The Guild

After much prodding I finally watched all of The Guild that's online so far. I recommend you do the same even if you're not into MMORPG type games because it's still pretty funnay. Admittedly the first couple of episodes (which are only like 7 minutes long) aren't that appealing but it gets better. Felicia Day writes/stars as Codex. She started the show after a few years of dealing with internet addiction.

Here's the promo they did for season three, which is catchy as all get out:



And if you want to start watching, here's the first episode.

Sleepy sleepy sleepy

The flu has been going around here and, while I don't feel like I have the flu, I am tired all the time. I have been for a week running now and it's getting old FAST. Time for 500% RDA doses of vitamin C.

I bought an epilator. In other news, MY LEGS ARE ON FIRE.

I also applied for a job as a medical office assistant at a pediatrician's office. Sent in the resume tonight-- I plan on calling tomorrow to see if they got it / see if they want me to come in for an interview. I am scared like WOAH. I really want this job and I think I'd be good at it so I'm going to be really upset if I don't get it. There aren't any other similar jobs around at the moment, either.

I haven't been taking pictures because I've mostly been in my dorm reading. The readings for my Pacific Island Cultures class are getting old FAST. The one that finally tipped me over to the "to hell with you and your damn islands" was the chapter mocking microloans and the efforts by nonprofits from Australia, America, and Japan to create jobs and industry by helping people start businesses. I don't just mean in Melanesia (where honestly it's not needed a lot of the time) but everywhere. Alright you ethnocentric rubes. Go throw your satire at Myanmar and see if they laugh.

Anyway, in place of photos here's a doll:



Yep.

Yeah right.

So I started doing these broad searches for schools with MPH programs, then narrowed that down by the type of program, academic standards etc. and narrowed my options down to just one. Are you ready for this? Because you might hurt yourself laughing.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

For the first time ever I am suddenly intensely remorseful for how much I have not given a crap about academics. I can't find any statistics as to what percentages of people are admitted to the program but I'm relatively sure it's somewhere between fat chance and no way.

Unfortunately now that I've looked at the Health in Crisis & Humanitarian Assistance concentration I can't settle for anything less in depth. Look at how specialized the course work is. Water and Sanitation Needs in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies, Assessing Epidemiologic Impact of Human Rights Violations, Ethics of Public Health Practice in Developing Countries, and my personal favorite, Issues in Maternal Mortality Reduction in Developing Countries. Compare that to U Penn's Global Health track and maybe you will understand why I've got my heart set on this now. Critical Appraisal of Occupational and Environmental Health Literature-- REALLY, GUYS? You're gonna make me live in West Philly and then make me read occupational and environmental health literature? Why don't you strap me to a damn rack while you're at it?

I'm going to go ahead and apply to see if I can't get in-- they require work experience so I couldn't apply for at least two years after graduation anyway, so I have a long time to think about this. Unfortunately that also puts me up against medical doctors and established health care workers, which is... Bad for me, to say the least. Wish me luck?

An open letter to locals

Not all locals. A very particular handful of locals that one of my friends has the misfortune of having to work with.

If someone moves to your hometown and brings a different culture with them and you get an attitude with them because they're too different and haven't already seamlessly assimilated into the Borg local scene, they're not the racist/xenophobic one. That title can fall squarely on your sheltered (and yet somehow still perfectly tanned) behind.

Furthermore, if you know someone here who moved from another country entirely and they say "wow things in America sure are different from back home," you have no right to get offended. I'm still not sure why you got offended, but somewhere between "YOU'RE PREJUDICED AGAINST OTHER CULTURES" and "AMERICAN CULTURE SUCKS HOW DARE YOU COMPARE US TO THEM" we surmised that this was projection of your own problems onto us.

So basically, you're racist and xenophobic. You hate my friend because she's different from you and you honestly believe that your inability to deal with her due to her being different makes her racist and xenophobic. You've never been to the mainland but you're entirely positive that the locals here are absolutely nothing like Americans on the mainland and should not be grouped in with them. At the same time you don't recognize me as being from the mainland because the culture I grew up in on the mainland is so similar to the one out here. You only recognize my friend as being different because she's actually from a different country altogether and isn't familiar with American culture or laws.

In summary: sit down and shut up, you clearly have no effing idea what you're talking about.

Where's my freaking medal

I want to get a BA in anthropology, an MPH with a focus on preventative medicine, and then I want to get hired by a nonprofit. I want them to ship me out to the Middle Of Freaking Nowhere, Asia-Pacific, where I want to work on sanitation and public health programs that will help prevent people from contracting diseases like hepatitis A and keep children from dying of preventable conditions like diarrhea. I want to make infant mortality and malnutrition drop off, and I want to be rid of illnesses like tuberculosis. I want to help make childbirth safe and sanitary so that no babies or mothers have to die because they didn't have access to clean facilities. I want to do this in areas that are hours away from hospitals, where political instability can prevent people from traveling for help. I don't care if the nonprofit I work for to have a freaking sign that says "NO VIOLENT INCIDENTS IN _________ WEEKS."

What I also want is to know why everyone seems to think this is a stupid idea. Everyone that's heard about this so far has tried to talk me out of it, not just because of the danger I may be in personally but because many of them seem to think that this is somehow unimportant. At least they've convinced me of one thing-- I can't do anything that could kill me because no one would take my place doing that kind of work if I died.

I want my pat on the back damn it :| Are there really so few people who think health is important? I can get botulism injected into my face to prevent wrinkles any day I feel like it but there are still places in the world where leprosy is a common problem-- Am I really the only one who finds that to be more than a little messed up?

In summary: Wah wah no one will tell me how awesome I am, I want a hamburger and french fries and a milkshake.

(If this was snarked on sf_drama the title of the post would be "Would someone give Blossom her freaking pony already?")

But then some days I'm stamping my nails and I suddenly realize, holy crap, I could go to beauty school and do nails for a living. Every day I could be going to work and painting nails and drilling acrylics and gluing on rhinestones. And it would be awesome. No really, how sweet would that be? Herp derp I'm going to work, gotta go paint some nails with pretty designs for six hours. You're essentially getting paid to doodle on people, and you get to sit the whole time. Sure you gotta touch some gnarly feet every once and a while, but that's not bad at all.

I guess there's no demand for professional nail technicians in impoverished rural areas, but maybe I could start my own nonprofit using my Konad kit. Save the Nails? Stamps for Subalterns? Poverty Pedicures? Hey leprosy survivors! You've only got seven fingers left, you better make the best of it! Your family's not going to take you back with dry cuticles!

Wait. That's not funny.

Oh Facebook

I love you. You make these things possible. And you make it so easy to stalk spy on snoop about meet new people on campus.

In other news, cover your internet tracks people. You might not want everyone to see photos of you in your underwear playing a snare drum. I didn't want to see photos of you in your underwear playing the snare drum. But now I have. Thanks a lot.

Philosophy

Dear Internets,

Today in class I referred to the Platonic form of a chair as a "knee-bending, ass-resting thing" in a discussion about realism and nominalism.

That is all.

OF ALL TIME

I suggest checking out Under Arcturus through this nifty lens.

In case of emergency...

... You better hope I like you! :D

Because I am, as they so delightfully phrased it in The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, a disasterist. I am determined to learn things that will allow me to function in case of a city/state/country-wide disaster and potentially be self-sufficient thereafter. I can build fires, build shelters, forage for food, and help treat injuries, and so on. I intend to be able to field dress game, drive 18-wheeler trucks and boats, repair necessary electronics, etc.

Why?

Because if anything crazy happens you're really going to wish you knew how to do a lot of things you don't know now. I'm not gonna say that I'm planning on a zombie apocalypse or anything, but I am gonna say that if that ever happens I am going to rock because I am scrappy lady. I will ninja in your damn window armed with a fire poker and a really heavy lamp base and be like COME ON THE BUS IS WAITING and then you will pile in with the other survivors and then I will drive you all to a heavily fortified hiding place up in the mountains. THIS IS THE APOCALYPSE OF MY DREAMS, GUYS. I'm not gonna say I want a zombie apocalypse, I'm just saying that if there was a zombie apocalypse I wouldn't be all that upset.

Of course it might not turn out that way, but this is my fantasy world and I choose to believe that I will be a badass. So there.

Fun fact: While looking for that comic in the archive, I ctrl+f-ed for "side" and when I found "The Tasty Side" as the name of a comic I knew that must be it. looool forever.

Since there will never be a zombie apocalypse (QUESTION MARK) I guess I will just learn that stuff to be a bigger badass in the real (read: boring) world. Although actually that may all come in handy if I really do decide to go to some insane place to do public health (I'm looking at yoooou Myanmar) or in the entirely likely event of World War III. And it would definitely be handy in case of a natural disaster like a hurricane or earthquake.

Now you all think I'm insane, I'm sure, but I'm really just an ESFJ. Or, more appropriately for this scenario, an ENTJ. I tend to get one or the other when tested depending on how excited I am about a zombie apocalypse. I guess I'm walking the line somewhere between "Do you folks want some homemade cookies?" and "TUCK IN THAT SHIRT, SOLDIER."


P.S.
There's still hope!
A small warning about A Softer World: Most of the comics are either funny or just plainly poignant, but some of them can be downright upsetting. Each one tells a whole story and sometimes those stories are very dark. It may not always be for the faint of heart. Just a note.

Stuff White People Like

Okay, I have a proposal for two additions to the list of Stuff White People Like... Which, by the way, got me again with the addition of "Hating People Who Wear Ed Hardy." Touché, Mr. Lander. Maybe one day you will convince me that I am white and not Caucasian but that day is not today.

Anyway, Stuff White People Like.

#129 - Wooing. No I don't mean making the ladies swoon, I mean yelling WOOOOOO. After much careful observation I have concluded that only white people woo, and that it is always completely douchebaggy. The two favored places to woo are in a large group of moving people and in a large group of people moving in a car. Apparently being in a "fun" place makes white people much more likely to woo, as I have probably heard five thousand god damn woos from white people over the last three weeks since my bedroom window faces both the main dorm walk and the main street on campus, meaning that every group of moving people going woo as well as every car full of people going woo can conveniently be heard clearly in my effing room. Apparently other people are getting tired of this, too, because today after a few walkway woos another girl on the floor above me yelled SHUT THE HELL UP out her window. The worst times for wooing are definitely on Friday and Saturday nights, as the number of alcoholic drinks a white person has consumed has a direct relationship with how many woos they will throw out in an hour.

#130 - Blasting Hip Hop. This goes somewhat hand in hand with #116 - Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore except that these are the white people that do listen to “Commercial Hip Hop” which I guess could land them in the category of the Wrong Kind of White People. The deal isn't that they listen to hip hop, however, it's that they play it as loudly as humanly possible with the bass turned up so high that my room shakes when they drive by on Dole St. These white people don't seem to actually really listen to or enjoy hip hop, they just pick a few tracks to play extremely loudly in the hopes that it will make them look cool to everyone who can hear it. They seem oblivious to the fact that it actually makes us want to punch them in the nose.

If that wasn't annoying enough, there are about half a dozen particular songs that some group of white people really, really like somewhere in the vicinity of my room. I've never been able to tell where it's coming from, but every day the same five or so songs are played in a loop so loudly that I can hear them in bed with the fan on over the traffic noise even though I think the person playing it is actually in the building next door. On top of that I can't actually hear the song for real, just the bass (in the case of cars) or the drum machine (in the case of my wanker neighbor).

But the thing that is about to make me snap and FIND this guy is one song in particular that he normally plays in the morning while I'm sleeping and at night while I'm trying to work has a track in the chorus of some kind of small child babbling out of tune with the music that for some reason is as loud as the drum machine. So I hear DOON DOON CHCKA DOON DOON CHCKA BLAHBLAH DOON BLEE DOON BLOOBLAH BLAH CHCKA. One weird habit my brain has is partially waking up in the late morning and convincing me that something I'm dreaming about actually happened*. It doesn't tell me OH PSYCH THAT WAS A DREAM GIRL for at least a few hours. On the mornings I get to sleep in that babbling somehow gets into my head while I'm half-awake, so three days out of the week I spend 7am-9am half-dreaming that I am interacting with a lost child and/or have to get my own kids ready for school. To say I wake up confused would be the understatement of the century. I am pretty sure this is going to drive me to madness. I guess the reason he's playing it so loud is because that babbling has caused him to go insane such that he thinks playing the same five songs over and over so loudly that he's causing himself hearing damage is a good idea.



*This is one reason I avoid zombie movies. If I watch one I am probably 98% likely to dream about it all night, and for the first thirty or so minutes after I wake up I am pretty positive that I need to get to a mall fast.

Makapu'u tide pools

How was my day, you ask?










How was yours?

Haole is the new gringo

To everyone who told me that I would not be a minority here: YOU WERE WRONG. I am the only white person around like 90% of the time and it is extremely awesome.

To everyone who told me that I cannot use the word "haole" casually: YOU WERE ALSO WRONG. All the haole do it and it's awesome. We're bringing haole back (YEAH) them other gaijin don't know how to act (YEAH) TAKE IT TO THE BEEEAAACH.

That was Justin Timberlake, guys. Honky Extraordinaire.

This is awesome because it means that I now have the perfect replacement in other songs words I am not allowed to say. Case in point, Black Eyed Peas:

Haole gon hate on us (WHO)
Haole be en-vi-ous (WHO)
I know why they hate on us (WHY)
'Cause we so fab-u-lous (WHAT)
Imma be real on us (C'MON)
Nobody got nothin on us (NO)
Girls be all on us
From the mainland back down to the US(S ARIZONA)

Okay maybe that was a little much, but you get the idea. Kudos to the one person who may or may not actually get these stupid pop music jokes.

My Pedagogy

Official notice to everyone: While this will not at all surprise the academics among us, any professor that has a "My Pedagogy" section on the syllabus and actually discusses this on the first day of class is going to be a big old sack of sad. Drop the class.

If it's required for your major as History of Anthropology is for me AND 25% of the grading is based on attendance because back in his day we always attended class and he thinks it's just the least you should do and you should be grateful that you get a grade just for showing up because that's much easier than anything else and if anyone is not willing or is going to be unable to attend for any reason you need to drop the class because he will fail you because really it's just the least you can do and he also recommends that we form outside study groups but he doesn't think there should be class time devoted to that because it's a waste but let's devote some time talking about how we're not going to devote class time to it and oh by the way would you like to hear his thoughts on Marxism? He has some opinions on Engels, too, while we're on the subject... Bring your damn laptop because it's going to be a long hour.

Yes. Skin cancer.

I also have a master plan for not getting skin cancer. It involves daily doses of a multivitamin high in vitamins A, C, and E plus at least one food or drink every day that is high in similar antioxidants, mainly green tea. I am also using a fruit juice-based antioxidant serum on my face (as well as a juice-based antioxidant cleanser and an antioxidant eye cream with SPF) and a vitamin E-based lotion on the rest of me. As soon as I can find a neat electric kettle I will also be spraying straight up green tea all over. Why? Because we have a shower stall so I can't bathe in it.

I honestly haven't been wearing sun screen every day and before anyone gets on me for this I should explain. Recent studies on lab created skin have shown that skin treated with the sun-blocking ingredients in sun screen had less sun damage but had more cancer-causing free radicals than the unprotected skin. The medical community at large is claiming that this doesn't mean bupkis and that we should all keep wearing sunscreen, but I think they're full of it and just don't want to admit they're wrong. The trend in skin care and makeup for the last couple of years has been NO SUN. SPF in everything, self-tanners, everyone wearing hats and long sleeves to keep out of the sun. The rate of vitamin D deficiency has gone up steeply which would indicate that people are getting much less sun exposure... But the rates of skin cancer have still been increasing.

That, paired with the other study, are telling me that sun screen is not your best friend all by itself. What you need mostly is a great deal of antioxidants to help specifically prevent against cancer, otherwise you could be doing just as much harm as good. You know why no one gets cancer in Japan despite that fact that it's polluted as hell and they all smoke like chimneys? Freaking green tea guys, seriously. I am not a crunchy granola hippie, I want to prove this with science. So I am going to do this totally uncontrolled and not entirely scientific experiment and get back to you in a few biopsies.

This is by far the most delicious experiment I have ever participated in. I just realized that's not true because I once found out how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie-Roll center of a Tootsie Pop for science fair. But this is a close second.

Promises of photos

Okay so all those photos I promised before I put this thing online will be coming shortly. I mostly haven't taken any photos because I don't want to look like too much of a haole taking photos of everything until I have enough of a tan to claim I'm local. Anywhoo.

I'm going tide pooling with another anthropology major this weekend (could it be I have finally found another outdoorsy type??) which promises lots of photos of, I donno, barnacles and stuff*. I went to the beach finally last weekend and took my camera with the intention of taking new Facebook photos... I'll wait while you laugh. Done yet? No? Okay I can wait...

...

... Alright that's enough. Anyway I decided against it because I went by myself and as the beach was crowded I knew at least half a dozen people would notice me setting a timer and then running away and then running back again. I didn't feel like looking like a loon that particular day, so there are no photos. And I wasn't going to just hold the camera out to get just my face and a smidge of background because this is FACEBOOK, guys, not MYSPACE. Sheesh.

I have temporarily satiated my desire for a full back koi tattoo by getting a tank top from T&C Surf that has an almost identical design on the back. I also got a tank with wings on the back from Papaya but that didn't affect my desire for wing tattoos, so I'll have to come up with something more creative. Like henna.

*Stuff is the technical term for limpets and algae and mussels and starfish and sea urchins and little fishes and crustaceans and a whole assortment of other little sea animals. Would I say I have a plethora of sea animals? ... Yes I would.

I am a pretty pretty princess

Went shopping with my Freshie friend for SEVEN. HOURS. today for some reason. We were going to go the beach but it ended up being rainy and cloudy. I actually didn't spend very much. Most of it was watching her hunt around for an elusive pair of denim shorts, which by the way are all gone now because the fall lines are coming in. In Honolulu. All the shorts, sun dresses, sandals, etc. are going to clearance and are being replaced with boots and coats. No, really. They are.

In other news we won our pre-season game this last Friday (WARRIORS WHUT WHUT). Then on Saturday I went sailing with a dude from the team. I haven't been added to the roster yet because it requires about a metric crapload of paperwork (the list of types of forms I have to fill out has about a dozen things on it) and I'm hoping that it's not too late because I actually enjoyed it after I got over my fear of being eaten by a shark. That fear comes back when you capsize, by the way, which we did twice.

In other news, sea water tastes awful.

Thanks to everyone who sent me cards and presents. I stuck all the cards up on my gross looking cinder block wall so it's much nicer now. The less you can see of those walls, the better. I think they may have used to be white but I'm not entirely sure about that.

Today is my birthday