Baubles the Meerkat

Baubles the Meerkat is proof that there is a god and he is hilarious.

A few weeks ago some friends and I went to the Honolulu Zoo. When we walked up to the meerkat exhibit, there was a big sign from the zookeeper to the side explaining that one of the meerkats, Baubles, was "a bit challenged" but noted that he is okay and not to worry about him. "If you see Baubles looking a bit unsteady on his feet, nothing's wrong it's just his way."

So we're thinking, okay, a meerkat that maybe falls over if he tries to do that standy thing that they do? That's not a big deal. Which one is Baubles? But at that moment it became extremely clear which one was Baubles, as he came a-baubling around the corner at just that moment and baubled all around the enclosure while we were there.

This meerkat has some kind of neurological disorder that apparently makes him think he is a pirate with peg legs on a ship in very unsteady seas. He rocks back and forth and constantly wobbles and falls over. He also can't stop very quickly and runs into things a lot.

Think that's sad? It was not sad. It was hilarious. He obviously doesn't seem to mind at all, and apparently he can still be a normal, happy meerkat. He just looks like he's really drunk and takes a little longer to do things. The thing that makes it really hilarious, though, is how everything the zoo says about him sounds like the way you talk about the one jerk in your group of friends. "Oh yeah, Baubles? Yeah Baubles is kinda... Like, you know. He's just Baubles. Nothing you can do about that guy." It somehow takes this poor handicapped animal from kind of sad level to I'm-going-to-hell-for-laughing-but-I-can't-stop level.

Please enjoy this KHON video of Baubles baubling about. My favorite note from this, "They think that like maybe he is sick or something or you know but he is just like that." HAH-HAAAAAAA! (Note: if the wrong video is displayed for you, you can view the correct one here!)

youwillgetnothingandlikeit

I've been sick for about five weeks now, and I can't help but wonder if this was kicked off by my near-drowning in two foot deep water. Maybe there's sand in my lungs or something. Maybe there's a thin crust of salt and minerals. Maybe there's a little tree in there and pretty soon I will have to move into a giant pot of soil to keep breathing. Either way it sucks lots and lots, primarily because I've had to start ranking my responsibilities from most to least important and cutting things off the bottom first to preserve my precious energy. What gets put at the bottom are all the things I want to do, the middle are things I maybe don't want to do but will be in trouble if I don't do, and the top are things I cannot get away with not doing.

So far I have taken off the entire bottom of this list with several deep chunks taken out of the middle, which are now causing me issues. The really disheartening thing is that my boss/professors frequently overrate the importance of the tasks they give me, which lead to weekends like this last one where I spent eight hours at work in which I did absolutely nothing because I was given the wrong event times. I spent another four hours running errands for my RIO to meet a deadline that it turned out did not actually exist. The end result of this was having to skip out early on a friend's birthday dinner and skip the Honolulu AIDS Walk entirely, which you may remember I have been excitedly planning for over two months. Even after explaining to several people that I needed to do as little as possible in the days leading up to the walk so I would not relapse again in the meantime, I was ladened with unnecessary BS and ended up falling into a nasty bout of bronchitis the night before the walk. I spent the day of the walk sleeping, coughing, and being extremely sad. (and if the person who asked me to run the RIO errands reads this, I am not blaming you, you didn't know what it would entail-- I'm blaming the ridiculousness of the offices involved, those asshats)

Unfortunately the extremely high expectations of my boss and the dependence of my RIO on me to take care of everything have meant that, more often than not, my classes have to be the thing that gets cut so I can rest between other crap I have to do. This means that, despite doctor's notes and a letter from the disability office at my uni explaining my recurring illness, a couple of my profs are more than willing to ignore an entire semester's worth of good work, good attendance, and general good studentness for a handful of what should be 100% excused absences over the last two weeks. As it also turns out, my uni does not require profs to make attendance exceptions for medical leave even if you're registered with the disability office for it, with the explanation that if you're not "healthy enough" to be a student then you don't deserve to pass. Though I'm not in danger of failing anything, it's pretty upsetting to spend three months busting ass and then in two weeks suddenly drop a full letter even though I didn't miss any actual work. I could have just screwed around those three months to the same effect. It's like when you're playing Scrabble and you're winning due to your excellent vocabulary and strategic skills, then right at the end of the game the other jerk plays "quetexz" or some shit on a triple letter space after spending the whole game time prior to that playing three letter words, texting, and watching Spongebob on the TV behind you. Maybe it fits the rules and all but to say that your mouth-breathing opponent is the better player isn't really fair.

So I went from having a serious case of the notgivingafucks about how this semester went to feeling completely cheated that my careful work to make sure I still maintained GOOD grades is now ruined. I could've followed my heart and just fucked off completely, but no, I decided to be good and responsible, which I should know by now never works out for me. The day I don't have lunch so I can get somewhere on time? Everyone else will be late. The day I stay up late to make sure all my homework is done? They won't collect it that day in class. If I come in early to help with something? It will already be done. Being responsible never seems to actually benefit anyone, and in fact it usually works out to my disadvantage. So I scrapped being nice last year, I think this year I'm going to scrap being responsible. This should work well.

Say Yes To Poisoned Apples

A side note that was omitted from my last post is that I have been on/off very sick and okay for the last two weeks. Today I finally sucked it up and went to the doctor for antibiotics, but I got the one doc at the health center who thinks I'm an insane hypochondriac. I got the meds but she always makes me feel like I'm lying to her. As soon as I start talking to her I start to think I just imagined two weeks of fevers and coughing, or that I didn't REALLY bash my nose last weekend. I don't know how she does this but I'd like to learn.

So anyway, sick. And because I've had a fever there's a severe limit to what I can do, so I've mostly been doing only things I can do while laying down. That includes TV, video games, and the Internet. The weird thing is that these are the only three things I usually do with my time, only normally I do them sitting upright instead of curled up on my bed frowning and squinting because my eyes are all fever sore. But to my great amusement there have been multi-hour marathons of one of my favorite shows recently: Say Yes to the Dress.

If you've never seen it, the premise is simple. It follows the sales people in a high end NYC bridal salon as they attempt to pick the right wedding dress for each client. That's it. Every episode they'll show three to five brides picking out dresses with friends/family gushing over how beautiful they look. Nothing interesting really happens, and there are not real plots. And it is probably the best show on TV right now.

My medical anth prof loves this show. He justifies it like he does all other weird hobbies of his: "It's very anthropological." While he may be stretching a bit in this case, he is right about one thing; it's really interesting to see how different families treat this process. Each one tends to be different, with some doting on their little princesses and some tearing apart every dress like it's directly responsible for the Holocaust. The best part is that all the dresses look the freaking same. Never have I seen so many wildly polarized emotions over a series of almost identical objects. I saw one woman show her sister what I swear was the same damn strapless a-line lace dress over and over for twenty minutes and the sister's range of reactions could have won her an Oscar if this had actually been a movie about the Holocaust and/or high school sports.

So for a week now I've been sitting here coughing and sniffling watching people cry tears of joy/horror at a bunch of nearly identical strapless white gowns. It's amazing. I can't stop watching because I can't figure out what's really going on. What is it about the dress they pick, the one that makes them cry in the store and say "This is the dress!" between sobs, that makes it ANY different from the others? I feel like Jane Goodall trying to decipher gorilla behavior. Though occasionally there's a bride who's like me and doesn't really get the whole dress shopping *thing* and the sales people are always so puzzled and frustrated by them, which is extra funny somehow.

I've heard the word "princess" so many times in the last week, though, that the word has lost all meaning. I'm so tired of hearing it, in fact, that I now have a very specific plan in case I ever do get engaged. I'm going to go to Kleinfelds and tell the sales lady I don't want to look like a princess, I want to look like the evil queen. The reason is because the evil queen actually looks like an adult, for one. Something about grown women excitedly yelling "I look like a princess!" just sounds weird to me, it's like saying "I look like a child! My ideals have not changed since I was four!" Come on, ladies, let's upgrade from Exiled Teenager to Woman Who Runs The God Damn Kingdom. On top of that she's beautiful, too, in a way that lets you wear red lipstick instead of boring nudes. And I'm pretty sure Snow White's skin was supposed to be paler than those dresses anyway, which I guarantee would make her look like a pasty naked mermaid in that generic white strapless number. But if they ask me why I'm going to tell them "Because fuck Snow White, that's why."


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Bronchiodilator and the Sea

There is a beach here you may have heard of called Sandys. It's notorious for having massive waves and extremely dangerous currents, so apparently it seemed like the best way to kick off spring break to two of my anth friends. We went and, under the assurances of my strong-swimming friend, I agreed to go out into deep water.

I knew this would only be a bad idea of I ran out of breath by over exerting myself in the water; I'm a good swimmer and there were plenty of body boarders and surfers out that could help someone in case of rip. I used all my fancy asthma meds before I left for the beach and tied down the sides of my suit before getting in the water. With waves like this you go in with your suit too tight and come out with it loose- I've learned this one the hard way. Tie your suit down well.

Anyway, so we go out. And out. And soon the body boarders are starring at us as we swim past them, wondering what the hell we're doing all the way out there. I'm fine until we've been out for about forty minutes, and then I start to have to breathe a little harder. No biggie, I think. I'll go in now before I really need to, just to be safe.

Lesson I have learned: once I have any trouble breathing, it is already too late.

Going back in is the hardest part. I felt fine, though I was progressively struggling for breath, and was keeping on top of the waves. Then I got to the shore break and, unlucky for me, a series of extra tall waves came up on me. The water was now too shallow to ride them so I had to duck under, but at this point I was panting and the deep breath necessary to go under wasn't good enough. I surfaced hastily and got pushed under again. And again. I started to wonder what would happen if I passed out- would anyone notice? I managed to look over the water long enough to see a few fat tourists starring at me from the beach, not understanding what they were seeing. I started to feel foggy and wondered if anyone would be able to help. Then I felt my feet hit the bottom and I pushed up with everything I had, comic staggering out of the water as fast as I could. I only made it to the edge of the water before I dropped down in the sand, panting, covered in the wet sand from the shore break, hair in a giant matt all over my head. I caught my breath and sheepishly trekked down the beach to my towel, thoroughly embarrassed.

A few minutes later, my first friend came staggering toasted the towels, still dripping, covered in sand, and panting. "Did you see me almost die?" I asked. "Did you see ME almost die??" She replied.

A few minutes after that my other friend, covered in sand, still dripping, came running over, panting. "Did you see me almost die??" She asked. We traded stories and I mentioned how the first two of us has slowly dragged ourselves down the beach, embarrassed. My third friend shook her head. "As soon as I could put my feet down I just ran the hell out of there and didn't stop till I got here. It prolly looked like the ocean just vomited me up."

I think they were not as serious as I was about the true impending nature of my demise by drowning, but I didn't really want to emphasize how much I suck so I downplayed it significantly. I did learn several things, though, among them being the fact that I do not want to be the only idiot in the world to die of asthma duress brought on by overly ambitious outdoor sports. The other lesson is that holy shit drowning might be the worst way to die ever.

I told them how I wondered if anyone would notice I'd passed out and she laughed. "I just thought, 'well, this is it. I had a good run.'"

Nine More Weeks of Winter

In nine weeks I will graduate and I will NEVER HAVE TO DO THIS SHIT EVER AGAIN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE* and I cannot even tell you how excited I am. I was really excited about working full time because I've always preferred working all day to being in school all day but now I really don't want to do anything. I want to have some time off to do NOTHING for a while because I am burned the hell out. But I don't get to do that at all, actually, and odds are I'll end up with a job that doesn't have vacation time. So there's that.

Also, I think you can very easily absorb my feelings about everything by reading Pictures for Sad Children from the beginning. You don't have to read all of it to understand, but the first 100 or so comics pretty much sum me up right now. I used to think A Softer World was the saddest thing I'd ever read but Pictures for Sad Children definitely takes that cake. Stay in school, children, what else are you going to do?

In other news, I am seriously beginning to think Hawaiian tsunamis are fake bullshit things made up by Menehune Water Co to make people buy their entire stock all at once. How else could a wave slap the shit out of every island between Malaysia and California and nothing happens here? Fucking magic, that's how. That or this whole state is its own goddam Truman Show and they use tsunamis and weird racism to keep us from enjoying the island too much.


*Unless I go to grad school, and if I ever need to go to grad school I might as well just go up on a mountain and die because I can't imagine wasting any more of my precious finite life on this crap.

I Want This Day To Last Forever

Over the last four days I have:

-Applied for graduation
-Been approved for graduation in absentia
-Bought my cap & gown
-Registered for commencement
-Applied for a field school in Costa Rica
-Given a presentation on the early 90's cholera epidemic in Venezuela
-Written a paper
-Aced a Japanese test

Today I got accepted to the field school. Then I got a call from HR at a company I had applied to a month ago. They'd filled the position already but said they would keep my resume on file, which I normally assume is bull but here they were calling me said they needed someone and I seemed right. Unfortunately they needed someone full time NOW and I can't do that plus be in school and working at my internship, so I had to decline. But they did say they would keep my stuff on file for another six months. Uh, wow?

The icing on this day is that when I got home I got a call from work telling me not to come in because my boss was out sick.



God I love everything about this week so far. Let's see how long it can keep up this way, shall we? I have a paper due tonight, then midterms tomorrow and on Friday. I am optimistic.

The Story No One Wants to Hear

A little over three weeks ago I started dieting and going to the gym again. Now I've spent a lot of my life working out, but I've never been on a diet before. I've never felt like I needed it because, despite the fact that I've been steadily gaining weight for the last few years, I was crazy skinny before so I was just coming into normal size. The problem was that I was not used to that. I've spent my whole life thus far having size 00 jeans fall off me in the fitting room. There are a couple of brands that made a 0 or 00 that fit me, so I've only ever owned maybe four pairs of jeans at any given time-- and you can forget about any other kinds of pants.

So when those smallest-of-the-small-size pants started to be too small for me, I didn't even realize what was happening for a long time. I've outgrown things, yes, but never in my life have I ever been too heavy to wear something. I was so used to being tiny that once I was no longer tiny I didn't even notice. It wasn't until my skinny jeans couldn't get over my hips at all that it hit me: I was getting chubby.

An interlude here to say that all the people who just rolled their eyes or got offended because that's still a small size and I don't understand what it's like to be REALLY big, I should shut up and be grateful, etc: Go play in the street.

Anyway, the moment I realized this was when I came home one day and peeled myself out of my previously relaxed-fitting bootcut jeans into a much more comfortable pair of sweatpants. That's when it dawned on me-- "These are FAT PANTS. Holy crap I have fat pants. I have to wear fat pants."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that not being a size 0 makes you fat. But when all your pants give you muffin top such that you stopped wearing fitted shirts to hide it and the only thing that fits right is your sweatpants? Those are fat pants. And on someone who's barely five feet tall with a short stubby little torso, a size 2-4 is starting to look chubby. Yeah the size is small, but so is the rest of me. Proportionally it doesn't look small at all.

So I decided to do something about it. I calculated my basic metabolic rate, figured out how many calories I needed a day to maintain, and tried to stay around 500 calories beneath that. I made an effort to keep my calories from fat as minimal as possible and to avoid simple carbohydrates more than once a day. I made sure to spread out my food over the day instead of eating two big meals and a snack like I normally do. I already walk about 45-70 minutes a day to get around, so I added going to the gym 2-3 times a week as time permitted. Since my stamina was really low (mostly from my asthma) I started off just on the elliptical and recumbent bike and, when that got easy, I added some weight training. I never spend more than an hour at the gym.

So now, at a little over three weeks of this, I didn't feel any better. I didn't think I looked any different. Until this morning, I wanted to wear long pants but the only clean ones I had were a pair of extremely unforgiving high-waisted American Apparel skinny jeans... A pair that had ceased to fit over my hips months ago. So I tried them and... POW. Fit perfectly.

I want to share my success with people but, like my original frustration with my weight, no one wants to hear it. People will congratulate me and all but generally hearing about it being easy for me makes other people feel bad. I think Ryan North is right on here when he says "dieting is about commiserating" and no one wants to hear someone going "GUYS LOOK WHAT I DID EASILY" especially when no one thought I was chubby in the first place.

Anyway, so the final punctuation on what I'm sure has been a wholly infuriating read for most of you is this: Today I rushed home from dinner with my boyfriend so I could make it to the gym before they closed because I didn't want to skip a day. When I was adding my workout to my log I realized I hadn't really eaten much today. So on my way home I stopped at the store and got a package of little chocolate donuts as a reward, and also to make sure I got enough calories today.



Now you all hate me, thank you, goodnight.

Honolulu AIDS Walk

April 17th is the 20th annual Honolulu AIDS Walk!

This event benefitsThe Life Foundation is a local organization that does amazing things. They're the state's oldest and largest AIDS-related organization and, as such, serve over 75% of the state's people, providing rapid HIV testing, education and prevention programs, and support services for patients of HIV/AIDS. This doesn't just include counseling and medical care, but home care, groceries, and a wide variety of other essential services. They currently serve over 60% of all HIV/AIDS patients in the state including men, women, and children from every income level and ethnic group. They operate an extensive peer-to-peer prevention effort that targets people at the most risk for contracting HIV, offering support and education. They go out of their way to reach people in the community; if you need an HIV test but can't or don't want to go to their office, they will send an inconspicuous employee to meet you anywhere on island for your cheek swab.

I've volunteered for them in the past, and this is really amazing considering that they operate out of one tiny office the size of a small apartment in Honolulu. Now I'm the captain of team Psychic Unity of Anthropology. We're the UH anthropology department's team and, the event being so far in advance, we are woefully short on people and donations.

You can help by spreading the word about the event or donating directly to our team page. I don't receive any compensation for bringing in donations, this money goes directly to Life Foundation programs.

Thank you very much for anything you can give and any efforts to help us reach more people. You are helping us create a safer, healthier Hawaii and for that you have our great appreciation.

Job Applicants Are People, Too

I've spent way more time than I'd like to admit applying for jobs over the last year and a half since I moved here. In that time there have been periods where I was applying to something new every few days for weeks at a time. I can't rightly estimate how many jobs I've applied for, but I can give you the exact number of times I've been rejected: Zero.

That's right, zero rejections! But I'm still unemployed, right? How is this possible? Because I got no responses at all. None that said yes, or no, or hey we got your application. Nothing. And every time I called a place to say "did you get that thing I sent ya" after sending applications by email (maybe it got lost in the internet tubes somewhere?) they were generally dodgy and annoyed that I was wasting their precious phone time. One place I applied to was a wee little business run by one woman, so she can't even use the too-many-applications-to-contact-everyone excuse. In fact no one can, because this is a tiny island and I know that there will never be more than MAYBE two dozen applications for any job opening ever.

So to all potential employers I say: what gives? Don't you understand that we're people, too? We have feelings, for one, and it is very stressful the weeks after applying for a job when you're wondering if you'll get an interview and then you never hear anything at all. It's rude, on top of that, to treat applicants like we should be grateful for any time you ever spend interacting with us. What more, we are customers. We probably want to work for you because we like your company, but if we apply for a job and never ever hear from you, that's gonna turn us off. And if we apply by mail and then you get all huffy when we call to see if you received it? We are not going to like your company anymore. And just like any bad other customer experience, that is really bad for you.

What more, you have no idea how little work it would take to make us happy. This week, after a year and a half of this crap, I emailed an application and the company replied to let me know they were looking at it and that if I didn't hear in four weeks I could assume I had not been selected. They also asked me for additional information and when I supplied it they replied again to thank me for responding promptly.

There, two emails consisting of about three sentences each. And now I love these guys and I won't even be mad if they reject me. I'm even more hopeful that I'll get this position now, and even if I don't I'll gladly keep supporting their organization. By contrast, runs-her-own-business lady lost me completely. I had been really interested in supporting a new business that did a lot of things I liked, but not anymore. This is the most effortless good press you can possibly buy yourself as a company, don't ruin it by treating your applicants like crap.

Why I Don't Want Prince Charming (And Neither Should You)

No, I'm not here about to tell you that Prince Charming doesn't exist. That's a big load of bullshit conjured up by bullshit guys who want you to think you can't do better than them. Oh no, Prince Charming exists. Not only am I sure he exists, I'm relatively sure there are thousands of men who can qualify for the Prince Charming label in any given generation. That's not the point. The point is that you're not a fucking princess.

And by princess here I don't mean prissy and fussy. I mean classy, charismatic, cultured, etc. I'm pretty sure you are not on Prince Charming's level in any of these facets, and if you do match up with one or two, there are probably some other big gaps in your Princess Charming qualities because you're a goddamn normal person and that's how it is.

You are not beautiful and unique in your own snowflake way. Your kindergarten teacher lied to you just like she lied about the class hamster Mr. Scoots going to live on a nice farm. The things that make you interesting to some people are also the things that make you intolerable to others. There is no one on earth who thinks all your weird little quirks are on the awesome side of the lameness spectrum, there are only people to whom the lame quirks are tolerable and/or unimportant. When compared to Prince Charming, who is the classiest of class acts, your lame quirks are going to look a lot less tolerable and a lot more important. And when this happens, one of you is going to get pissed. Most likely, it will be you.

Yes, you. Why? Because Prince Charming is a reasonable person, odds are good he's not going to insert his head up in his ass and start nitpicking at you for not being good enough for him. If you really get under his skin, he will probably be decent and leave. And if you don't get under his skin, his acceptance of your issues will get under yours. When he doesn't notice that he's out of your league, you will, and it's going to bug the crap out of you. Every time he takes the high road, you get a little more angry, sneaky-hate-spiral type angry. You don't realize it's making you angry until one day he goes and does something awesome and you just hate it.

Because when you're surrounded by people who do things better than you, it makes you realize all the ways in which you should be better, but aren't. It makes you feel bad about yourself, and that can make you resentful. You most likely won't understand why you can't just be happy with a good thing, and that will make you feel worse. That's why, when a normal guy surprises you with breakfast, it's okay that he follows up by whacking you in the shins to see how long it takes before you kick him. That's what makes you feel okay when you do something ridiculous that afternoon. It's all balance. If he surprised you with breakfast and then did the dishes and didn't do anything weird up until you left the house with your pants on backwards later that day, then you're the loser in the relationship. No one wants to be that person, so being made that person by comparison to someone amazing hurts.

And if you don't feel that way, you're a jerk and you don't deserve Prince Charming. So there.

Hawaii: Where Every Day Is Opposite Day

I'm beginning to think that people here actually do make an effort to figure out what the best plan of action is, then they willfully do the exact fucking opposite.

I've been suspicious of this for a while now, but this week I really think I've come across irrefutable proof. Monday, January 10th, was the first day of class for all the schools in the University of Hawaii system. The first week to two weeks of every semester is marked by extremely heavy traffic around campus, impossible parking, and lines with waits of twenty to forty five minutes at pretty much every office on campus. The longest and most annoying lines are for student ID validations, textbook purchases, and financial aid office help.

Those first two things are located in the Campus Center building, which is also the student union. The book store is here, along with the ID/bus pass office, student government, university credit union, a major computer lab, all the meeting and conference rooms, the campus copy center, and most of the eateries available on campus. It's a lot of things in a large building.

UH decided that the weekend before class started was the best time to start massive expansion project on Campus Center. They also decided that walkways are for chumps and completely blocked off the entire center of campus, AKA the place with the heaviest foot traffic and the intersection of every path necessary to get from one building to another. For good measure, they also repaved the second busiest walkway on the other side of campus and blocked it off entirely, too.

So now to get anywhere, we have to make massive detours that don't make any sense, and you have to stalk in circles around Campus Center before you can find a way in. There is only one way in now, by the way.

And just in case no one cared that foot traffic was an ordeal, the city also decided to repave the major road that runs alongside campus and in front of all the dorms on the first two days of school, shutting it down. And because they also hate pedestrians, they made it impossible to cross without walking for two blocks in either direction of the major intersection at which we all normally cross.

Hawaii: You Will Run On Island Time Or We Will Fucking Make You Run On Island Time.

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.


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

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.