, but i had to turn it down because i had to support my household, and the fellowship only paid $7 an hour. it's a decision i have not stopped lamenting since. my boss at CVS was a terrific guy, and he made sure i advanced in this glamorous retail career of mine. i eventually dropped out of school because school wasn't paying the bills, and neither was my significant other or his 2 year old, so i found myself with a family to support and gave up any aspirations for something better. i just kept chugging up that corporate food chain.

then something happened.

with justin and i talking more frequently on a friendship level when he moved back from LA, he let me vent about this, and it was the first time i had talked about it to ANYONE. joey was a good guy, and he had enough pain with the passing of his father, so i didn't want to lay it all down on him. and nik was 2 years old... probably not going to go out and get a job... i slowly realized that i had given up my dreams and goals for a relationship i got nothing from, and i was quite spiteful. these are the mechanics that ended that relationship, just one of the many aspects i realized through finally being able to talk about it all. eventually i took a management position at gamestop and ended up with the worst boss i had ever had in all my years of employment. justin's salary allowed me to quit and relax for the first time since... jeeze, lakewood (though i wouldn't call recovering from a psychotic break "relaxing")? it was during this time that justin helped me figure out what i really wanted to do since i'd lost sight of it. he would ask me questions like "well, what makes you happy? what can you see yourself doing the rest of your life?" and it was at this point a plan began to form.

when his grandmother died, she left money for me to pay off what i owed kent state so i could finish my undergrad. education was incredibly important to her, especially since she hadn't gotten one. she was really into female empowerment, and that no woman should have to rely on a man, even if that man was her grandson. she also had faith in me, always marveled at how "smart" i was and lamented that i was wasting it in retail. i learned about what it would take to pursue a career in behavior analysis in certain law enforcement circles and now... 2 semesters of 4.0 later (well, this past semester is a guess, but 3 out of 5 classes are A's so the odds are good) i'm on my way. i took a practice LSAT (the law school admissions test) and got a 178. the most you can get is 180. i'm thinking my chances are pretty good.

its not that i want to see blood and gore and unspeakable acts of violence, its that i feel i have the skills to throw these depraved people in prison, or to get them the help they needed that they wouldn't have gotten without intervention. and yanno, if i fail at getting that far, i'll still be a lawyer, and that's one hell of a fall back. i plan on pursuing corporate and criminal law. each of which will have a future unless we're invaded by another country and all the laws are changed. then i'll be fucked, lol.

so i guess in 10 years, i picture myself as a law enforcement agent catching and putting away the worst of the bad guys (which is the goal). if not, i picture myself practicing law, either in the criminal or corporate sector, and hopefully making enough money that justin can relax the way his success in his career allowed me to in order to get my head on strait. either way i want to continue my education in social psychology once i've established a way of paying for it. i've been incredibly fascinated by this field and love the fact that it explains things about people that my asperger's has blocked me from comprehending naturally.

i would just rather have a career that is both lucrative and fulfilling, not misery driven like retail was. in retail, customers see you as their bitch. they say and do things to you they'd NEVER say and do to anyone else. one that sticks out in my mind in particular is a girl SCREAMING at the top of her lungs at me: "I'M not happy, what are YOU going to do to MAKE me happy?!" you know what she was pissed about? i dunno if you've ever seen those "sliding robots" on the as seen on TV circuit (they're little things you put under furniture to make it easier to move), but they were advertised as being on sale, and we were sold out. the store not even 7 miles down the road had them, and she refused to drive there because she came to MY store, and was demanding she get what she came for. the saddest part? she couldn't have been more than 20 years old... i understand that any time you put yourself in a position of service you run the risk of being someone's bitch, but that was just degrading because i couldn't punch the twat in the mouth.