2008 April : duncan heights

Glog

by V.E. on April 23rd, 2008

Do you know what a glog is? Here’s my first attempt. As with every other storage space and bulletin board in my life, there’s not enough space!! This one is for Bunny.

What am I supposed to do on Glogster?
Glogster is a revolutionary way of expressing your mood, feelings and ideas, and it goes miles beyond text or video! Creating a Glog lets you express all those things you haven’t been able to describe by words. It opens the door to a whole new world of communication – just choose a background, throw in some shapes and characters from our galleries, add text, your own videos or photos and perhaps a pinch of music and there it is! In just a few minutes, you can make a digital poster, a colorful medley of ideas, reflecting your own special style.

Posted in entertainment, fyi | 2 Comments

Walking today

by V.E. on April 23rd, 2008

filed under health, thoughts, wtf

I walked the miles today (22 April)… as fast as I could without jogging or running. By the end, my legs were killing me. It took exactly one hour. Two interesting things happened while I was out.

First, an old guy almost got run over. He was chatting in the middle of the street with another old guy and a car (which had just gone through a yellow-turned-red light) slammed on the brakes and the driver leaned out the window and screamed at the old guy. He raised up his hands and said, “Take it easy! What’s the hurry? There’s no fire.” It was classically Italian… which was good, I guess, ’cause both men were Italian. The driver, decidedly not Italian, screamed some more and sped away. The two old guys both laughed and congratulated each other on being alive.

Second, this nice-looking young Muslim woman (I know she was Muslim because she was wearing a hijab) had just come from Wendy’s with her boyfriend (I guess that’s what he was, I’m not really sure) and was heading into the park, through which I was walking. She was carrying a drink and, as if it was a normal thing to do, she set it down on the sidewalk and kept walking… At first, I thought she had to tie her shoe or something, but she just kept walking like the cup was never in her possession. I wanted to stop her and ask why she just blatantly littered like that, but I was afraid she’d think I was singling her out because she was Muslim (and I wasn’t)… Talk about reverse racism. In any case, I picked up the cup, dumped out its contents (ice and soda) into the grass and tossed it into the next trash can I walked by.

The reason I mention these two people’s apparent heritages is because I realized that when someone goes out, that person is not only representing him or herself, but also his or her gender, family, school, workplace, culture, race, religion, and everything else of which he or she is a part. If I had never seen an Italian or Muslim in person before today, my idea of what “Italian” and “Muslim” is would be based completely on those two old men and that young woman, whether I meant it to be or not. I would think Italians are easy-going and lax about danger (that is, standing in the middle of a busy street) and Muslims litter and don’t care about the Earth. I know that’s not true, but not everyone knows.

This brings me to stereotyping. If I thought all Muslims littered and all Italians cared less about their own safety, I would be stereotyping. Most people don’t think about representing their cultures when they go outside, and, likewise, they don’t think about thinking about other people stereotypically. It’s… meta-thought, if you will. I think being aware is part of the first step to creating a better world. Full disclosure is part of it, as I’ve mentioned before, and awareness is another part. Disclosure is when someone tells me, for example, everything they know that affects me to the best of their ability, and awareness is me being present enough in the moment to accept and understand what they’re telling me.

The second step is to figure out what to do with the information, and the third step is actually doing it… But that’s for another time.

Posted in health, thoughts, wtf | Leave a Comment

ABOUT YOUR LIFE

by V.E. on April 23rd, 2008

filed under wtf

I received this in the mail today. Some spam is stupid—most of it’s ridiculous—but it’s scary when it’s like this.

From: “Mr. G Hord” [axa@killer.com]
To: info@axa.com
Subject: ABOUT YOUR LIFE
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 04:56:18 -0000

Hello

Is a pity that this is how your life is going to end as soon as
youdon’t comply. As you can see there is no need of introducing
myself to you because I don’t have any business with you, my duty as
I am mailing you now is just to KILL you and I have to do it as I
have already beenpaid for that.

Someone you call a friend wants you Dead by all means, and the
personhave spent a lot of money on this, the person also came to us
and tol me that he wanted you dead and he provided us with your name
,pictureand other necessary information’s we needed about you. So I
sent my boysto track you down and they have carried out the necessary
investigationneeded for the operation on you, and they have done that
but I toldthem not to kill you that I will like to contact you and
see if your lif is Important to you or not since their findings shows
that you are innocent.

I called my client back and ask him of your email address which I
didn’t tell him what I wanted to do with it and he gave it to me and
I amusing it to contact you now. As I am writing to you now my men
are monitoring you and they are telling me everything about you.

Now do you want to LIVE OR DIE? As someone has paid us to kill you.
Getback to me now if you are ready to pay some fees to spare your
life,$3,000 is all you need to spend You will first of all pay$1,000
then I will send a tape to you which i recorded every discusion i
hade with the person who wanted you dead and as soon as you get the
tape, you willpay the remaining $2,000. If you are not ready for my
help, then I will carry on with my job straight-up.

WARNING: DO NOT THINK OF CONTACTING THE POLICE OR EVEN TELLING
ANYONEBECAUSE I WILL KNOW.REMEMBER, SOMEONE WHO KNOWS YOU VERY WELL
WANT YOUDEAD! I WILL EXTEND IT TO YOUR FAMILY, INCASE I NOTICE
SOMETHING FUNNY.

DO NOT COME OUT ONCE IT IS 7:PM UNTIL I MAKE OUT TIME TO SEE YOU AN
GIVE YOU THE TAPE OF MY DISCUSSION WITH THE PERSON WHO WANT YOU DEAD
THENYOU CAN USE IT TO TAKE ANY LEGAL ACTION. GOOD LUCK AS I AWAIT
YOURREPLY.

Posted in wtf | 2 Comments

04 Bennett

by V.E. on April 20th, 2008

filed under writing

[This is the first draft of the fourth part of my Master's thesis/book, Confession.
Comments and questions are always appreciated.]

I’m sure that if I begin at the beginning, I will bore you all with how Bennett and I met; suffice to say, it was during our first year in college. I was dating another boy then, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter to Bennett.

I don’t remember how we began talking, but he says it was when I started waiting for him after German class so that we could walk back to the dorms together. That may be true; I vaguely remember something to that effect. I do remember, however, the night that Nathan, my then-boyfriend, and Bennett met.

Ben and I were studying for some German test in my dorm room. Irregular verbs in the past tense, I think it was, or something equally heinous. He was sitting on a chair and I on my bed. We were quizzing each other, back and forth, back and forth.

“Sein,” I said.

“I know ‘sein’ in the present tense,” he replied, and then rattled off: “Ich bin, du bist, er ist. Wir sind, ihr seid, sie sind.”

“Good, but that’s not what we’re being tested on tomorrow,” I grinned, “C’mon, you know this. Ich…” I began for him, then trailed off, waiting for him to continue.

“Ich war…” he paused, then went on in English, “you were, he was. We were, y’all were, they were.”

“Ooooookay. Looks like we have some work to do,” I sighed.

“My turn,” he said. “Haben.”

“What? Aw, man! ‘Haben’ is the worst irregular verb there is!” I complained, stretching out flat on my back on the bed.

I tried to mask my wince, but he noticed and asked, “Wie geht’s?”

“Es verletzt,” I answered.

“What does?” Bennett pressed, switching to English so there would be no confusion.

“My back. I have a bad back,” I stretched my arms up behind my head, wincing again.

“Turn over. I’ll give you a massage.” He motioned for me to make room for him on the bed.

“Really? Sweet.” I smiled and let him help me flip onto my stomach.

He moved over me, resting a leg on either side of my torso so that his knees were around my hips. Taking one of my arms in each hand, he pulled me so that my back was as flat as it could be without being poked or prodded.

“Wow. You have the worst back I’ve ever seen,” he said, running his fingers over my back to take in the terrain.

I snorted. “I told you, I have a bad back.”

“I guess it’s not the worst,” he corrected. “My grandfather’s is worse, but not by much—and he’s fifty years older than us.”

I frowned into the sheets. “And exactly how many backs have you seen in this context?”

Ben pressed hard and I squeaked in protest. “If it hurts too much, let me know,” he said before answering. “I’ve studied pressure points and have practiced on my family—and they don’t mind telling me what I’m doing wrong.”

“Ouch!” I cried before I could stop myself.

“It’s amazing how quickly the body adjusts, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I replied. The pain had lessened somewhat, even though the pressure had remained consistent.

The dorm room door jangled with my roommate’s keys and swung open, clanging against the painted cinderblock wall.

My voice was muffled, but I managed a “Hi, Daylin!” before Bennett’s hands moved onto an especially sore spot and I made a noise that sounded like I was a wounded animal.

“Hi, my lovely,” she responded before dropping her stuff on her bed. “You must be Bennett,” she said to him, and he extended a hand long enough to shake hers before returning his attention to the stubborn knots in my back.

“Ow! Ow! Too hard!” I protested.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, “I’m used to working on people who are used to the pain.”

Daylin was standing in the open doorway when Nathan came looking for me.

“Day, have you seen Vi—” he began before looking past her into the room. “What the hell?” he sputtered. Bennett looked up, and I half-twisted to see my boyfriend better.

“Hi Nate,” I said cheerily, before seeing his face. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean ‘What’s wrong’?” he asked defensively.

I sat up, pushing Ben off of me in the process. “We were studying and when I mentioned that my back hurt, Bennett offered a massage.”

“By sitting on you?” Nathan countered.

I shrugged, confused. Ben was stuffing his German work into his red sling bag. He looked up at me and raised an eyebrow.

“I’d better get going anyway,” he said. “Good to meet you, Daylin.” And he was out the door—and out of the line of fire.

“Sketchy,” Daylin said under her breath.

“No kidding,” Nate agreed, looking pointedly at me. “Vi, what the hell was that?”

“I told you!” I replied, bristling at his implication. “He was just giving me a massage. It was totally innocent!”

“Maybe for you, Vi,” he answered, “but not him. Any guy sitting on top of a pretty girl like that is not innocent.”

————

When I asked Bennett about it later, he confirmed that he had been… somewhat less than innocent in what I thought was an innocent situation.

“But I told you I have a boyfriend,” I said dryly. “Multiple times, if I recall.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, “I just assumed it was something like having someone back home still in high school or something.”

I shook my head. “But you know Nathan’s our age and goes to this school.”

“Yeah,” he admitted, “but I’d never seen him before that night.”

Posted in writing | 2 Comments

Human Footprint

by V.E. on April 19th, 2008

filed under fyi

National Geographic is cool, and so is this (new?) series… at least, I think it’s a series… Human Footprint.

“When you eat an egg, you’re not just eating an egg. You’re eating the gas the truck used to deliver that egg, the coal used to generate electricity for its refrigeration, and the resources used to boil, fry, or poach that yummy egg. And that’s your human footprint—how much of the world you use in your lifetime.”

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HAH!

by V.E. on April 19th, 2008

filed under health

I shaved five minutes off my total time from two days ago! Down to 3.4 miles in 50 minutes, which is 14:42 minutes per mile. I’m right on track. Plus, I’ve run five days IN A ROW.

That may not seem like much, but it’s a lot for me. I’m proud of myself.

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