Ode to Megaupload

Of many eves I’ve dwelt awake

To bask in your immortal glow

I never knew I’d feel such woe

How could I guess you’d forsake me

But now your life paused evermore

You bent the rules but you’ve been beat

The men in blazers hit delete

They said you broke copyright laws

In fact just this October past

I had a strange premonition

You had reached your last edition

But I pushed such thoughts from my mind

I bought Netflix and cast you out

To shield myself from such a curse

But now this act makes me feel worse

I abandoned you on your death bed

No one dast blame this all on you

You let us steal a film or three

Yet I consumed it knowingly

Seven full series of Doctor Who

And countless hours of Buffy

Users caused your termination

An untimely expiration

Dear friend, I do apologize.

Categorizing madness

The extended Pottermore Beta period has done nothing but agitate my inexplicably strong desire be sorted, once and for all. Gryffindor or Hufflepuff? Which flipping house do I belong to? Or have my own self perceptions deceived me altogether and my true place is in the basement with those good-for-nothing Slytherins (sorry guys). I didn't get early access to Pottermore and at this point only people who did can use it.

Why am I so eager to be sorted? Although I value Jo's opinion, (which the Pottermore quiz is probably a significant representation of) I shouldn't need it. I like personality quizzes and love finding great ones on the internet to...what exactly?

Well I have a theory. Maybe the Pottermore situation is getting at me because, on some level, I crave a higher, wiser power to tell me where I belong. Sometimes, I want to be categorized by some stupid ten question quiz because it gives me sometime to go with. My obsession with self assessments has gotten to the point where I spent at least ten minutes yesterday afternoon completing a quiz of four questions on the back of a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch to determine whether I am "full of sugar and spice and everything nice" or "have a big appetite for life". And the really dumb part was that I don't even like Cinnamon Toast Crunch!

But being grouped based on any trait is a lot like letting someone place a large glass dome around you five miles in every direction. You've been shown where you are, but it's nearly impossible to get where your going. Someone just gave you a free "you are here", and although the space before you appears wide and interesting, it is nothing compared to what it could be if only the walls that stand just out of view were not there.

I will take the Pottermore sorting quiz when I can. I will have fun answering the questions and will embrace my house with pride. I will not let a hat define my entire being. Really, everyone is both heroic and cowardly, kind and cruel, ignorant and intelligent, and ordinary and terrific, all at once.        

Brain bleh

because sometimes I get that realization that those little moments can tip my entire world like 


flooring the gas or pressing send and when will stuff begin to be right I can’t even write with 


my left hand much less my right to a vitamin water for under two dollars was rudely removed 


by the ladies in the cafeteria downstairs last weak knees, swoon, sigh, still the ones whom I 


admire never notice little ol’ meal time, sleep time, school time, meal time, sleep time, school 


time, time time, tick tock, tick clock tock time your fixed punctuality is nearly as irritating as 


the prices in the cafeteria I mean honestly, haven’t ya’ll heard of a student discount every 


thing you suspect from my sometimes stained sweatshirts and usually unmade hair because I 


have a quiet confidence or so I’m told that there’s some really great food three blocks over and 


you can get a sandwich plus a drink for $3.15 but oh. I forgot, you don’t eat, and come to think 


of it I have those tests I need to study for so I should go sit in the library and pretend to do 


homework while I pretend I don’t have homework to do nothing would be worse than doing 


somethings wrong, but that’s a hard concept to internalize when the world has billions of 


people, and twice as many eyes

Feels good to be writing again, even if it is rambly brain bleh.

I Should Have Known That

A poem for my AP Lit class. We were assigned to write about our high school experience and thoughts on being a senior (I know I'm a senior!), but I  stretched the topic a bit. Oops. Well at any rate...

In trigonometry last year, my name was vacuum cleaner

Because I sucked

and puckered my lips in disgust like a lemon eater

We each have our mess as I should have known

Maybe then I could have been shameless in asking

For help in solving those darn inverse equations

I referred to freshmen seminar as the “unsharpened pencil in my side”

Because it was oh so dull

and thought to myself with self-righteous pride

That after watching paint dry it must be boring task No. 2

It was two years later when I finally learned

To look for the edgier corners and sides

My friends in the hallways always called me space

Because that is where I go

Or so they say, though I might never know

I hum between classes under my breath

and seem too distracted to consider the homework question

Though I swear I don’t try to be rude

I’m not sure what titles I will take and give this year

Because I am not clairvoyant

And though I would fancy the symbol and status

Of being a great prophet or wise oracle

I’m quite content to ride these bumps and bends

By the end of this year, you never know what I might know by then

language barriers

If I spoke Spanish I would drive to the border

To warn that this country is full of pinwheel people

Spinning upside-down faster than anything with blood should

Here might not put you back in working order

And if only I was fluent in French  

I could appreciate poems by the late Rimbaud 

But then if I mastered German instead

I could curse out the Nazis in their native tongue 

I wish I knew how to do Sign Language too

So no one would giggle when my voice cracks and squeals

But then they would mock my skin’s cracks and peels

Maybe I should stop trying so hard

Etgar 36: Aids Quilt and OKC Bombing Memorials

Oh, wow, haven't posted on here in a while. Hello friends, I've been back from a trip across America called Etgar 36 for a couple weeks now but blogging about it is such a daunting task that I've put it off. But no more! I went on adventures and I need to write about them. This particular post is about two memorials I visited, though I saw quite a few more than these. Feel free to share your thoughts in comments!

The Names Project Foundation is an organization dedicated to spreading awareness and providing education about AIDS through what is known as the AIDS quilt, a constantly growing memorial quilt to those individuals who lost their lives to the disease. Each panel is dedicated to one person, and the wonderful thing is that when I first walked into the Names Project headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, I didn't understand why these people were stitched together at all. It was our first meeting and I was fixated on my inner monologue of "Shit I don't know anyone, no friends, friendless, must make friends...," so much so that I hadn't cared to ask anyone why we were there.

When I walked into this place, I assumed it would be something of an office building with cubicles and coffee only to find these gorgeous quilts adorning the walls, with more panels folded on shelves or flat under humming sewing machines. I looked for a trend across the colorful squares: Ethnicity no, gender no, religion no, race.... Except for the actual lines and shapes that made up the fabric, no such pattern existed. And then I figured it out: AIDS. How appropriate is was, the woman speaking with us explained, that a quilt so big and diverse be created to educate and spread awareness, because AIDS can infect anyone and affects everyone on a global scale. The quilt was different from some the memorials we would visit later on. It celebrated the life of individuals, not the death of HIV positive victims. The quilt requested that I mourn and remember, but it also asked that I live and grow.

Almost a week later I found myself at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, a distinctly different experience from the one I had at the Names Project, and I think much of that comes from the way the memorial is structured. Two gates stand at opposite ends of the memorial, The eastern gate with the time 9:01 and the western gate timed at 9:03. The gates of time symbolize the minute before the attack and the minute after it, the the last minute of innocence and the first minute of recovery. Between the gates stretches an expansive pool of water, hardly moving at all. The unequivocal stillness of it reminded me of a heart rate monitor that flatlines, like the dead hearts of those 168 people at 9:02.

We visited the memorial that morning but after a couple of hilariously pathetic rounds of  bowling we went back to experience it at night, all lit up. I got a chance to walk up the rows of chairs with glowing glass bottoms, each bearing the name of a victim. A few people with brains and hearts that should have objected to their plan were responsible for those lives and the empty chairs that should be filled with working adults on important phone calls and gossiping parents with children fidgeting in their own miniature seats or climbing down them to play and giggle with each other.

After a few minutes the group gathered together with our director. He said he didn't have an explanation for why the chairs are empty, or why our shoes are full. Some people live and others don't get to and he said he doesn't know why. It's okay that we don't either, that no one does. It was okay to be sad at the time, okay we goofed off at the bowling alley, and okay to feel happy again tomorrow. So I figure it serves us well to overcome the guilt and grief of our existence. God only knows why, but we are alive and that is much more than okay. If we don't learn how to live, we might as well be an empty chair, or the panel of a quilt.


http://www.aidsquilt.org/ - These people are really incredible, check it out if you have a few spare minutes

http://www.etgar.org/ - The trip I went on has a website! And this post is me explaining what the trip is.

Photos are not mine, they belong to a couple of my friends. Thanks guys :)

Inspiration and Motivation

I have a flight to catch tomorrow morning that begins my summer trip, but I figured I would leave you with one last post before I head off and the amount of blogging I'm able to accomplish becomes questionable. Here is a by no means complete list of music, poetry, and people that I draw inspiration and motivation from.

Bigger Than My Body - John Mayer
This song inspires me to be more than I'm capable of, and I love that.

You Gotta Be - Des'ree 
When I was a baby this is the only song that would get me to stop crying. The minute my parents popped in the CD I shut right up. They were thankful for that. This song still motivates me to keep fighting when I've nearly given up.


Scratch and Dent Dreams - Eric Darby
Very creative poem that inspires me to pick up the things I gave up on (like soccer, which I'm starting again in the fall!).

The Information Man - Buddy Wakefield 
More abstract but at the end it all comes together. He is a riot, his delivery is perfect, and the poem is a real celebration of humanity!

The Doctor (You know, like Doctor Who)
So not a real person as much as I have tried to convince myself otherwise, but how could this guy not inspire anyone? He's an alien who travels though space and time, is witty, charming, and compassionate! He's far from perfect and often makes huge mistakes, like, the universe could collapse kind of mistakes, but he fixes them. And he cares. I might be in love. But crushing on a fictional character is probably better than crushing on dead people (cough Jeff Magnum), or murderers, or something.

Vlogbrothers - 
This may seem like an obvious choice to most of you, since most of my traffic comes from people who stumbled over here through Nerdfighteria. But how can I not include them. So much of who I am is defined by than channel. They've brought me so many odd facts and funny inside jokes, but the most valuable thing they teach me every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is how to wear myself with pride, which is the most daring, stunning outfit anyone can put on.