Friday, December 31, 2010

2010 is over so I'm gonna write a cliche blog about it

First of all, this:
the best playlist ever.

Sooooo it's sunny and cold out and I love this weather so much and it has put me in such a good mood that I'm gonna write about good things instead of bad ones.  Here Comes the Sun is playing and it couldn't be more appropriate for my life, for everything right now.  2011 will be the last full year of my life where I live at home, and it will also be the end of 2010 which was definitely the hardest year of my life, but also one of the best.   The difficult things include the entire month of January and learning to speak Arabic at Kent State, and although I would never change how Kent went, I would definitely make a few adjustments to January of 2010.  I think that when you're happy, you're supposed to say that you wouldn't change a thing, but I would. There are a few things that I would be better for changing, but I can't and that's okay too.

2010 was one of the best years because of the more full person I became.  I became a little more aware of the world around me and of the opportunities offered to me and I would like to think I'm a nicer person.  I figured out that I really like photography even though I know very little about it.  I also realized that my thoughts matter and I started writing them down.  I started picking what to care about instead of caring because I thought I had to.  I realized that I don't have to do anything anyone tells me to, I only have to do what I want to do to be happy.  Whatever that happiness I'm looking for ends up being still has yet to be found, and I doubt I'll find it this coming year or even in the year after that, but that's still pretty okay that at least I know it's coming.

I've been hearing it often said that you shouldn't have to wait until a new year in order to change and I guess that's true but I like to think that a new year actually will bring brighter times.  So my resolutions that I probably will feel no compelling force to complete except the first are:
1.  At the end of 2011, I want to have 365 pictures showing my life in a year.
2.  I want to start a dailybooth!
3.  To exercise sometimes maybe, I don't know.
4.  To be less lazy and do more things even if they do require getting out of bed.
5.  To read twenty books.  I don't really read at all right now so this is probably the one I'm going to have the most trouble keeping.
6.  To start a collab channel on youtube with my big brother, Beau!
7.  To get into college.

Okay so maybe 7 things to do in 2011 shouldn't be that difficult.  But anyways it's getting close to two thousand tino time.  Oh wait, I mean two thousand eleven time.

Monday, December 13, 2010

All my sources for my crappy research paper are online.

Ironically, I really support written works being in print.  It's ironic because I actually almost never read things in print, and I don't prefer writing to typing either.  It's my generation that's ruining printed works though, and I feel like we mask it by saying that computers are more efficient, which they would be if it weren't for that they are.  Computers are efficient for everything and that in itself is an issue.  When I open my laptop and log in, I do a few things before opening my online textbooks.

Yeah, online textbooks.  This year I don't have as many online as I did last year, but last year I basically didn't even need a backpack because I was able to just access it all from my computer.

Anyways, I log on and I open up some music, usually some obscure hipster indie bullshit playlist from 8tracks.com, I check facebook, and I check my youtube subscriptions.  And all of these things are so convenient just sitting inside my laptop's brain waiting to be seen by me that I really don't even get back to the thought of homework until I've already been on my laptop for an hour.  Having all of these things so accessible is awesome, but them being this accessible and being in the same place sucks because it's so easy to be distracted from my original task. I can't get through homework without wondering what's going on on facebook or wanting to listen to Bowl of Oranges by Bright Eyes just one more time.

I understand why no one wants to read anymore.  A lot of us teenagers are too busy being bombarded by other information than to be reading an actual real book.  Facebook is nothing if not just information and though it's actually very boring information that will never matter, we all care about it together.  Spending an hour on the internet can get you a lot more information than can an hour of reading a book, or so it may seem.  The ratio of information payoff vs. time consumed of a book is way different than the information payoff vs. time consumed googling the plot and characters.  But who even bothers to read the sparknotes anymore because if you don't give enough shit to read the actual book then why even read the sparknotes. Who cares.

So yeah there's the whole time consuming aspect of reading a book, which is too bad considering that if I took all the time I put into facebook and picked up a book instead, I would have it finished within the week.  Maybe I'll do that.   And a book would be more worth my time anyways.  

And although I do actually spend time reading newspapers because over the summer I found out how sad ignorance can be, I pretty much only read online newspapers, partly because I like newspapers from England better than ones from America, but also partly because it's much more efficient because theres no cumbersome huge evil pages to flip through.  (Why do newspaper pages have to be so big.  Why can't they just make magazines every day on newspaper paper without staples but with a table of contents.  Such a better idea than normal newspapers, why hasn't anyone contacted me about my brilliance yet.)  

But the thing about written works being online that scares me the most is the ability to lie about what one wrote.  It's so easy to delete a source and pretend like it just never happened in the first place when it's on the internet, and that's a lot more simple than book burnings for sure.  It's kind of what happened in 1984, with the government choosing which information we are privy to.  Though I am not accusing the government of doing this, it is other people choosing which information we are privy to, and anyone can publish to the internet and say what they're saying is true.  

This whole argument is weirdish because anyone can print their words and say they're true too, but there's a lot more respect about what you write and sell in bookstores than there is on the internet.  

NOTHING MAKES SENSE.  

I wish I knew how to pick a side and be vehement for it EVER because I actually just sit in my room a lot and argue with myself.  

Right, reason #87 why I should ask for some medication for Christmas.  

But let's just take a moment real quick and observe the syntax of my writing.  I never indent, and I don't really know why I hate how indentations look, I just do.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

angsty teenager bad writing.

Two things:
1.  Today I realized that I only have about 20 months until I start college
2.  Today I became a little weary about that for the first time ever.

Since I started really considering college last fall, I have never had a sad, negative, bad feeling about it at all.  College sounded perfect, it sounded like exactly what I needed.  It still is but at the same time, leaving what I have here is going to be so hard.  I have some amazing friends here, and I'm never, I realized, going to be ready to leave them to go out on my own.  I've always known that that would eventually come, but I never really considered it as something that will really, truly, happen.  There will be a last day of goofing off in choir and there will be a last day of asking Harry which men he wants to make out with.  It seems bizarre because I've been in this routine of my daily life so long that it seems to me that it won't change. 

I'm not normally this existentialist and terrible buttttt it's snowing out.  I love snow but it definitely puts me in weird moods.  The other thing is English.  My English class this year has pretty much just made everyone in the class a depressed existentialist.  We just got done with studying romanticism and by the end most people in the class had stopped taking notes because we were all so funked out by it, like why take notes if we're just all conformists who are going to die and be forgotten and we have no hope of knowing the beauty of nature and stuff. 

But yea that's over now and we all failed the test on it and now we can all go fail the research paper together!
Failing sucks, but it's better when your whole class just rejoices that we're in it together.

Monday, November 29, 2010

convenient christianity? and other stuff.

I give mad props to anyone who has found something to believe in and has figured themself out spiritually.  I honestly do wish that I could believe that I was going to heaven, but I don't.  I think it's majorly cool of people to be able to convince themselves of the various  religions of the world, and though I don't believe it myself, I totally respect it. 

What I don't respect is a person who calls themself a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu WHATEVER who doesn't follow the tennants of their religion all the time.  Being a religion is a life choice, and even if it's not for your entire life, it's for your life right now until or unless you denounce yourself of it.  You should honor what you've been told to do on the path to being a better person, and if you don't, you're really NOT part of being in that religion.  What I mean to say is that people take religion way too lightly.  You can't just lie and cheat and then think it's okay for you to enter a church and pray next to an honest man and be one of the people in your congregation.  You can't.

Using the lord's tennants and values  only when it's convenient for you to use them and ignoring them when they hinder whatever you're trying to do is totally wrong, and it's up to you to either fix your ways and never do it again or you have to leave the religion.  You don't get excuses either like "I'm trying to get better," because guess what, it's something you just do.  All you have to do is stop.  There are no excuses.  If you don't like or believe it's beneficial for you to follow the tennants of your religion then leave.  Simple. As. That.

If people really considered what I am saying here and went by it, we would have much less corrupt religious folk, and also much less religious folk at all.  Religion is assumedly supposed to make you a better person, but if you're only being religious with the stuff you're already a good person at and completely ignoring when it comes to the hard stuff... what's the point?  It's really not fair to the people who honestly are trying to be with God that have to pray next to a liar.

I didn't really think that this had a name at all until I was thinking about how I know so many people who are only Christian when it's convenient. Then the whole alliteration thing popped into my head and I googled it andddd there we go.  This is a pretty sweet article I found on the whole dealio.

And also, the whole catholic confession thing is such bullshit.  Not everyone confesses all of their sins, AND who is to say that God has forgiven them.  Not the "father" of the church, that's for certain.  It's all too easy to walk into a church and say that God has spoken to you.

...he hasn't.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

bloggin vs. vloggin

When you (and by you, I mean I, because there is no you.  I have no audience..)  really think about it, I have had a lot of test runs on my blog and I honestly have been blogging for years.  Journaling, writing long emails about my life to friends, putting my thoughts into facebook notes, and just writing things and saving them EVERYWHERE.  I have found my writings printed out lying in old books, saved as drafts on my multiple email accounts, saved under false names, just put somewhere far away where I have it if I want it.

So it really is no surprise how easily blogging came to me.  It's kind of been my life since seventh grade, even though at the time I really didn't know it.  I used to write in Crayola marker when I was 12 in notebooks, and if it wasn't in marker, it wasn't an entry.  And those notebooks filled with what are the trials and tribulations of a 12 year old, then a 13 year old, then a 14 year old are hidden in a shiny box in the storage room of my basement where they are never supposed to be found.  I know, I just told the internet where they were.  But internet, please don't go into my basement and read all my shit.  Read what I write now, because it's better.

But...vlogging? This, I have come to realize is kind of new to me.  I have done acting and have watched some of my performances back on DVD but I never had a very big part, nor were the words I was saying my own.  And though I do speak to people and tell them what I think about everything every damn day, It's not played back to me and I don't have to hear it again and again trying to get the cuts right.  So vlogging might actually take a lot longer than I think.  I'm going to need to have a few trial runs with vlogging, make a lot of videos and learn how to use microsoft moviemaker because it has proven to be a pain in the ass.  But one day, I'll get there!! (triumph, double exclamation point.. aw yeah.)

But on the other hand, I feel like such a n00b to the internet right now, and I'm trying to find things I like to subscribe to so that I have something to watch AND THIS IS WHY I LOVE THE LIKER CHAIN!!! So helpful, best thing ever.  I found out what dailybooth was today, and I think that will be a goal of mine to get that started in 2011, because I will hopefully have a SICK. camera by then.  Anyways, the point of THIS paragraph is that I enjoy watching vlogs better than reading blogs.  I'm subscribed to probably 10-15 vlogs because they're easy and they take no time, but I'm not reading anyones blogs.  And no one reads mine.  

dear appeasement,

suck my d.

xoLaura

Friday, November 26, 2010

I can't wait to not vote for Obama.

So good old Barb Walters is interviewing the lovely President and Mr. Obama.
These are my notes, while they were talking:

"I've made her into a expert"
... really?

S korea most important alliance also japan, china big influence on n korea.

by 2014 we hope to turn things over to afghan people- he says you never get a specific day to declare victory you have to be relentless all parties and actors in the region realize this isn't just a threat to us but to them as well.  nothing concrete...

PAT DOWNS AT AIRPORTS
 hopefully we approve technologies if theres an explosion in the air that we could have prevented it that would be upsetting to even Obama. (nothing about racial profiling..? HAVE AN OPINION DAMMIT.)

Michelle is more popular than Barack, shes opinionated shapes how he thinks tell me something new.  fighting childhood obesity- goal is ambitious but simple goal is to begin shaping habits and conversation.  sarah palin bought cookies to one of her deals at an elementary school to say who decides what children eat, government or parents.  palin's an idiot.  government in schools, okay with this because we do it everywhere else.  michelle likes her toned arms.  Now we're talking  bout her wardrobe.  thinggggs i don't care about.  blahblahhhh.  THEYRE BLESSED YAY FAITH <3

stress- Obama excercises. spends time with kids.  and he curses.  a lot.  and he prays every night and reads the bible.  why do people think youre a muslim? because of the internet, rumors take on a life of your own can be powerful whats important is that he's a superchristian.  the girls are so cute about their prayers and they hope to live long and strong.

Cool they wrote a children's book.  Proceeds going to the children of those who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan scholarship bussiness and stuff.  At dinner they describe the rose and the thorn.
Barack's rose- happy healthy family; Thorn- the fact that we havent been bale to make a bigger dent in unemployment this year
Michelle's rose- children, family. going to military bases; Thorn-  (how about your husbands a coward ?)  she has no thorns.
what she tells mothers of servicemen- she hugs them and cries with them, apologizes how she feels for their lost.
obama's advice- this country is resilient we've been through wars and depressions and great turmoil and yet we can pull together and make our way towards a brighter future for kidz and grandkidz.  michelle says to come together be kind laugh dont worry about how much you eat just enjoy it.  I'm glad she's having a lol.

And then there's this, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-an-american-bribe-that-stinks-of-appeasement-2139101.html

It's about Obama's $827 per second appeasement deal to freeze the building of settlements in Palestine's west bank and maybe in the Gaza Strip, but not in East Jerusalem. He's basically going to pay $827 per second for three months to Israel asking them to obey international law COOL.  We should give them a crown and pronounce Netanyahu kind of the world too.

If Canada marched in here with their army.. okay just kidding, If mexico marched in here with their army and started building settlements and told us that their people were going to live here and that we weren't even citizens in this country and then they tried to bomb us and kill and maim our children, we would literally obliterate them to the point that Mexico wouldn't be a place.  It wouldn't fucking exist.

So why is is okay for Israel to do it? Are all countries not equal?

originality&othergoodthings !

Sooooo today I was thinking about how I do love that this page is just mine.  Hense.. the title.  So I thought I would tell you that all the photos and stuff on here is original and are mine.  Those that will be posted in the future will too always be original, unless otherwise noted.

The background is actually a heavily edited picture of a jellyfish at the Boston Aquarium.  I went there last year with my school's show choir.  Not just to the aquarium, but also to a competition in Salem, which was fun.  And then the picture I put in the post before this about lucid dreams is one I took on the plane I took to go to Costa Rica this past summer.  It was a really fun trip and I love my family down there and I really do love the country, it really is so photogenic and gorgeous.

For Christmas (see below.) this year I have asked my parents for a Nikon D3000 SLR digital camera so that I can take beautiful pictures and not have to edit so much.  Right now I have an olympus digital camera, but I'm not sure of the make.  It's kind of lame, but I love it because it can go underwater and can survive most drops and stuff so there isn't much danger of breaking it.  But it takes kind of shoddy pictures so I can't wait to get a much better camera with a real lens and everything! <333

Christmas.. So.  I'm an atheist, and so is my dad, and I don't know about my brother and sister but I do know that my mom believes in God.  But no one in my family attends church, and that's a-ok with me.  I don't really like organized religion, I think it, and especially in the Christian faith, gets corrupted super often and preaches too much hatred.  That's not a generalization, preaching any hatred at all is preaching too much and a lot of religion today is just kind of a mockery of what religion should be.  But yeah, we celebrate Christmas.  I think we have deduced it down to just being a tradition in my family to celebrate because it's something fun and as much as it is a religious thing, it's very cultural too. Also, I do believe that Jesus was one of the greatest men to ever live, and I do like celebrating his presence on Earth, even if  I don't appreciate the effects Christianity has on the world today.  So no, Christians, I'm not stealing your holiday.

slightly lucid dreaming ?

I'm really lame.  I'm not that sick but I get really tired quickly and I sound sick and annoying.  So I just act really sick and retreat to my room a lot. But!  This morning I had two dreams.

One, probably the most collectively positive dream I have ever had.  Like, nothing bad happened.  I went on a field trip to Bradley Woods or Clague Park or just some woods and we walked around.  I ended up walking next to a boy I liked and using all three of his hands he gave me an awesome back massage while walking and simultaneously held my hand.  Then we walked and he held both my hands at the same time, which would've been a really awkward position to walk in except that it was my dream and it was perfect.  And then he said "Hayley, I'm not sure that I can do this." and I asked what it was we were doing and he just said "You know." and I said "Well that's perfect because I don't really like to date anyways," and he just smiled.  So I guess had the dream continued we would've stayed together.  Wish we had.

And then my second dream was one of the most collectively negative dreams I have ever had ever ever ever.  I was at work at Peterson Pool, I'm a lifeguard, but it wasn't actually the pool I work at, it was somewhere else and I just knew that that was where I was.  I had picked up a shift from 10 to 3 for a classmate of mine who isn't a lifeguard and works at the library, not the pool.  So that was weird.  And then at 3pm no one came to rotate me out of the chair I was sitting in by the baby pool.  So I kept looking around trying to figure out what was happening and then the big blonde lady wearing a suit and tall heels and she was giant walked over with my supervisor and told me to lay down on the pool deck.  So I did, and as soon as I laid all the way down my body stretched to be as tall as that of the blonde lady, and she drew lines all up my body with a red marker.  Then, on the lines, she burned me all up my body.  She started at my ankles and worked up to my neck.  It didn’t hurt though, I didn’t flinch, I did what I was told.  And then she pulled out a knife, and she cut my ankle, deep, on the lines.  The cut didn't hurt, but I felt the warm splash of blood on my leg.  And then she cut up on the other lines, but only up to my calf.  I kept thinking, why don’t I just wake up.  And when she cut my calf, I did.  I was almost conscious when all this happened but I wanted to see what would happen if I just kept letting the dream go on.  I wanted to see how I would get out of it, which was weird because now I’m just happy that I woke up.  It was weird though that the only time I felt blood was when my ankle was cut. It was my right ankle, I was laying on my left side and that was the ankle on top.  I was facing a huge body of water, the Pacific Ocean I think, so my body was facing west.  My feet were at the north and my head south.  It’s weird that I can remember what directions we were facing.


But yeah.  As far as creepy dreams go, this one's up there for me.  It was queer though that it followed such a good dream.  Usually when I have nightmares or bad dreams or whatever, I don't get physically harmed at all.  It will just be me trying to avoid physical harm or trying to save everyone else I know from it.  And I've also never had a dream where I woke up and was screaming or anything. There really wasn't any aspect of the first dream that was bad though.  I was:
- in nature, in the sun, where I love to be.
- with people I like and with a guy who I think is really smart and just good.
- not stresses about being in a relationship with anyone at all, I was just enjoying myself and living
- not nervous, not stressed.  Just well.

And then there was absolutely nothing good about the second dream.  I was:
- at work, which isn't such hell as seemed in the dream but getting out of there did have a certain desperation.
- outside, which I did say I loved but it was really hot and sweaty, and the only thing to cool me off the whole time was the blood on my ankle.
- being mutilated by a strange giant.
-  not being paid because it was only a dream.

There really was nothing good going on at all.  That truly was the weirdest dream combo I can ever remember, but also I usually can't remember any of my dreams and the fact that I remembered two is kind of extraordinary.  

Thursday, November 25, 2010

things I don't understand about thanksgiving

1.  Why my family cooks our thanksgiving turkey in the laundry room.  Yeah.  We do it at my grandma's that way and I always thought, hey, her laundry room is big and spacious enough to cook a turkey in.  BUT this year we're cooking at my house andddd there is still a turkey in my laundry room.  Our laundry room isn't that spacious or turkey convinient sooo.  I'm just lost by my family's traditions. 

2.  My grandmother.  I love her, but she's kind of crazy.  She's one of those really old grandmas who just says whatever, but it's hilarious.  She cheats at cards.  I'm the only person who will actually fight her on anything which is probably why I'm her favorite grand-daughter.  Granddaughter?  I don't know.  Today she keeps telling my little sister to get on the compy and print her an advil coupon.  She's richer than hell AND she probably doesn't even take much advil.  AND THEN after saying the work "coupon" she talked with my parents about how people say that word.  She's from western PA so she says Q-pon, we, northern ohioans say it the was it is spelled because we're boring like that and our southern friends from Nashville always say coupin.  AND THEN she got into the spelling of the word for the fluffy things cheerleaders wave around.  Turns out, its pompon.  YEAH. 

3.  Why people don't think about the origins of thanksgiving.  I mean, someone's facebook status is maybe supposed to be a joke but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not.  Says something along the lines of oh i hate being muslim and not being able to celebrate thanksgiving.  What?  No.  If you're American.. it's cool.  Go for it. 

my bloggity blog.

The reason people (or maybe just me) blog or vlog is that 

fnehdgfbsjkfn by the by, I didn't particularly want to start a blog, I really just wanted to film myself saying them and put it on youtube because 1)  when you're just talking, you're more likely to say what you're thinking.  Typing it's different because you process it more when going from brain to fingers.  I would rather just say what I'm thinking than to really have to think about things that the internet really need to know about me.  I guess that's  sort of dangerous. and 2) because when I write, you, the reader, cannot hear my voice inflection, which makes a difference because with sarcasm and stuff like that.. it matters.  

But me and youtube right now aren't going to work out because I don't have a webcam, the sound on my digital camera SUCKS and my brother's webcam, to put it shortly, is being a tit.

ANYWAYS.
 The reason people (..I) blog or vlog is that they're too scared to just say their opinions.  I don't like posting this stuff to facebook because I don't want my opinions to be shoved down the throats of my innocent friends.  However, if they click on the link to my bloggity blog, that's their own dumb fault for coming to a place where I'll just say what I think.  But yeah.  I want my opinion to be heard, but not by people who don't want it.  I do think that a lot of people could use some Hayley in their lives, but they can't have me unless they click.

Also, I'll be their real life friends too but, uh, they can't be an ass.

 

Sunday, November 21, 2010

first ever?

I used to be really fearless about everything I did.  I would do flips off of everything and say whatever I  thought and be bold and be happy.  But somewhere between freshman and sophomore years of high school that all went away, and now I'm scared.  If you're old, or even old-ish, you're thinking ...how old is this chick? I'm sixteen and in between my freshman and sophomore years wasn't that long ago to you, but it's a whole fourteenth of my entire life as of right now away, so cut me a break.  High school has been about an eighth of my whole life right now, and it's a big deal to me even though I try not to let it be.
Anyway.
I'm probably too scared to tell my thoughts on facebook in notes anymore, because I'm afraid of what people I know think of me.  Or what they'll think of what I think.  And if people who I know won't read this, well then who will?  Maybe no one.  So yeah, hey there.

things I like

  • clocky alarm clocks!!! *mom, christmas?!
  • L4D2
  • squirrels
  • gilmore girls, I watch it. All. The. Time.
  • thanksgiving
  • tv
  • acoustic music
  • singing loud
  • my best friend, Laura