All Things Great and Small

Haha, ok, so it's been like 5 months. What can I say? I've been busy.

Well, my last post was about the expensiveness of graduate school applications. Well, I did not lie to you! But now they're over, and I'm attending Central Washington University. Woo! It's in Ellensburg, WA, and it is indeed the center of Washington. It's also the center of nowhere, but hey, I've been there before. The exciting thing is that I'll be working in the Chimpanzee and Human Communications Institute! how cool is that? I'll be teaching chimps to speak American Sign Language (if I can get into a class here in Philly that is....). I'm super excited! So now I'm looking for a place to live...worrying because I haven't been able to find an assistantship yet; the Psych department turned me down, and so did some editing job, and I can't seem to find where they're hiding the rest of them so I can apply. There's gotta be SOMEONE who wants to hire me. I'm also in charge of finding us a place to live. Or, at least making all of the calls. I did find this amazing place last night, for only 650/mo. It would be about half of a house (separated), with a kitchen and bathroom and washer/dryer and no utilities! But one of the other girls from the chimp institute got there before me, so now she's planning on staying there. I must say I'm terribly envious.

In other news I am enjoying work (surprisingly). We (myself, and my two female coworkers) were rather nervous about not having a boss for the first month. We bonded quite closely, and were little less than hostile when the new boss came. But our new General Manager has really carved a place for herself out of our inimical 3-musketeer wall. Now we are a fearsome foursome (oh, and Joe). I will be very sad to leave these three wonderful women. I finally feel like I'm learning what TO do, as opposed what NOT to do. Both are valuable lessons, but learning what to do always looks better.

I'm also taking a trip to Florida to see Jes get married to Charles (woo!), and attempting to keep myself sane while I wait for Washington. Wish me luck!

Ok, so I know I haven't updated in a while...work is busy as hell. Buuuut, I'm trying to apply for grad school in the best way I know how (which is not very well), and doing my best to do everything right (and failing miserably).

but one thing that I read, and which I pretty much agree with, is that you should never mention/talk to a professor unless you have read something he/she has written FIRST. So, with application deadlines coming at me fast and furious, I'm scrambling to find professors at schools I want to attend who have articles available on the interwubs.

While this is not so difficult, finding them for free IS. I have been offered for purchase not only articles, but books and even single chapters out of text books. They have ranged in price between $20.00 to $59.99. Now, that doesn't sound like very much, but I'm applying to 12 schools. that's 12 schools times 12 application fees and if you stack 12 articles (assuming I only read one thing per professor) on top of that, I'm looking at thousands of dollars just to get a letter in the mail thanking me for my application, but due to the high volume of people who want to attend that school who also happen to be better than me, or a better fit, or richer or whatever, they cannot admit me to their school. But maybe I should try again next year...

What the fuck, grad school. What. The. Fuck?

I thought that the Internet was supposed to herald a new age of free information and a huge sharing of ideas. How am I supposed to write/speak to people I've never met if I can't even read what they have written?

/end rant.

Ok, so I went to a preview of Sweeny Todd with Gordon and Kelly last night, and while the acting was amazing, the singing incredible and the story a classic , I was struck by the sheer amount of gore that Tim Burton chose to include in the film. I know the point of the film is to showcase the depths of monomanaicism and the lengths to which Todd will go to achieve what he wants, but this is also a show that I have seen high schools perform, and perform well. I do NOT believe this movie is appropriate for high school students. I'm not sure it's appropriate for anyone.

Now, before everyone gets all up-in-arms about freedom of speech and a person's ability to choose, let me also say that I not only thought the movie was incredibly beautiful, I'm also glad that I saw it. It makes a person skew the lines between right and wrong, antagonist and victim, love and infatuation. It shows, in horrific detail, not the decent, but the actual madness itself, and the madness is threefold. It is breathtaking. This movie was done exceptionally well. Except for the gore.

Kelly and I had a long conversation about Uberviolence and how sometimes something is so violent it reaches a point where it becomes a parody of itself. It parodies violence by showing violence. I can understand this, there are several movies I quite enjoy that show this, Kill Bill 1 & 2 being two of them. Hell, even Monty Python and the Holy Grail parodies violence by showing violence (It's just a flesh wound!).

But I felt that this fell short of that mark. Far short. And that kind of ruined it for me.

I feel like the most profoundly, utterly frightening movies are the movies that show not a single knife piercing skin, not a bullet entry, not even a strangling. Take Alfred Hitchcock for a moment. This has perhaps the most frightening scene in movie history. Even if you have never seen the movie, you know the music, can picture the shower, the belly button, the knife poised in sillhouette, the piercing scream, the blood running to the drain, but never rent flesh. It is chilling while being not in the slightest graphic. It is tastefully and expertly executed. Hitchcock's movies are still watched today with the same fear, the same reaction they had when tv and movies were of a gentler nature. Why? because he understood how to utilize his audience's imagination. Tim Burton has an incredible imagination. His vision and his artistry are nigh unparalleled in the film industry. But he's not using our imaginations, and he's hammering home the themes in Sweeny Todd a little too firmly. Alright. Enough. We get it.

My overall review: Go see it. It is amazing. It is beautiful. But be prepared for a lot of blood and a rather large sick feeling in your stomach.

On the twelfth day of Christmas,

mizzcheerbear sent to me...

Twelve

tstthisrnbws eating

Eleven mmorpgs writing

Ten girls a-clubbing

Nine friends camping

Eight olives a-drinking

Seven cocktails a-reading

Six lesbians a-cuddling

Five clo-o-o-oves

Four video games

Three epicurian delights

Two mind-fuck movies

...and a love in an alfred university.

So, I just found out that my cubicle is being moved. It's not a very big deal to me, mostly because I actually fit inside one cubicle. But Mark has three computers, plus two filing cabinets full of stuff (I also have a tiny filing cabinet and a locking cabinet with shelves for petty cash). We are being moved to the shit-tastic middle of the office, where there are eight cubicles all together, not to mention the conference room and copy rooms. There will be way too much noise and way too much going on for me to concentrate on anything. Needless to say, I'm not pleased about this and neither is Mark, but it's REALLY crappy for him. Rather than having three cubicles to spread out in (he needs it), he will have to condense himself into two.

All this, so that fucking Saxby's Coffee can take over our cubes. What the hell? I mean, they've already been sitting in our conference room for the past 3 months or so, which is really shitty for them, true, but we've been down a conference room (that we really need). Apparently the "big boss" (eliminating names to protect anonymity...hah!) has purchased a large portion of Saxby's and so now, since my company is going down the tubes, we're being pushed aside to make way for the more profitable company. Seriously, what the fuck.

Oh, and apparently the new security desk is online for installation...all glass and circular with colored lights on the inside. The sum total for this thing is nearly $200k, which puts this desk at about 6x my salary. Oh, and they have to cut a circular groove in the MARBLE FLOOR of the atrium for it...the marble floor that is laid out like a Quaker quilt pattern, and which is probably worth millions.

Maybe we'd have more money and not be so broke if we weren't spending money on FRIVOLOUS CRAP!

Oh, and my boss decided that she can leave work 4 hours early because she's babysitting her friend's kids, and she had to go pick them up. If I was babysitting my friend's kids (not that my friends have kids), or my own kids for that matter, I wouldn't be able to leave work to go pick them up for any reason. I am absolutely insensed at her actions, especially since she nearly fired me because I wanted to take my first sick day ever to take my car to the shop (it was overheating). I ended up having to wait three weeks and one 1400 mile round-trip road-trip to get my car fixed. But that's another story.

20%

Quiz courtesy of Funny Lists from Listocracy

I'm honestly surprised at this one. I thought I'd be more scroogelicious. You heard me. scroogelicious.

Your Celebrity Boob Twin:

Carmen Electra

Ok, so Kelly sent me the link to this article about some little boys who raped a little girl. Let me repeat that. They RAPED a little girl.

What the hell, people.

What. The. Hell.

I just had the weirdest idea. What if our society as a whole evolves to the point that we will no longer need spoken word?

We are already on our way. Most of us spend hours and hours silently staring at a computer/pda/phone screen, typing/tapping away, communicating just as complexly (possibly more-so) as if we were addressing the person(s) face-to-face. Cell phones are becoming more and more text-based, utilising the internet and even including entire QWERTY keyboards.

In the past five years we, as a planet, have generated more paper than in all years previously. That's a lot of stuff being read. That's a lot of stuff not being said.

Is it possible that soon all correspondance will be text-based? Even now, as I sit here in the glow of my flat-screened monitor, I could be postulating on the future of our language over drinks or coffee, face-to-face with a friend.

So what would happen to vocal nuances? inflection? facial expression? Is it all doomed to be translated into textual emoticons? T_T Will we lose all the subtleties of pronunciation? Similar to Latin or Egyptian, will all language be readable only silently? (Latin has 6 different accents that it is considered "correct" to utilise, based on what your first romance language is.) How would we teach our children to read if they cannot learn audibly? Will illiteracy rates drop to nonexistence?

hmmm. Pondersome.

You Should Get An All Over Tattoo

Outrageous and funky
Because you should never have to choose just one tattoo

Rice Boy. Seriously, it's gorgeous and inventive. Some of the best art I've seen in a long time, and a beautiful plot with minimalistic characters. I would have trouble describing just how well this comic pulls off surrealism in both 2-D art and language. I can only say that I wish there were more projects like this.

EDIT:

riceboyartis actually an LJ user! even more reason to read!

So last night I went out with

kspectre and

razorangelwings to a great place called Rangoon which was really quite tasty and inexpensive! Don't let the website scare you! it's not actually quite so....neon.

Anyway, we had some tasty rice and noodle and bread dishes (the thousand layer bread is amazing!) and had a grand time. One of the owners even came to our table to wait on us at one point. That was pretty cool.

After the tasty food we went to Sister's (Sisters'?...oh, Sisters....) for drinks, which was plenty of fun. They have nice drink prices, and a quiet atmosphere (although the music they were playing was boarder-line hilarious), at least until about 10:30, and we were out of there long before that! Basically I got enough drinks to make me incredibly sleepy (but not enough to make me want to party like a rockstar...), so we left around 9:30pm. When I got home I conked out and didn't move all night, haha. I rarely sleep that well. I guess all I needed was a little alchy to help me out.

But oh! Sisters is having a Thanksgiving Eve party with a $2 happy hour ($5 cover) from 9-11, and 4 different DJ's. Apparently Thanksgiving Eve is a very big party night...I did not know this previously, but my friend Kathleen has just confirmed it. So, Kelly and I are probably going, and everyone should come too! it should be fun and cheap at the very least. We are also looking for a designated driver, haha.

But of course, now I'm feeling pretty craptastic! mostly just tired, not hung-over or anything. This week has sucked my ass.

Oh yeah, and Wednesday night I interviewed for a catering job. That will be a couple weekends a month, bartending and serving. woo! that should bring in a little extra money. They started me at $15 an hour....that's more than I make at my current job! ftw! I just have to call them on Monday and let them know when I want to work. Hopefully this will give me the experience I need to start bartending full time and I can quit this godawful job. We'll see.

Well, I haven't been posting as much as I probably should, but I've been bogged down by work (crappy excuse! who isn't?!) . Honestly, I haven't even had the time to be a lurker.

Whew, and I just witnessed a scene wherein my craptastic boss nearly got hit in the face by the superiorly craptastic company owner because her print job was taking too long. He pulled back however, and hit a filing cabinet instead. What the fuck?! do I work with barbarians? Who the hell punches walls at work? People with anger management issues, that's whom. I mean, seriously: he yells and screams so loud that you can hear him (through closed doors) half a block away. He punches inanimate objects (well at least they're inanimate, I guess), and fires people at will.

We don't have an HR department, so there's not really anyone I can go to about this situation. My boss is completely frightened of this ogre (or "Frankenstein" as some of us lovingly call him), and won't stand up for herself. She instead kisses his ass and follows him around like a puppy. They go drinking together and she fauns over him like a mortal would faun over a giant to keep from being eaten.

Be that as it may, his behavior is completely inappropriate, and I would like to address it, legally if necessary. Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do? I don't think I want to spend the money to sue him. But this is ridiculous.

Anyway, other than that I'm getting along pretty well.

Well, this weekend Kelly and I went up to Lehigh U. to celebrate homecoming with her sister, sister's boyfriend, cousins and their (collective) families. It was a good ol' time with lots of wine and cheese (oh the cheese!) and food. Oh yeah, and a football game. I believe Lehigh won, 40-0 (go Lehigh!), so it was actually a pretty boring game, and by the 4th quarter, everyone just went into the other room to talk and drink (more) wine. So, that was lots of fun. I'll admit, I didn't think it was going to be (I don't enjoy football very much. Something about huge sweatily-spandexed men throwing themselves at each other doesn't really appeal to me.), but I had lots of fun.

That was Saturday. Sunday we went grocery shopping and made peanut pumpkin soup! It was pretty good!

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