Monologues and Dialogues

If you aren't a Facebook friend of mine, likely this topic will completely pass you by.  The topic being, of course, douchecastles.

I post links to things that outrage me, and make social commentary on them.  I am fond of facts and logic and forcing reason down my opponents' throats, but I can't seem to be cool and tactical without plenty of ad hominem thrown in.  One of the insults that I've come around to using is "douchecastle."  "Douchebag" seems sort of tame.  A douchebag is just your average, everyday jerk -- the kind who makes your day suck, but not really maliciously.  They're just too self-involved to notice that they shouldered you into a dirty puddle during the lunchtime rush to the Student Union.  They're not perpetrating atrocities via a complex and arbitrary system for their own personal gain while spreading vile propaganda to keep the populace sheep-like and unaware.  No, the people who are doing that are douches of the sort uncontainable by bags.  They are douchecastles, not only because of the magnitude of their asshattery, but also because of the opulence they live in while they knowingly force others into desperate situations and then blame those others for not working hard enough or not being good enough citizens or other bullshit like that.

Such a term's existence only makes sense.  The state of douchery is not discrete, but rather, exists on a spectrum.

Thus, it is recommended that the use of "douche" be versatile.  It should serve freely as prefix, root, or suffix in any word, portmanteau or otherwise.

Here are some examples to get you started:

Herpedouchery: snakes being jerks to each other
Corpodouche: the salaryman or highly-paid executive who also happens to be a big jerk
Doucheware: any material object that seems ubiquitous of people who are douches -- for example, aviator sunglasses and popped collars
Doucheparty: any gathering that supports bigotry and/or idiocy and is against progress and a better world -- for example, Tea Parties and protests staged by the Westboro Baptist Church

The possibilities are endless as long as you have an imagination and plenty of seething contempt for people who can't seem to string together a coherent sentence and yet have the right to vote on things that directly affect your livelihood.

Unless you live under a rock, you've heard about the devastating earthquake in Haiti.  Do you remember what Katrina was like?  How even if you weren't within a thousand miles of Louisiana, everything was still chaos and how you poured your emotional and financial support over there because FEMA was doing only a little more than jackshit and needed help and goddamn, those were your fellow Americans who were homeless and dislocated?

Yeah, it's like that in Haiti, only a lot worse.  Haiti is nowhere near as prosperous or as geographically large as the United States, and the earthquake hit their capitol.  In the United States, that would be as if Katrina wiped out Washington DC and the entire Eastern seaboard.

Unless you live in a nice part of America (by "nice" I mean New England or Northwest metropolises) or have unrivaled channel-surfing skills, you've probably heard what conservatives -- Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, various Fox News correspondents -- have had to say about the earthquake in Haiti.

They and their statements are what human beings of the decent type call "assholes" and "utter doucheassery," respectively.

Do you want to be like them?  Do you want to be associated with their ilk?

If not, here is a list of organizations assisting the disaster relief in Haiti and ways that you can help.  I favor Doctors Without Borders and the International Red Cross, simply because they're well-established and trustworthy secular non-discriminatory organizations, but really, any penny you send anywhere will help.

Unless you are in financial traits ("I will not be able to have my daily Starbucks latte for three days!" does not count; "I will not be able to buy fresh produce this week" is acceptable), you are an asshole full of utter doucheassery if you don't contribute.

My three-day-old bank account at the PNC on campus now has $10 less than it did when I opened it and made the initial deposit.

Go forth and help your fellow humans of the American continent in their time of need, as they did in ours.  Do it because it's right thing to do, do it because all your outspoken liberal socially conscious Facebook friends are spamming your feed full of their statuses about it and you hate them and want them to stop pestering you, do it because you're one of those outspoken liberal socially conscious Facebookers and you don't want to be the only one not on the bandwagon, whatever.  Just do it (and then go buy some Nike sneakers so your karma doesn't get too good).

Tonight, I saw Daybreakers, which is a film by the Spierig Brothers.  The premise of the movie is that vampires have taken over the world and that the humans that are left are either farmed for their blood or part of a small underground resistance.  The only problem for the vampires is that the human blood supply is running out, a viable blood substitute has not yet been developed, and blood deprivation leads to physical and mental degeneration into inhuman, skeletal, bat-like monsters.  Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, chief hematologist of Bromley Marks, the "leader of blood pharmaceuticals," who is working to formulate a blood substitute and gets entangled in the affairs of a group of humans who claim to have the cure for the problem.

Based on the trailer that I saw, I had expected it to be sort of like Gattaca and Children of Men mushed together, where the corporations and the government oppressed both humans and vampires alike, vampires sought to hunt down more humans to perpetuate their unsustainable way of life, and humans, in small resistance cells, fought back against the vampires and their system guerrilla-style.

Well, it is sort of like that, really.  The beginning of the movie starts out slowly, to establish the setting and current affairs of the world.  Then, the action/thriller part of the movie takes over the drama and world-building and things get progressively more predictable and unintentionally hilarious.  Hilarious, because there were a lot of tactical blunders on the characters' part (when you live in a dangerous world full of desperate people trying not to starve and turn into monsters, or are being pursued by bloodthirsty soldiers committed to hunting you down, the only smart thing to do is to leave the door wide open and stand with your back to it), and also because cinematic blood and guts soaring gracefully through the air always elicits a giggle.

The acting was awkward in some parts, and there were definitely plot holes and continuity errors, but I did think that it was a nice, watchable movie, albeit a bit heavy-handed with its take-home messages (the corporate villain was totally a Republican who didn't believe in global warming before he became a vampire), parallels to our current global situation (food shortages and rising food prices of 2008 and 2009 ringing a bell?), and symbolism (I am currently desensitized to Christ figures in modern cinematography).  Ethan Hawke looks good in an unbuttoned waistcoat, which also helps.

Happy Winter Solstice, everyone!  As a friend said, from here on out, the days will only get brighter.

I am home on break, and have finally settled back in to being home.  Oddly enough, despite the luxuries of home (most notably, FRESH FRUIT), I find myself missing my dorm room, and even school work.  I liked being miserable and overworked.  All this relaxation will turn my mind into putty.

I think I might hibernate, and only wake up for a) any Awkward Asian Potlucks, because there will be delicious food and enough wontons and potstickers to feed the entire state, b) the Doctor Who Christmas special, because I totally called it during Easter when I said the Master was coming back and augh I have to know how David Tennant's going to die and regenerate into Matt Smith, and c) meet up with friends who are also on break.

I'm currently not sleeping, obviously, but doing a little writing.  I have all these cool story ideas in my head that will probably never get realized because I can't focus on one story long enough to actually finish it.  On a related note, do you consider "Gil" to be more of a boy's name or a girl's name?  I am trying to find the Perfectly Unisex Name.  I know Alex is one, but I'm sure there are already tons of plucky teenaged protagonists out there in the literary world named Alex.  At first, I wanted to have my protagonist be nameless and genderless, but I eventually realized that I'm not quite skilled enough to pull that off, yet.

So, lined up to be written so far: George Oliver Drexel who has the Universe inside a casserole dish which he keeps in the refrigerator (put on hold until after I've read the Bible cover to cover), a heteronormative vampire romance with a relationship that doesn't come off as creepy and abusive, and dystopia-that's-really-a-utopia because as fond as I am of democracy, Machiavelli does not approve (I'm writing this one in snippets that I'll hopefully be able to string together later).

Other than writing bits and pieces here and there, I am also catching up on reading.  During the semester, I had a gazillion things to read for Classics (and I didn't even get to Plato's Dialogues, because I read Plautus' plays instead; I regret that now, because Plautus was kind of terrible and even if he did predate Shakespeare by nearly a millennium, he was obviously trying so hard to be Shakespeare; also, Plautus was barely even on my Classics final).  So, now, I have two weeks to read some of the things I've been wanting to read but haven't been able to, and maybe reread some of my favorites.

Currently, I am reading The Lexicographer's Dilemma by Jack Lynch, which I actually started reading in the middle of November, before I got distracted by Greek tragedy.  I'm only as far as Chapter 8 (which is on orthography), and I'm really enjoying it so far.  Even without having read the chapter on naughty words yet, it's been an interesting and very amusing read.  I'll form a full opinion of the book once I've finished it.

And at this point, I have to realize that at a little over 14,000 words, I will not be a NaNoWriMo winner this year. That's okay, though. I'm still going to stick with writing the two stories that I've started and I want to finish them, because I've rediscovered, after a long dry spell of gosh I don't even know what happened, that I like writing about people who aren't me, opinions that aren't mine, and events and such that aren't real. So, basically, I like writing that's not vaguely journalistic or me whingeing on my blog (ie, right now).

I definitely haven't been able to write the allotted 1667 words (or even more) a day, but clocking in a few hundred in between my complete inability to manage my time and my complete lack of willpower when it comes to doing anything and in general getting back into the groove of writing (sort of) has been fun.

There's always next year.

First, the good news: I don't think I did terribly on my Bio exam yesterday. Admittedly, there were several questions on structures of the ear that I floundered on, because like an idiot, I skipped studying for sensory systems and instead focused on metabolic processes (which was basically the entire first half of the test, so good job me for that), effectors (muscles, basically), and the circulatory system. The circulatory system will help me for my Bio lab quiz later tonight, though. I am unrepentant.

News neither good nor bad: I bought Aeschylus' Oresteia (translated by Robert Fagles) new from the Book Center for Classics class today. There were used copies available but they had ugly orange stickers on the spine and were all wrinkled and torn, and you don't understand how lovely my copy of the Oresteia is. I mean, guh. I can't wait until we get to the part where the Furies descend upon Orestes and rend him from limb to limb. Also, I bought Almond Roca and lots of chocolate and food. I'm poor again, ho hum, I really must manage my money better and et cetera, but dark chocolate and marzipan are really yummy together and my life up until I bought Almond Roca was just an endless cycle of being awake and craving toffee and sleeping and dreaming of toffee.

Bad news: I think my GPA may not survive my performance on this morning's Chem exam. It was all fun and games and electron configurations and periodic trends until the free response section, in which I completely forgot how to calculate covalent radius given bond length and obfuscated and hemmed and hawed my way through figuring out and then explaining my rationale for Schrodinger's wave expression equation for the 2s (or was it 2p?) orbital.

Terrible, horrific, apocalyptic news: I just learned that B- = 2.75 GPA, B = 3.0, B+ = 3.25, and A- = 3.5. To stay in the Honors College, Honors housing, and the PharmD program, I need a 3.25 GPA. To keep my scholarships, I don't know what my GPA needs to be, but I'm pretty sure they're a 3.5 GPA or something -- I can't imagine the criteria for National Merit Scholarships being lenient. If I get A's -- a flat A, not an A- -- in Classics and Spanish, B- in Chem (yay for labs and homework being grade boosts!), and a B in Bio, I think I might be able to pull off a 3.25. Maybe. Also, to top it all off, I no longer have a thermos -- it died in the wash -- nor the money for a new one.

I talk about my grades a lot, don't I? I should get excited and make things and talk about them instead.

My parents, sympathetic to my jobless, penniless plight, have given me money.  Having friends whose parents are not sympathetic to their jobless, penniless plights, I feel extremely lucky to have parents who are capable and willing to provide beyond the basic necessities.

I spend a lot of money, and it's probably because for me, the line between "need" and "want" is very, very hazy and moves depending on what mood/mindset I'm in.  Part of my problem is money management, which is why I'm going to save receipts like mad to figure out what I'm spending money on, and also so that I'm able to return impulse purchases later.  However, I definitely think that another part -- a very big part -- is my current state of unemployment.  Back when I lived at home with my parents and was still in high school, I had a part-time job at the library, and because I knew that I always had another paycheck coming, I didn't feel at all worried that I was spending almost all my money on books, music, electronic doohickeys, etc.  I wish now that I'd saved more of that money.  When I lived with my parents, I didn't have to buy food, either.  Now, trying to eat as well as I did back home on what little I've saved, I've come to appreciate exactly how expensive food -- especially fresh fruit -- can get.  I took huge white grapefruits, crates of persimmons, and pounds of pomegranates and blueberries and pick-your-own blackberries for granted, and I really, really miss having access to such an abundance of fruit whenever I feel the least bit peckish.

So.  The solution is to find a job.  I want to tend bar, but since bartenders need to be certified and I have no way to pay for training, I'm going to have to settle for something else until I have $100 just sitting around waiting to be used.  The Arby's down the street from my dorm is hiring, and that's probably where I'm going to end up working, because although I might be able to find a department at the University that needs an office lackey or research assistant, I don't think I'll be able to get paid for that work since I'm not eligible for federal work-study.  I also really don't know how to go about finding a job like that, and I'm not really sure whom to ask, either.  I've responded to copperbadge's post on LiveJournal, and I'm going to wait a week to see if anything comes of that before I apply to work at Arby's.  I'm also going to just walk up and down Forbes Ave. and Craig St. to see if any of the cafes, restaurants, or shops are hiring.

All my NaNoWriMo writing buddies have more words than I do, and I guess if I started actually writing instead of wandering about on the Internet, I wouldn't be 1,300 words behind, with only ten minutes until I'm 2,967 words behind.

Anyway.  Course registration is upon us!  Or, well, me, rather.  You know what that means?  That means weeping and watching all the classes you want being taken up by upperclassmen while you wait with the rest of the freshmen for your enrollment restriction to be lifted.  And, because CollegeBoard are a bunch of money-grubbing jerks who accepted your payment for AP score-sending but never actually sent your AP scores, you don't have more credits than the average freshman and thus can't enroll a tad bit earlier.

ENGCMP 0400, Writing in Professional Communications, one of the required courses for those on the six-year conditional admission PharmD track (ie, me), is going to fill up so fast.  All the lectures that happen at pleasant times during the day are going to fill up so fast.

I don't want to have morning or night classes.  If everything were perfect, I would have classes from 12 PM to 5:30 PM every day of the week except Friday, which would just be a wonderful day of rest and frolicking.  Everything is being made unperfect by the hordes of people who can enroll before I can and will inevitably try to arrange their class schedule in the same manner that I hope to arrange my class schedule.

I must confess that I'm not doing as well in my classes as I would like. Spanish and Masterpieces of Greek and Roman Literature (heretofore called "Classics") are going wonderfully, and I love the material, the professors, and the other people in those classes. Biology and Chemistry, on the other hand -- classes I need to excel in to fulfill my dream of becoming a psychopharmacologist or virologist or immunologist or epidemiologist or surgeon -- I am currently -- well, definitely not failing, but I wouldn't consider C's good grades either. My grades for Chemistry lab will hopefully boost my grade, but since Biology lab is given as a separate course and since most of the grade is determined by quizzes on detailed background information on previous labs, my grades for Biology lab wouldn't boost my Biology grade even if they could.

I think it's a combination of my complete lack of study skills -- they were hardly needed in high school -- and my complete inability to learn in a large lecture format. My recitations might as well be large lecture format classes too, since there are about fifty people -- maybe more -- in them. The fact that about ten people regularly don't show up helps, but not by very much.

I have a Bio paper due on Wednesday, which isn't bad, because I like reading articles in scholarly journals and keeping up with the literature and such, but it appears that I was supposed to have posted to a discussion board about what my thoughts on the article we were supposed to read were on Friday ... and on Friday I did my Chem homework (inadvertently skipping a Chem tutoring session that I'd signed up for ... damn), walked all the way from Forbes Hall to Chevron Science Center to turn it in, took a shower, went to the Pittsburgh Opera's production of Falstaff (which was hilarious and awesome and OMG I love opera and the Pittsburgh Opera is doing productions of Carmen and The Marriage of Figaro in the spring!), and then returned and watched Firefly with friends.  I didn't even start reading the article until today.

I feel as if maybe I should also acquire some time management and non-procrastination skills along with my study skills.

I also feel as if NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo, although they're enjoyable and make me feel better about life, are too escapist and distracting for me to focus on doing well in Bio and Chem.  Hrm.

Oh yes.  I am doing NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo because I figure I can win one of them at least.  And it's not like blogging will be that hard -- I can just whinge about NaNoWriMo every day.

I swear, I am going to do this thing properly this year, unlike last year, when I basically blogged and whined about how much I wish I were a Kennedy or a Sedgwick or a Roosevelt and called it a memoir.  I will have character profiles and a plot outline and a writing schedule, and I will churn out two thousand words per day with the aggressive tenacity and drive of a dedicated stalker trying to catch a glimpse of her intended through an upper-story window half-curtained in sheer gauziness.

Which is why instead of making corrections to a Spanish essay and then doing a gazillion exercises concerning the use of the subjunctive and health-related vocabulary and then seeing if I'm up to wrestling with some quantum theory, I am drinking tea, reading articles on writing (since I'm not allowed to actually write yet), and planning to SparkNote the Holy Bible (King James version).  I can't be bothered to read the actual thing -- a lot of bits are exciting and full of smiting, but most of the other bits are just this guy begat that guy and that guy took a wife and begat someone else and Jesus H. Christ in stilettos, who gives a shit? -- but I definitely need to make some snappy Biblical allusions and parallels in order for my intended story to work.

I am also starting to realize that maybe characterization is going to be a problem because instead of imagining to be each character and figuring out who they are and what they're motivated by, I'm just making them me, essentially.  Only, cooler.  With snappier outfits that invariably include waistcoats and crisply ironed French shirts with black resin and gold cufflinks.  And hair that's tastefully and, seemingly, effortlessly pulled off.  Basically, a whole cast of quirky indie well-dressed Mary Sues and Gary Stus as found in a Sundance Festival wannabe.

Let's not even talk about plot or format.

In the words and dejected tone of a friend, "Oh deep sigh."