Underage: Habitual Trash Picker-Upper

Tuesday, November 4, 2008 cannot come soon enough. Sometimes when I get so stressed out about the future of freedom, I have to listen to Obama's Yes We Can song over and over, just to keep myself from vomiting.

Other times, when I'm walking past the Capitol, thinking about the next congress, I start hyper-ventilating, and I just have to reach down to start picking up trash. I will, no doubt, continue this annoying practice as I wait in line to vote.

It is not always easy being a
kid. This is one of my greatest

worries and my way of dealing with

it.My gretest worry is will

the earth be hear when

I grow up? What will

happer to me will

I die. will I disapear?

I deat with this by

picking up trash. Recy-

ciling and Reuseing

things.

Thats

how

I deal

with

that

Gemini: You Don't Have Gills

Your stress-management technique of taking long, deep breaths will prove disastrous this week when a riptide drags you underwater.

Flickr: (Slimmer Jimmer)

This I Believe: We Are Not the Enemy

This post is part of the Write to Marry Day - Support for Marriage Equality.

"I don't think the world's biggest problem is two people who love each other so much that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. (via comments on dooce.com)"

With things heating up in the final days before the election, I have endured and read about some unfortunate confrontations over "the homosexuals" and their battle "against" marriage in California. I have donated to the cause, and fretted about the consequences of Proposition 8.

While I am worried that marriage rights will be taken away in California, I am incredibly disturbed by the tendency to de-humanize and vilify lesbians and gays in order to mobilize people to vote against them. I worry people forget that these individuals have mothers, fathers and partners who love and care for them, that they are more interested in building their own lives than in destroying the lives of others, and that they only ask the rights which others already enjoy.

I wonder if hate crimes against lesbians and gays would have decreased, rather than increased in the past year, if people could see lesbians and gays as actual people they could be friends with, rather than enemies.

I wonder if my father would still be talking to me, if he could see me as something other than an enemy to his marriage and family.

I wonder if Prop 8 would have less support, if more people had lesbian and gay friends in their immediate circles.



It's more difficult to vilify and then discriminate against a group of people when we put a face on them and/or get to know them. The brilliance of blogging is that it gives us the chance to see lesbians and gays as something more than a threatening, ominous enemy, but as real people, people we could be friends with, people we could even support and love.

I hope people will take the chance to put a face on the individuals that will be affected by Prop 8 (One example: We Are Not the Enemy), and I hope they will support equality by voting No on Prop 8.

Underage: Potty Humor

Yeah..., this photo was bound to surface anyway.

Why do parents even take these photos?

In any case, my mother did a good job. With the exception of the LSAT, I never have potty accidents anymore.

If I went on a trip and
could take only one
possession I would take
I would take a tolite
because if I didnt bring
a toilit I would hoft to
go bathroom on the
ground.

Pioneer Craft Hour: Here is the Steeple

It has turned violently cold in DC. Yesterday I was wearing shorts. Today I'm in a jacket and scarf. The cabbie I was complaining to said not to worry, "We haven't skipped fall cause the leaves haven't changed."

Well, mother nature, I'm waiting.

Remember: That time you borrowed a pencil for the LSAT

There are times when I think signing up for the LSAT two months before the deadline is good enough, but sometimes I’m wrong. So wrong, in fact, that I end up on a waiting list which inevitably gets me a test spot in BALTIMORE.

The night before the test, Mandrew and I head up to “the greatest city in America” (apparently, Baltimore). I set up headquarters in the living room of one of his high school friends, where I pack my one gallon ziplock (the only container allowed in the testing center) with 3 pencils, a water bottle, my ID, my LSAT ticket stub and some cash. I don’t cram, since I’ve been cramming the last 2 months, but I do try to get some sleep.

(Photo: S.C. Asher)

I wake up an hour before my alarm trying to figure out this problem:

If the 10th amendment is traveling east at 40 mph and the 2nd amendment is traveling west at 75 mph, in the resulting collision, how many Supreme Court justices will be replaced by the next president? And will Roe v. Wade be overturned?

I shower quickly, use the restroom TWICE, grab my ziplock and run out the door. After running around this foreign city for twenty minutes, I finally find a cab driver awake at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. He takes me to the hotel where the test is being administered. I’m an hour early, so I take my nervous jitters out on the men’s restroom three times before I check in and take my seat.

The girl next to me is organizing her ziplock on her desk. While examining a glitter-covered pencil says, “I don’t know if this is a no. 2 pencil,” and takes out a normal one. I courtesy laugh and examine my own pencils just in case.

(*&^#$%*(# [HEAD EXPLODES] *&#@&@^% [EYES FALL OUT OF HEAD]

All three of my pencils are no. 2.5s. TWO AND A HALFs! WHO EVEN MAKES THESE!?!?

I search my peers frantically. I have just become THAT kid, the one that had to BORROW a pencil for the LSAT! The one that can’t read SIMPLE directions (NUMBER 2 PENCILS ONLY).
The upright girl with SEVEN immaculately sharpened no. 2s is probably too anal retentive to lend me one, but the girl next to her in the hoodie, with unwashed hair, might just be the one.

Sure enough! She lends me two pencils, but only after she and everyone around decide I PROBABLY won’t make it to law school. And if I do, I’ll probably be hit by a car on my first day, when I stop in the middle of the crosswalk to search my backpack for a writing utensil.

I wait for the test to being, and just before they fire the starting shot, my bladder gives up. Despite having gone to the bathroom a total FIVE times this morning, I have to go AGAIN. But since I’m determined to finish this test AND with a DECENT score, I just writhe and reel with borrowed pencil in hand.

ON YOUR MARKS! (Hold it! HOLD IT!)
GET SET! (Don’t cry! DO NOT CRY!)
GO! (You WILL finish this test!)

Gemini: Culinarily Impotent

You'll be awarded the Nobel Prize For Not Paying Attention And Letting The Damn Rice Burn Again this week.

(Photo by: boskizzi)

Pioneer Craft Hour: Meridian Hill

I took these at Meridian Hill for a few engaged friends of ours. Mandrew would make them laugh, and I would shoot them with my camera. I take full responsibility for my actions.

Black & White:

X Pro:

This is my absolute favorite: