Oh my, Cupid!!

So, I have set up a tentative "date" (which is more of a getting together with a bunch of my friends for a movie, and I invited a guy from OKC) for next Saturday, and I have since been favorited by two other guys.
I looked over their profiles, and one of them is amazing, and sounds just like my type. So....I don't know.
I'll try to keep things friendly with Guy1, see how things go, but I really don't want there to be any expectations.
As for Guys 2 & 3...well, who knows.

Well, at least life is interesting.

Please. We already have compulsory water cuts in my home town.
Sometimes, I wonder what's going through Schwarzenegger's head.
Usually, my mind makes it into something like this:

I used stripgenerator to make this.

Ok, Cupid?

So, I've joined OkCupid, a networking/dating site. It's bizarre, and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.
I joined because a friend of mine was talking about it, and it sounded interesting. It is interesting, but I don't know if it's a good interesting or a bad interesting.

Within ten minutes of registering and filling out my profile, I was propositioned by a 30 year old man. A few minutes later, by a 27 year old woman looking for a threesome with her 28 year old boyfriend. Interesting, indeed.

Dollies

Got two porcelain dolls in the mail today. (I collect them.) One is a Chinese girl in a sitting position. She's the first porcelain doll I've ever had that isn't white. She's so beautiful.
The other one is a ballerina. Pretty standard general appearance, curly blonde hair, blue eyes. She's very pretty, and seems well made, though.

I haven't gotten new dolls for my collection in a while. It was exciting.

Miss Edith might be jealous.


...And kudos if you get the reference.

Urg. I get headaches way, way, way too often.

Thesis update

Okay, so I've done a bunch of new reading. Outlined the general look of my thesis, now that I've had to change everything.

Tonight, I'm writing the introduction. It's unfortunately short. Boo. Everything else will have to be really long to make this work.


Why, oh why, Professor, couldn't you have told me last semester?!

Pink

Crappy color. Great artist.

My sister's been humming a Pink song for a bit, so I decided to put on a few of her discs. Love it.

For Dearie and Poppa, a belated Valentine dedication

I sang this song to my grandparents several years ago. It was 'their' song.
I've been missing them a lot lately, since they've now both passed.



"My Funny Valentine" from Babes in Arms by Rogers and Hart

Behold the way our fine feathered friend,
His virtue doth parade
Thou knowest not, my dim-witted friend
The picture thou hast made
Thy vacant brow, and thy tousled hair
Conceal thy good intent
Thou noble upright truthful sincere,
And slightly dopey gent

You're my funny valentine,
Sweet comic valentine,
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable
Yet, you're my favorite work of art

Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak, are you smart?
But, don't change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little valentine, stay!
Each day is valentines day

Nine-year-olds dating? Writing about it?

What?

When I was nine, boys still had cooties. Now kids are "dating" at that age? No way.

Even the kid-writer himself says that he's too young to be dating. So why are grown men listening to his dating advice?

The Crow, 1994

Just watched it again for the first time in a few years. Such a good movie. It really is beautiful, despite - or perhaps because of - all of the death and bloodshed. In a twisted way, the deaths caused by Eric Draven have meaning, more thank just the standard vengeance murder.

To me, it is an incredibly powerful film. I love it. It always makes me incredibly sad, though, because I really liked Brandon Lee.

To end with the ending quote from the film: "Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever."

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I understand that she's controversial. I understand that she talks about a controversial subject.

But, just the fact that she has an official death threat over her head, merely for speaking about her experiences, says quite a lot about the extremists against whom she speaks.

Here in the US, we have a very different lifestyle than in the Middle East and Africa. Even a Muslim woman here cannot necessarily comprehend the experiences of a Muslim woman in the Middle East.

If you want to be angry at Ali for speaking "for all Muslim women," then don't try to speak "for all Muslim women" yourself. It's hypocritical and ridiculous.

Also, if you want to be taken seriously, calm down a bit. Angry rants in an academic setting against someone who is being relatively calm while debating with you don't make you seem credible. They make you seem emotional, which is fine in other settings. In a formal question/answer (or, in this case, debate[question]/rebuttal[answer]) forum, it is inappropriate to be so emotional that you are incredibly disrespectful and rude to the guest speaker.

Maybe I would have listened more closely to their opinions if they appeared to be based more on fact than on emotion. Maybe, if Ali had been yelling passionately, I wouldn't have taken what she said seriously.

In any case, Ali was not talking about all Muslims, nor was she condemning Islam as a whole. She wasn't talking about Islam in the US - the experiences of the women who disagreed so passionately with her at her lecture. No, she spoke of experiences under radical Islamic rule, where women are not heard, and are kept out of sight. She spoke of her own experiences, which cannot be refuted. They don't belong to anyone but Ali, and she can speak of them how she wishes. If you try to silence her, you have no right to talk, yourself.

Next time, also don't mutter "fuck you, fuck you" while she's speaking. It's rude.

ALQ

If you're selling something online, and the person who purchases it pays for rush shipping, you don't wait a week to send it out. You also don't ship it standard shipping.
I am really annoyed at the bookseller right now.

Thesis woes.

Urg, Blogger, why must you insist on logging me out and asking me to log in with my Gmail account?
It's annoying.

In any case, I am frustrated, yet relieved. I have to, essentially, start over on my thesis (changing topic, scrapping most of my work from last semester), but I now have a better idea of what I'm doing.
Granted, I am peeved that my professors couldn't have brought all of the issues to my attention four months ago. Thank you, thank you. Or not.

Check ya,
ALQ

Welcome, my clearly human President

I want to start off by saying that I adore President Obama.

Frankly, I greatly respect him for all of the hard work he's putting into making sure things aren't screwy. No double standards for the people in power. We are all US citizens, and Obama gets that. It's wonderful. I am quite happy that he acts like a normal person, and takes responsibility when he messes up.

I, however, don't think he messed up. Yeah, he should have done some more background checks into his Cabinet members, but it hasn't caused any problems, and he doesn't condone the tax evasion on the part of Daschle nor Killefer. Things didn't get out of hand. There were no detrimental issues caused by the fact that these two people were being considered for Cabinet.

I think what I love most about Obama, especially in light of this situation, is his ability to seem incredibly down-to-earth. According to BBC News, Obama said "I think I screwed up. And, you know, I take responsibility for it and we're going to make sure we fix it so it doesn't happen again."

He doesn't merely say "Yeah I made a mistake," just to make people happy and then brush it off.

It's incredibly important to look at exactly how he talks about this issue. He thinks he screwed up. This shows a sort of humility - he isn't trying to jerk us around, isn't trying to use his position to treat the situation as something unimportant.

I am hesitant to say that this phrasing is slightly insecure, as that makes him seem 'weak' (which I also think is stupid - people need to be able to have some sort of fallibility, or we'll end up with another President Bush, Sent From God). However, this phrasing does say to me that he realizes he isn't the Alpha and the Omega. He realizes that he is just a man, and can screw up unintentionally without having to be brassed off about it.

I'm sure part of this is my bias, since I really do like the man, but he really is turning out to be as good a guy as he presented himself during the campaign. I, for one, am impressed.


In other news, let's not tell the world that we only care about ourselves. Another good show for Obama. I approve.

Check ya,
ALQ

I am terrified of writing my thesis. Very, very terrified.
Why do I have to write one? Because my school is anal like that.
Can't I get my BA without it? Nope.
Now I really need to force myself to continue working on it. ><;