The C-Word

I've realized something recently. All the things that make my life the hardest are called cancers.

It's extremely appropriate, I think, that people born between June 21 and July 22 are Cancers. Every boy in my entire life that has cause me large amounts of trouble, with the exception of one, was a Cancer. They stick on you like that, too. In a lot of ways they never go away entirely. You might stop seeing them and you might stop hearing about them, but you start acting differently because of them. You probably never stop thinking about them.

And if my tattoo is any suggestion, I'm more than a little shaken up about my dad's illness. Like Steve Irwin, you keep seeing him do crazy shit and you think "that dude is gonna get killed!" and then when he finally dies you're shocked because, really, how can someone who has to frequently defied death actually die? After seeing someone dodge it so many times, you start to believe it can't even happen. Unlike Steve Irwin, my dad will not go out in a way that's appropriately absurd. He will gradually decline and we'll see it coming, and we'll try to stop it but eventually it will come back and that will just be that.

I've heard before that it used to be that you didn't talk about cancer. It was the c-word, something you didn't want to talk about. Something you only brought up in trusted, intimate company. In some ways, this is still true about the disease. For me, this is also true of all kinds of cancer men. I don't talk about what's happening with my dad to most people. I don't talk about what's happening with my boyfriends to most people. Because it makes people uncomfortable, and it exposes something about yourself that you don't always want to expose.

Unless you're me and you prick it directly into your skin so everyone can see, and then you don't really have to explain.

Updates On Inking, Pain

I got the tattoo and it came out better than I could have hoped, which is about the last good thing that's happened in the last two months here. I got it on October 16th and we've been pretty much all downhill from there. I haven't really been updating because I know no one wants to hear about how I hate everyone sometimes. Yes, everyone. ESPECIALLY YOU.

Anyway, to continue what I was talking about way back then, the hair and the tattoo. I went back and had my hair re-done and it's red now, but I'm still not entirely happy. It's red and people call it red and all, but I know natural redheads whose hair is WAY more red. Anyway, right after I get it done it looks something like this but eventually it fades considerably. People still call it red but I don't feel like it really is. It still looks better than my natural color, though, so I'm keeping it. And the lady who colors my hair seems incapable of going any more red (I keep asking and it keeps not happening) so I guess it's going to stay this way until I feel like undergoing the grueling task of finding a new stylist-- which I don't plan on doing anytime soon.

The tattoo is pretty cool. I know its one wing looks all mushed up in that photo, but it's 'cause I was holding my arm back. That was right after it was done and it was really sore if I had my arm anywhere other than pinned directly at my side. Anyway, it's all healed now, so I think it's time for another one.

You know how if you ask someone if their tattoo/piercing hurt a lot, they always tell you it doesn't hurt? Same for waxing/threading and stuff like that. "Oh Brazilian waxes? Those don't hurt AT ALL, just go for it!"

All of these statements are lies. All of those things hurt. The thing is that they hurt, but it's tolerable, and its manageable. I think we come to assume that pain is something we can't reasonably have-- the reason why people get angry at me for not taking aspirin when I have a headache even though it doesn't affect them. To most of us most of the time, pain of any amount is something to be avoided at all costs, and to cause any amount of pain is abhorrent. If you and your friends are slinging rubber bands at each other and someone goes "OW, dude that one HURT!" then the game is over. You apologize. Why any of you assumed that getting hit with rubber bands WOULDN'T hurt is questionable. What's solid is that, if you sling a rubber band and it hits someone and it stings, you're an asshole.

So when you encounter pain that is manageable, you don't really know how to categorize it. Furthermore, since you actually sought out and paid to have this pain, you feel like you can't reasonably say it was painful. Why would you go out and pay someone to hurt you? So you end up saying it doesn't hurt, because that's the only category we have that accurately describes your relationship with the pain you experienced.

Just before my tattoo I suddenly panicked. What if the pain was more than I could handle? I was there with my then-boyfriend who had a massive tattoo all the way down one arm. If I couldn't take it I would have to concede that he was tougher than me, something I will never ever do otherwise. He told me he ended up watching TV and cranking up his headphones at full volume because it hurt so bad, and the sound of the machine made it worse. What if I couldn't take it?

Not only did I take it just fine, I didn't have any distractions. I just kind of starred off into space for two hours, occasionally chatting with then-boyfriend, mostly scanning the titles of the books on the shelves in front of me. I think this annoyed him because he kept offering me my iPod or phone and I kept declining, and finally he got cranky and decided to go get a soda from the store across the street so he wouldn't have to watch me be way tougher than him.

Update, Re: Hope

My optimism has waned considerably after three tries and vaguely-red-and-not-even-the-right-red hair. Why is it so easy to shake up my world views? I think all anthropologists are like this. If we weren't, there's no way we could use Warcraft to write on the creation of identity and the nature of human interaction. And certainly no one would give you tenure for it*.

If anything, the cognitive dissonance and guilt related to having to tell your perky stylist they messed up is just further proof that I am never going to change. And, more importantly, if I think dying my hair will make me change, I am dumb but probably also a fantastic ethnographer. Because in medical anthropology EVERYTHING MEANS EVERYTHING and no extrapolation is too generous. Take the last article I read, for example: People sharing food with each other in Fiji means that your body is communally owned and you are not your own individual person, nor do you have control over your own physicality.

So my excitement over the tattoo is combined now with a deep-seated fear of permanent disfigurement and a compulsion do just freaking do it anyway because like, come on. Really.

Though I guess it's not fair to say I'll never change, since I haven't turned in my last two weekly assignments in Ethnobotany and I don't even really care. Normally this would cause me to panic but these things are like, what, half a percent of the whole semester? And when I have a paper, presentation, project, or midterm nearly every day for three solid weeks, watching videos and giving trite summaries is just gonna have to go on the back burner. The fact that I'm okay with that is pretty interesting.



*If this does NOT make you want to quit your job and become an anthropologist, you better be a professional chocolates-massages-and-wine-at-the-same-time critic because I cannot imagine anything sweeter than getting paid to screw around in Warcraft and then tell people how to think about it.

How Dying My Hair Brown Made Me Fear The Future, Part II

My god. What if the tattoo ends up like the hair? Good looking to everyone but me? Just far enough from what I wanted that every time someone points it out, I get even more disappointed? If I can't even pick who to color my hair and cope with five days of off color, how could I possibly pick a tattoo artist? What would I do if THAT didn't come out right? If the wrong hair color makes me feel like I'm looking at a different person in the mirror, A) how much of a sissy am I and B) what the hell kind of reaction would I have to the wrong tattoo?

Suddenly the insecurities came back. Maybe these are superficial changes and aren't really enough to make them go away. Even if I get the right red, even if I get the right tattoo, even if I didn't need grad school-- am I really going to feel different? I had imagined embodying the kind of person I wanted to be would make me that person. In all likelihood, I will not change. And when I imagine me in that body, it suddenly doesn't seem to appealing. Maybe I won't be vibrant and self-assured. Maybe I will still be worried and difficult, just with red hair and a tattoo and a lower education level.

While on the one hand I feel like I should know that getting body mods and new hair styles doesn't make a person change. But in my work to change thoughts and behavior, I felt like I needed to look different to really be regarded as different-- even just to myself. I remembered back when I wore whatever I wanted and had ridiculous hair, when I had friends and people thought I was tough. I was more obviously an individual, and because of that I feel now that the expectations of me were very different.

If I obviously looked how I wanted without much regard for how stupid that was, it sent three messages: 1) That I was stupid, 2) that I wasn't about to change anything I did for you, and 3) that I was stupid and wasn't about to change anything I did for you. Somehow, those three not entirely desirable judgments made me a more likable person. Back then no one ever told me "You know what your problem is?" or "You ALWAYS do this!" Back then anything I did to rub my friends the wrong way was met with a shrug and a write off-- well, that's Blossom. That's why we like her, she's kind of a jerk. It's funny.

Maybe I thought that if I started looking how I imagined would be awesome without concern for how weird it was, I could get that pass again. The imperfections would turn back into quirks. The quirks would build character, not a character flaw. In some ways, I would rather be the ranga with freckles and temper than anyone else.

So I'm going tomorrow to get the red, and ten days after that I'm getting that tattoo. I'm still not going to grad school and I don't plan on taking the GRE "just in case." I'll keep going to my unpaid internship, crossing my fingers that something I learn or someone I meet will prevent me from having to move back in with my parents next year. I will make that Rocky Horror joke in my medical anthropology lecture when we discuss the formation of the transsexual identity through surgical practice. I guess because hope springs eternal and even though the future is just as scary as ever, I'm not going to let that stop me from going there anymore.

How Dying My Hair Brown Made Me Fear The Future, Part I

Apparently some people were actually reading this and were disappointed when I stopped updating. Traveling this summer and moving back into the dorms, coupled with an internship and a full 18 credit semester, has left me with little time to bitch and pontificate. Time passed and shit happened. More on this later. For now, I would like to explain how dying my hair brown last Saturday made me extremely fearful of the future.

I've wanted to be a redhead since I was a kid. I always talked about coloring my hair but never did it because I used to grow out & donate my hair to nonprofits that make wigs out of them. Don't judge my hobbies-- it beats model trains and fantasy football. Some sick kids out there now have 12-17 inches of my flexible head growths. Anyway, I finally decided to just cave and color my hair. Originally I was gonna do it in a salon, then I got talked into doing it at home, then I got talked into doing it in a salon again. Last Saturday I came with the photos I've been pining over for the last few years (my tastes in shades of red have changed since the teenygoth days of yesteryear) and went to the lady who usually makes my hair look so damn good.

I left with brown hair.

Not intentionally-- and, mind, it was a different shade of brown. Somewhere a wire had been crossed that turned copper red to a not at all red kind of brown. The roots were reddish and, only seeing that, I left without realizing that all the hair behind my head was only about one shade off. It wasn't until I got home and inspected it in the mirror and normal, non-trendy salon lighting that I realized it was not at all red on 90% of my head.

People complimented it every day since, since it's still a nice shade of brown, but it's not red. It's not RED so it's not what I wanted, and no amount of being a nice shade of brown has yet been able to quell my disappointment. It's like finally getting the courage to jump out of the plane with your parachute to find you're only ten feet off the ground. You land on your feet and everyone claps a little, but it is just not the same damn thing as terminal velocity.

I rescheduled for tomorrow to have it re-done, but now I'm plagued by insecurities. This red was one of the first steps in my transition from a stressed student to someone who I was determined would be more relaxed, more accepting of her situation. I was going to stop fearing the what-ifs, stop sweating the extra efforts, and start doing the things that made me feel good. I started eating better, packing lunches and snacks so I didn't go hungry all day during class (a bad habit I've had since middle school). I stopped impulse shopping. I threw out much of my lazy clothes. I decided not to go to grad school right now, not to take the GREs. I convinced myself not to panic when I ran out of time and couldn't complete an assignment. I made the appointments to dye my hair red and get that tattoo.

The most immediate of these things has gone wrong. And not horribly wrong, because it's fixable, but many of these others are not. If dying my hair was a mistake, what else was a mistake? What about all the things I threw away? What about grad school? What about a freaking tattoo?

How Blossom got her groove back

Today, after a full week of hiking, shoveling, sifting, and sweating, it finally felt good.

Since I started working here, I've been lethargic and unmotivated for no reason. Getting plenty of rest, eating well, and staying hydrated did nothing to help. Hiking to the sites and doing the heavy work wasn't fun for me like it used to be. I jumped away from ants, gasped at spiders, tried to stay out of the dirt, and gingerly dabbed sweat off my face with a gym towel. I asked others to lift the heavy buckets into the sifter for me and half-assed shoveling the dirt underneath it. Work that used muscles wasn't fun, so it wasn't really fun at all.

I realized it earlier today when I had to admit that I actually couldn't lift the full buckets at all. Something about that admission felt terrible. They were just buckets of dirt, max 20lbs, and I couldn't lift them? My backpack in high school weighed that much. It dawned on me then that I have become a freaking GIRL.

Apparently, realizing this pissed me off so much, I got my mojo back. Suddenly the shovels felt lighter, the dirt felt thinner, and the pit seemed a lot more shallow. I leveled the whole thing, bringing the 4 square meter pit down by 5cm so quickly I had to stop and wait for the sifters because I had filled ALL the buckets on site. The girls in the other pit got mad. One of the women got mad because lifting the full buckets is difficult, and I had filled them completely. She told me I should start lifting them into the sifter if I was gonna to do that, SO I DID.

I felt so great about it. I know it was coming from anger- anger at being the littlest always, anger at having people always taking things and helping me when I don't need it, anger at knowing I'm not as tough as I want to be, or as I used to be. But I got my passion for work back, the excitement of being outside and straining yourself for no good god damn reason. The satisfaction of finally laying down in bed afterwards. Most importantly, I didn't feel TIRED anymore.

This evening I went to the reef in Pago Bay. I sat still in the water so the fish moved around me. I collected hermit crabs in empty oyster shells and watched them crawl in the sand.


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First day on site

We got to see the sites we're working on today, and of course I got assigned to the one that's in the sun all day. Dr. B said I could switch to a different one (since I'm burned already) that's all shaded, which I think I will take him up on. All three sites are about 100 feet away from some of the most beautiful beach I've ever seen, so lunch time at any site still means I'll end up in the sun for at least a little while.

On the plus side, I will come back bronze. I think I'm going to actually have to try to not come back from Guam looking like a boot.



Anyway, if I go to the other site (the first latte site) I'll be working on the shallowest excavation. The other one, Casa Real, is the deepest, and also the least interesting in my opinion. It's a Spanish colonial-era building was standing as of the 1970's when the military bulldozed it, so it's a lot less exciting than the other sites. At the two latte sites there are tools and potsherds just laying on the ground out in plain site, which is amazing. And then of course there are the latte stones, some of which are still standing, albeit without the capstones on top.

Ours aren't as big as the ones in that photo I linked; they pillars are about waist-high and the capstones are less than three feet wide. They get much larger. That's from the quarry on Rota, apparently the latte stones around where we are in Ritidian are normally a lot smaller.

Tomorrow we start excavating for real, and at night we're going to get Chamorro food which is exciting because I have no idea what that actually consists of.

I am a consumer whore

My quest for Korean and Japanese cosmetics may be dashed. One of the girls asked the TAs if there was a touristy section of the island, which is exactly where I wanted to go to find that stuff. The overwhelming majority of tourists to Guam are Japanese, so much so that many of the hotels and shopping centers' websites are only in Japanese. Because of this, I've heard that you can find Asia-exclusive products and brands in Guam. The TAs told her that there is, but it's lame and boring so they wouldn't want to take us there. D'aww :( Dior did an Asia-only re-release of the Iridescent Leather quint* and I might not get my hands on it. I am a sad panda.

So today we went and saw all the sites we'll be working on and, despite layering on a bunch of physical-blocking sunscreen, my arms and shoulders are burned to a crisp. I guess reapplied SPF60 isn't good enough, so I'm going to go get some 85 as soon as possible even though it'll have to be a chemical block in that case. I've never seen a physical one over SPF65.

But since I'm already burned, I'll also need some aloe and antioxidant products (both of which I own but didn't bring) and some long-sleeved shirts which I also didn't bring with me. Why do the solutions to all my problems always involve buying things?

* Christian Dior is famous for their eyeshadow quints, a small palette with five sparkly shadows in it. They're probably one of the most popular cosmetic products in the world. For the holidays a few years ago they sold a quint called Iridescent Leather, which was full of cool brown neutrals-- a set of shades that are surprisingly hard to find in high-end makeup. It was a smash hit and sold out everywhere. Now it's one of the most sought-after and hard to find items for makeup enthusiasts like myself. Though the quints usually retail for $50, this one can be sold on Ebay for... Well, let's just say substantially more. If you put an IL quint up for swap (a deal through Makeup Alley where users trade makeup/skincare products they don't want, probably the best way to get discontinued/hard to find products) you could probably get whatever you wanted for it.

Nature sucks big eggs

We're going to the dig site tomorrow for the first time, so I'll know what I'm really up against then. I should be used to the humidity by Tuesday, so hopefully being outside will get easier soon. Right now it feels like walking into a wall as soon as I go out of the air conditioning. Now I know what people are talking about when they describe the heat/humidity in Austin. I grew up in that level of crap weather, so Texas & Hawaii feel normal to me. But Guam's humidity is even higher, believe it or not (I didn't believe it until I got here) so even though it's not actually that hot it feels horrible. It's just sticky and wet outside, like the inside of a greenhouse.

There's a beach right next to campus as it turns out, but it's all rocks and reef so I'm too afraid to go in. Reefs scare the crap out of me, since they're full of poisonous things pretending to be harmless. The thing that really killed my desire to go into the water there is the aquariums. Each dorm building here has an aquarium in the common area that is full of fish people caught at that reef. Apparently they catch them, have them in there for a while, let them go, and catch different ones. The tank in my dorm is full of lion fish. Oh hells no. I thought, okay, well they're bright and obvious so maybe I can deal with that. Then someone took me over to the other dorm and showed me the stone fish.

Imagine, if you will, a rock. A lava rock covered in algae that sits on the bottom of the ocean, with a dusting of sand. Then add poison that will cause you to lose your foot. That is a stone fish. When they pointed it out to me in the aquarium I almost said, where, behind that rock? I thought they were playing a joke on me for a good ten minutes before I saw another fish poke it in the eye and it winced.

So anyway, I'm never going in the ocean again.

I guess that's the trade off you get in the Pacific. Sure, you can go hiking and camping without having to worry about venomous snakes, rabies, skunks, big cats, coyotes, bears, etc. But god help you if you want to go swimming. Not only are there poisonous animals, there are plants around Hawaii that you can't even SEE that will get in your suit and give you a painful rash all over. There are also rip currents that will sweep you away, and caves that will suck you in if you get too close. Oh, and there are giant centipedes that sting. Never before did I think a rattlesnake would look appealing... At least you KNOW when one of those is around.

Arrival!

More on Maui will continue over the next few days, as I have not had internet access but I'm now in Guam and I'm SUPER EXCITED.

Well Guam is pretty interesting. It's very, very American in a lot of ways that I was not expecting, so I feel weird. This isn't the US, really, but it is at the same time. The currency and language is the same, which is really throwing me off. You'd think that would make it easier but for some reason it's actually kind of unnerving. I feel like I can't possibly be doing things right, since anywhere else I could possibly go overseas would be different. Even if they spoke English it wouldn't be the same kind of English, and no one else uses American dollars, or has the same tipping culture. They also don't usually drive on the right side of the road, or have the same kinds of traffic signs. It has all the symptoms of being America, but it's also so obviously NOT America that it feels unnatural and strange. It doesn't feel foreign enough, I guess, compared to anywhere else I've been, but it's also not American enough to feel like home. If Dr. Saethre really does give extra credit for a tattoo of the word “liminality” maybe he would also accept a tattoo in the shape of Guam. Maybe I can get extra credit just for proposing this idea (note to self, try this next semester) since a tattoo in the shape of Guam would probably just look like a deformed mole to most people.

The dorms are also liminal as all get out, with much nicer rooms than any of the dorms at UH but with what may be the nastiest bathrooms I've ever had the pleasure of using. There's AC in the rooms but not in the halls or bathrooms, but unlike the halls there are no big open windows to keep air circulating. Imagine, if you will, a toilet/shower room that is full of the most stagnant, humid air you have ever experienced. Imagine that the pipes from the bathroom above are exposed in many places and occasionally they drip what you hope to god is clean water, that there are lizards living in the faucets and behind the trash cans, and that the toilets' flush is so impotent it can't even clear out toilet paper in one try. There are also no shower heads and the water rushes out of pipes in the wall like a garden hose, but that's actually kind of awesome and I'm considering taking the shower head off my own shower at home now. Despite everything else, that shower leaves me feeling nice and clean, probably due to the fact that the water pressure alone is capable of taking off a layer of skin. Ahhh.

The rooms are sweet, though. The two beds are separated by two bureaus, one for each person, down the middle of the room. There's a ceiling fan above that, and a window AC unit on one side. You actually can't hear much of what the other roommate does because the window unit is pretty loud-- there are even two separate lights over each side that can be turned on/off independently. UOG 1, UH 0. I will take your funky steamy toilets any day if it means a cold, private bedroom.

While UH has a surplus of wild cats that roam campus, UOG has wild dogs. The cats at UH will run from you if you go anywhere near them, even if you offer them food. Earlier as my roommate and I were walking back from eating dinner, we passed a stray dog laying next to the building. We looked at her and said hi, and she decided we were her new friends and followed us all the way back to the dorm. She picked up sticks and things and wanted us to throw them for her, and a few times she ran ahead of us because she seemed to know we were going to the university. I even saw her look both ways before she crossed the street. UOG 2, UH 0.

From Maui, With Love 2

They came back about an hour and a half later with the good news that the rental car company was on their way with a new van. Yay! But someone had to wait for them, obviously, so not everyone could go. L's parents decided to stay, so the remaining five of us crammed into the compact and went to Hana.

Almost two hours later, the tow guy calls us to say he's just left. By this time it's already pitch black outside where L's parents are. He doesn't get to them until after 9pm, and they got here after ten, but all was fixed! Yay!

The next morning L's great uncle Goro ran into the other rental with his truck and obliterated the passenger's side mirror.

On the plus, the rest stops along the way are populated by some kind of feline-chicken society

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone because I am a consumer whore.

From Maui, With Love 1

As some of you know, I went on a trip to Hana, Maui with L and his family. I had no reception in the valleys, so I had no way to update! Booo.

Hana is a very small town on the far windward side of Maui, famously the deathplace/grave of Charles Lindbergh and the area Oprah purchased to prevent unwanted commercial development. To get there you can fly from the Kahului airport (which is in the middle of the northern shore) into the tiny Hana municipal airport. Or you can do what most people do and make THE MOST RIDICULOUS DRIVE EVER through Maui on these ludacrous winding mountain roads. The roads were originally gravel and not made for cars, so on the most dangerous curves and precarious ledges and bridges, it dips into one lane only. One lane TOTAL. People coming the opposite direction have to wait until oncoming traffic passes by before they can proceed. The road also can't go for more than 100 feet without making some kind of loony hairpin curve. Apparently it's so jerky ride that many people get seasick. It makes the 52 mile drive take somewhere between two and four hours depending on traffic and the condition of the roads that day.

About halfway there we got a flat. The right front was flat like I have never seen, it was FLAT. Riding on the hub cap flat. At first I was like "oh we have a spare, we're good." the. We hear sshhhhh coming from the rear right tire.

Eff. Okay, we'll call AAA or the rental company to come help. Take out my handy Internet phone and OH no reception. For any of us.

Okay well, we were smart enough to get two vehicles! The other can go on ahead and get a tow truck. What's that? There's no tow truck or mechanic in all of Hana? Okay. Well they can to ahead and call someone then.

Here's the road right behind us

In front of us is a bridge that makes another one lane hairpin, and across the valley (to the right of that photo) is this



Can you see the road?

L's dad and brother go on to make a call and and they're leaving, his mom adds "make sure you're back soon, once it gets dark there are no lights on this road."

I suddenly have way too much spare time

Some things you all need to watch:

Forrest Gump in One Minute
Kill Bill in One Minute
Star Wars in One Minute
28 Days Later in One Minute
Minesweeper: The Movie
Machete trailer from Grindhouse MUST SEEE
Werewolf Women of the SS trailer from Grindhouse

In which I misinterpret Alice Cooper

YESSS THE SEMESTER IS OVER I'M DONE FOREVER AND EVER AND I WILL NEVER HAVE TO DO WORK EVER AGAIN AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED RIGHT NOW OMG.

Time to eat cookies and jump on the bed and stay up AS LATE AS I WANT. HOT CRACKERS I AM SO EXCITED. I think my grade is effed in a couple of my classes I don't even caaaaare. Wait I care a little bit because I just got my Emory info packet in the mail and I really, reeeaaally want to go there but I don't know if I can possibly get in. I think if I don't I might as well go wait tables since there's nothing else I'd really like to do but ANYWAY FOR RIGHT NOW I'M GOING TO EAT ICE CREAMS AND WATCH MOVIES AND SLEEP FOREVER.

Actually I can't really get used to being done with work so I got a Chamorro language tape to study before I went to Guam but it's probably the most useless thing ever. It has a dude repeating phrases over and over and telling you to repeat them but it never tells you what they're saying. There's no accompanying book either, so I guess I'm just screwed. Normally I would just get some books but since I've never, ever heard someone speak Chamorro I don't know how to pronounce anything.

I also checked out some books on Micronesian archaeology and got some unpublished research from the University of Guam on excavations done in the area we'll be looking into. What the hell why am I so determined to keep working now.

Piggybean

Check out my newest impulse buy. I have dubbed him Piggybean.

Piiiiggybean, Piiiiiiiiggybean, looks like a piggy and a bean




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Universities: Not giving a shit about your flash cards since 1636

So. I saw a pre-health advisor and said "What do I need to do to get into an epidemiology program?" and she was like "Uh go back in time and do a pre-med track?" so I guess that's out.

I've spent the last week gradually coming to terms with the idea that, no, I am not going to be a scientist. I will probably never be a scientist. And while that SUCKS, I guess it makes sense. My advisor pointed out that when I talk about public health I talk about it like a social science, not a lab. Despite my interest in the biological sciences, my performance in the social sciences has always been substantially better. She thinks I might find it difficult to deal with public health in terms of empricism rather than personal interaction, which is partly true. So she showed me what I would have to do to get into a program for global epidemiology and a program for global health and said I should do whichever I felt was better suited, but an epi program means 1) another year of school and 2) that much more loans, which may max me out before I've finished grad school.

She also made it clear that it's very common for people to do a non-science MPH track and then later on their careers get additional education in the sciences. So basically, I can also go back and do it, but I can't undo the time/money spent on doing it now. So I went from global health to global epi and back to global health again, which I guess is okay.

The problem I'm really having is that I had been thinking my whole life that I wanted to be a SCIENTIST. I want to do science! When I was little I was always saying I wanted to do genetic research, or be a doctor, or a biologist, etc. So I am a little disappointed that I finally have to admit that I suck at it.

Who put the goat in there?

Okay I mentioned India to Layne and he reminded me of this video, which I felt I had to share. I have no idea what's actually going on but the dancing is hysterical. At the same time I feel like I can't laugh because it also looks pretty difficult. Anyway, it has subtitles that say what it sounds like they would be singing if they were singing in English. Hilarity ensues.



I actually really want to know what this is from and what they're saying, it looks fascinating. And a little bizarre.

Fashion victim

Reason #3 why I would love to get to intern with the Comprehensive Rural Health Project in Jamkhed, India, is that they recommend women to have local garments made for them in town. That means I will actually be encouraged to wear salwar kameez which is something I have always wanted to do. When I was little I remember often seeing women at the grocery store wearing them in rich colors with embroidery and I always thought they looked so cool! I can't really get away with wearing that anywhere else, though, because 1) I will stand out like a sore thumb and 2) other white people will tell me I'm racist because I am appropriating a culture that is not mine for its aesthetic value. So yeah. But see, if I actually go to India, it would be totally fine! Sweeet.

So, reasons why I want to intern with CHRP:
1) Do hands-on work making a very real, tangible difference on the population I would be working in.
2) Learn about public health from creators of a program that have effectively eliminated malnutrition and other common but preventable causes of death and illness from its area.
3) Get to wear awesome clothes that were actually tailored for me.

Okay now to be fair, I didn't know about the clothing thing until well after I'd decided I wanted to try to work with CHRP. But imagine the pleasant surprise! I'm just looking at their site, doo dee hoo, let's see what kinds of things they advise about this sweet internship. What's that? We can/should have awesome clothes made for us? Oh hells yes. I don't even care that it's in the interest of modesty, that's how much I like this idea. So not only could I potentially get to work with and learn from an immensely successful public health program in rural India, I could wear sweet digs while I do it. What a score.

Shu Uemura Discontinues US Sales

I'm not sure how many of you care about this, but beloved cosmetics brand Shu Uemura is going to stop selling their products in the US sometime in the near future. No exact dates or explanations have been given, but this sucks. Dong.

Gateway House is the new Free Store

A few weeks ago a group of skinny white guys rolled up in a van and stole all the couches out of the lobby of my dorm. In broad daylight & with the RAs present, who got photos of them and their license plate numbers. We later saw them being chased around campus by security, but we have yet to get the couches back.

Then last night we saw (well, I missed it because I was in the shower, to my endless disappointment) a guy stealing a bike. Oh I'm sorry, did I say stealing a bike? Because I meant being a goddam ignoramus. This slick joker was at the bike racks directly below ALL the windows in one tower of Gateway trying to hacksaw a u-lock. I don't think I have to explain why this is one of the dumbest things anyone will ever see, but there are a few things that make it extra special: For starters, you can hear what goes on around the racks in every room in this side of the building, which houses upwards of 100 people. It was late, meaning not only was everyone home, it was quiet hours in the dorms.

And my favorite part of this whole equation? Most of the bikes out there don't have good locks like that one did. Even the nicer bikes mostly have crappy cable locks, the kind you can take off with pretty much anything sharp that you could find in a tool box. If this maroon had invested in a pair of bolt cutters he could have probably absconded with two or three bikes before anyone noticed.

Instead, he tried to hacksaw a u-lock. So some time after midnight, the entire Ewa tower of Gateway House was serenaded with the scrsh-scrsh-scrsh sounds of saw-on-tough-ass-bike-lock.

Don got up and yelled "HO, WHATCHU STAY DOING?" out the window. There was a short silence... Then faster, scrshscrshscrshscrshscrsh. After a minute he took off, just before campus security rolled up. I was mad that Don yelled at him because I wanted to go down and sneak up on him. Oh well.

With this caliber of criminal, I'm questioning the necessity of a police department. We should just phase it out and use the money to end Furlough Fridays and buy me a shiny new bat. I'm pretty positive I could personally take care of this problem with a shiny bat. They'll call me the Bear Haole.

We're insinuating it

This is probably my favorite commercial ever.



"We're not saying this body wash will make your man smell into a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are insinuating it."

Love the 'Stache

I have a fever, and the only cure is more 'stache.

Not your style, you say?

Well, how about these?

Spring back

Unfortunately today was the first day back from spring break, to which I say LAAAME. My wonderful, thoughtful, totally not vindictive phys anth prof decided to make our second midterm today at 9am, plus an extra credit paper was due. Before the break he cheerfully told us that we shouldn't worry about the test because the class average on the last one was 77%, and that's great because usually his class averages are more like 67%, so we're doing great! Smile! Yay! There was a big heavy silence before I piped up with "That's a terrible grade, no one wants those kinds of grades!" and everyone else chimed in with "Yeah dude wtf, wtf dude." He seemed confused and repeated that he's not going to grade us on a curve anyway, so whatever. Also, three exams like this one make our entire semester grade. Silly physical anthropologists, you're all so odd.

YES MILANA, I'M TALKING ABOUT YOU AND YOUR APES.

I had library books due yesterday but the library was closed for the break so I had to wait until today to recheck them. They're still charging me a late fee for all of them. It's only 75 cents total so I won't complain, but sheeeesh. Way to be a pain in the ass, library ladies. This is even more annoying than the time I returned books on time but they didn't get around to checking them back in for a few days so they tried to charge me late fees for that time.

Good news, though. I was talking to a girl in my Biomedicine and Culture class (one of the two other pre-med profession people in the class) about how difficult it's going to be for me to get the kind of experience necessary to apply to public health school. Turns out she manages the pre-health profession advising office on campus, and she got me an appointment with the director and gave me a lot of good advice on where to go to get the experience I need. I had tried several times to get that info from the pre-health office before and they'd told me to just go to the public health school's admissions and ask them, which is a horrible idea. I'd also asked the community service office and the career development office, both of which had told me to leave, go home, get on my computer, and search their database for openings.

So this is mixed good news. On one hand, I'm finally getting the information I should have gotten (and tried to get) seven months ago when I started at UH. That's good news. On the other hand, it turns out that I REALLY need to have been working to get the requisite experience for an MPH program starting... Oh, SEVEN MONTHS AGO. Turns out they want you to get work experience while you're an undergrad, not after you graduate. That's the bad news-- whatever lazy chicks had been brushing me off at the pre-health office before quite literally screwed me out of getting to apply to an MPH program on time because they didn't give me the opportunity to get that veeery valuable little tidbit of information. Meh.

That means I'll be trying to get taken on as a full time volunteer with at least one medical center and/or clinic nearby here. After I get back from Guam I'll use the advice I got today to try and get a paid or intern position at a private practice. Apparently the trick is to just keep asking until someone agrees to take you on, which I'm going to hate doing but whatever. I'll have to jump through some stupid hoops if I want to SAVE THE WORLD and whatnots.

SCORE

I got early acceptance into the Guam field school :D WHO WANTS TO GO SHOPPING AT R.E.I.?!

My nomination for sainthood

I just watched Don read the entirety of Jane Eyre in one sitting. Took him 10hr 15min STRAIGHT. He has to write a paper and decided to do that instead of reading summaries.

Guys if I had that kind of resolve I'm pretty sure I could enslave earth. God damn I feel so lazy now. I'm not allowed to complain about work ever again.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone because I am a consumer whore.

Things-o-rama

I finally turned in my Guam application yesterday and he said he would get back to me today or tomorrow. I haven't heard back yet so I'm nervous. I imagine him sifting through all the work I turned in last semester, shaking his head and tsk-ing quietly to himself as he decides not to let me in.

By the way I'm still spending most of my time hunched over a computer writing about domestic abuse. I have a short paper due this weekend that involves critiquing and attempting to create a feminist ethic for interpreting and responding to sexual abuse, then next Wednesday (YES RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SPRING BREAK) I have a 3000 word research project on the use of the idea of mental health as a form of gendered control. So if in the next week you find yourself thinking "hot crackers, I sure am having a shitty time!" I want you to picture the eleven books about systemic abuse I have sitting on my desk, and I want you to picture me reading each one of them and stuffing them with post-it notes instead of relaxing over the only break I will get for the rest of the semester during the only chance I'll have to see my dad in almost a year. Then I want you to think "WELL GOD DAMN I guess my time is not as shitty as it could be!" Because gals and pals this is SHIT-O-RAMA right here, yes it is.

In somewhat related news, pick a monkey and then try to find its family, subfamily, superfamily, suborder, & binomial nomenclature in less than fifteen minutes. YOU CAN'T DO IT, I TRIED. Now do this for every primate at the Honolulu Zoo one after the other. Have fun, kids.

St. Patrick's Day

... Is just another day in my life that won't be any fun. I have two papers due tomorrow. So while you're all enjoying your green beer, remember me hunched over a laptop writing about domestic abuse for several hours at a time. HAPPY HOLIDAYS Y'ALL.

Today's green manicure:

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone because I am a consumer whore.

My beefs

Because I like to brag, I decided to let you all know that after I painted my nails earlier, Layne scratched my ear for me. Then he buckled up my sandals.

In similar news, when I try to appropriate lyrics from My Dick to brag about things other than my dick it sometimes goes horribly awry. I like the first part so I'll start to go for it without thinking of how messed up the second part is. Like just now when I tried to do "My beef costs a late night fee, yo beef gots the HIV.

No, no. Gosh I can imagine the angry finger wagging I would get from the other medical anthropologists for that one. By the way, if you feel like a laugh one day, advocate sweat shops to a room full of anthropology grad students. They will temporarily forget to name drop theorists.

P.S. MY BEEF IS LARGE LIKE THE CHARGERS THE WHOLE TEAM, YO BEEF LOOK LIKE HE FOURTEEN.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone because I am a consumer whore.

Spring is so last season

...


*ssssiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiipp*


-Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone because I am a consumer whore.

I mostly post at night. Mostly.

I'm baaaaaack holy crap this semester has sucked some eggs. My goodness. I just withdrew from THE JAPANESE CLASS FROM HELL in light of the fact that it was going to cause me to fail all my other classes by being a goddam time vampire the likes of which I have never seen before. That means I can no longer receive back credits which means I just got boned out of 8 credits I deserve for being placed in an upper-level language course. That means I'm not going to be able to graduate on time if I don't load on summer classes. If I had only had a different professor, this would not have happened. I am BEYOND angry about this, so much so that I don't even want to talk about it.

Anyway, I got a new haircut. That's about the only good thing that's happened so far.

My dad is coming in a week, yaaay. Unfortunately his plane gets here right when I have a super important class thing so I can't actually pick him up from the airport, which blows. I wanted to have all my local friends ride along and talk pidgin for only the first ten minutes and then, by our synchronized watches, they would suddenly stop and start talking like normal. I was curious to see if my dad would say anything. Now I don't get to find out, boo.

I was less than happy to find that the medical assistant position that I didn't get last semester is STILL being advertised and it still says they need someone ASAP. It had just been posted when I applied... I almost want to call them and be like BET YOU WISH YOU HAD ME ON STAFF NOW BITCHES AHAHAHAHAHA-- then hang up, but that's not really constructive.

You win again, LVHM

Okay so after I bought almost all of the nail polishes I want (still need China Glaze's Wizard of Oz and new spring stuff, plus OPI Alice in Wonderland and then I'll be set, so I think I'm still like 7 polishes short of having everything I want) I moved on to wanting millions upon millions of lipsticks. I think it started when YSL had their first ever sale and the lipstick I wanted sold out before I got it so I started looking at all the other colors to see if there was another one I could use. It got worse when Sephora decided to stop carrying Cargo and their Plant Love Evangeline lipstick disappeared forever before I managed to snag a tube. Somewhere in there I was shown, by my boyfriend's roommate of all people, this video. Ignore the pandering of "CHEMICAL FREE" makeup (which makes me want to punch unicorns) and just watch her put on that lipstick. Yes.

So now I want lots and lots of lipstick in pretty orange and peach and whatnots. So much so that last night I had a dream. I dreamed that I went through my closet and it was filled with EVERY LIPSTICK EVER and they all looked good on me and I was so happy. Then in my dream I "woke up" and had no makeup so I went to the store but all they had were eyeshadow palettes and I haaate eyeshadow palettes. What more all the glitter was rubbing off onto everything and it was a big mess and uhggg it was horrible. That's my version of a bad dream. Really.

Oh wait I just realized I also want the LA Girl Rockstar polish set and a few from China Glaze's Rodeo Diva set, so I'm more like 15 polishes short of having all the ones I want. Kay.

See there are lots of people with weird makeup obsessions on Makeupalley, and they make me feel better about this because they are all much, much worse. For starters I don't own near as much of ANYTHING as they do and I actually use all the makeup I own. Here are some of the things that were posted today that made me feel like I can buy as much as I want and still not have a real problem... You might need to be a member to view these links but I recommend making an account so you can search the reviews there, they do reviews of bath/skincare/makeup and it's a really good way to find out of something is good before you buy it.

Anyway, this person bought more eyeshadows in one single internet order than I own at all. They're NYX so they're all only a couple of dollars each, but sheesh. This is a post of someone's lip product stash that honestly makes me very jealous. I had more than that in my dream, but still that's awesome. This stash is JUST eyeshadow palettes and nothing else. Every single one of those containers has 4-10 eyeshadows in them. This is like the sad part of my dream, actually-- they were all in a black cabinet like that and I couldn't tell what was in any of them. Psssh, palettes. You're so boring.

I told them about my dream and one girl said this week she dreamed she applied false eyelashes perfectly, something she's still trying to do in real life. I'm not alone :D

Mercy Corps

As many of you may or may not know, I am a huge fan of Mercy Corps. They are a wonderful organization and are a large part of the reason why I want to get into global health-- one day I hope to be a part of one of their programs.

In the meantime I'm encouraging people to support their development and relief efforts all over the world, and of course right now the big issue is the earthquake in Haiti. Since you're all probably getting pressure from everywhere to donate to this and that, I'd just like to throw out two things: 1) 89% of Mercy Corps resources go directly to their programs and 2) all donations are tax deductible. Unlike other organizations, Mercy Corps stays in areas affected by natural disasters for as long as it takes to re-stabilize. That might not sound like much, but they still have programs in Indonesia helping rebuild economy and infrastructure after the tsunami in 2004.

Anyway, I can't donate as much as I could back then so I made a fundraising page to help encourage people I know to donate. So go here to donate if you want to donate to Mercy Corps and it will tell me how much the people I know have raised. I don't get anything for this so if you have another charity in mind go ahead and give to them instead. As long as the groups involved get the funding they need I don't really care who gives to what.

Apologies for the solicitation.

This list goes to eleven

Things I have learned so far this week:

1. Japanese classes in universities are universally horrible and don't actually teach anyone Japanese.
2. I was born to be a medical anthropologist.
3. I never want to work in academia.
4. The university housing office can (and will) give you a roommate without telling you.
5. I am gradually becoming ambivalent to my responsibility to society.
6. No one makes red spiral notebooks anymore.
7. I do not belong in A) churches or B) gyms and going into these places makes me feel like an interloper.
8. My loony suitemate has made it very easy for me to go from 0 to bitchtacular when dealing with people's dicketry.
9. I was not made to get out of bed before 9:30am and taking 9am classes is a recipe for disaster.
10. The cafeteria food here tastes good if you've been lifting weights/running in the hours before dinner.
11. Death metal rooster makes everything better:

Guamarama

Original post about the field school in Guam I'm applying to removed since it has been discussed and we decided that if I get accepted we'll figure out a way to pay for it. I am super freaking excited about this :D