Hemingway in the Rain

    I have recently developed a crippling addiction to StumbleUpon and now waste more time giggling at funny pictures and anecdotes than anyone, I mean anyone, ever should.
    Today I "Stumbled" into a list of the "Top English Language Fiction of the Twentieth Century", supposedly compiled by Stanford. It was a list of books that are, frankly, mostly the type of book that is so boring that the reader is left feeling as if only they were smarter they might have understood and enjoyed it more and therefore walk away gushing about the complexities and nuances while in reality not understanding them at all. To be fair they did have a few jewels in there like The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood (my all time favorite author), Winnie the Pooh, Watership Down, Corelli's Mandolin, everything George Orwell has ever written, and Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. However, I was hugely disappointed to see the disgusting abundance of James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway littering the top ten with their pretentious rambling (fine, I'm a hypocrite, sue me).
   Take it from someone who can understand them, they're not worth it. What is the point of fiction? To entertain. True it is often used to project the author's views on society but the central focus should always be to entertain. Now I challenge anyone to try and make it through an entire volume of Hemingway without wanting to shoot him yourself by the time you are finished. If you manage it then you are a more patient soul than I.

I'm Feelin' Weepy

    Since I am leaving for the Philippines on Saturday and my Best Friend is set to leave for Hungary right before I get back and just left for Seiku for the week, today was most likely the last time I will see her for a year (unless my mother actually pulls through and we go to visit her during spring break).
    When we were little we always used to talk about how strange it would be to live so far away that to talk to her face to face would take more than a couple blocks walk and now it's happening about eight years before we had anticipated (assuming we were to go to college together and get our first studio apartment together (yes, I still have the floor plan we made in 5th grade)). So as she was leaving we hugged super awkwardly (neither of us are people who hug very often, maybe it's because we developed most of our aversions together) and I'm still sort of teary eyed.
   Love, love, love that girl. Definitely going to miss her the most.

What I'm Watching Right Now

My friend sent me this video link and while I'm still signed on I thought my hordes of imaginary adoring fans should check it out. (It's about Glee).

Bad Habit

I have this horribly bad habit of reading the comments at the bottom of the news stories I read.
Just now I was reading an article about the BBC which, in the comments, turned into an argument about how the liberal news networks have been pushing lies to the public with such "europhile" tactics as giving all distances in kilometers and treating global warming as a real, current news issue.
So liberals are horrible people for telling the truth and using local measurement systems instead of a confusing, outdated system that is only really used in one country?
Well I guess I'm glad that those seem to be the worst of our problems. I'd hate for my political beliefs to be associated with baby killing... oh wait, never mind.

Wow, it doesn't seem real that the end of the school year is coming up so quickly. I only have two weeks to bring up my grades and only 3 weeks until I leave the country for the entire summer. Goodbye chilly Washington, hello monsoon ridden Manila. Maybe I'll actually be productive this summer?

Drama Drama

After the nightmare that was this afternoon I came home from my college classes to even more irrationalities. This time in reaction to the consequences with the fight with my dad (Did I really expect to get out of this without being grounded? No. Was I right? Yes.).
This has been bugging me a for a while. Why do some people just go along taking what comes and absorbing it, not taking it personally, maybe hurting inside but never vocalizing it? Why do others take everything as an affront to themselves, squalling when they assume they have been wronged?
Maybe I'm being harsh. I'll put it less personally. Why do some people bottle it all in (disregarding all the school counselors who insist it's unhealthy ) and why do other people wear their hearts on their sleeves?
I've never had any patience with the latter. It's honestly not like I go about my day wondering what I should do in this master plan to hurt the people I care about. I'm way too self absorbed, I am on a blog for goodness sakes. Am I really the only person in my social circle who assumes that other people do things for their own personal reasons that have nothing to do with me? Am I wrong? Has everyone else been orchestrating an elaborate plan to stress me to such a high degree that my head will actually burst out through my eardrums? If so, it's working.

Wow, here I am whining while the leader of one of the largest terrorist groups in the world has just died. It's big news but it's not going to change anything. Not here, in my corner of the United States and not even the rest of the world. I am going to keep going, and the Taliban is going to keep going. Did we really think this was it? It's over just like that? Not a chance.

Head Colds

Have you every gotten really angry?
Like with your face turning red, hair flying, tears streaming down your face , and the words coming out so fast that you choke on them?
Have you had to cough so hard afterward from the shear force of your words that you felt like you were almost going to throw up?
Have your tears ever made your nose run so much you needed a roll of paper towels once the tissues ran out?
Have you ever wanted to blow your nose so hard it bleeds?

I don't know. I don't think I even have time to have this fight, let alone fix what was wrong.

The worst part is, this afternoon started so great. I completely ACED my AP CompSci test and I was going to treat my dad to ice cream as a late Birthday present (he turned 70 yesterday) and a celebratory snack. It was going to be really great because we haven't kept ice cream in the house since his heart attack last February.
Then this had to happen.
Awesome, another potentially productive afternoon down the drain where all I want to do now is curl up in a corner of my bed and sob some more. But, as I mentioned before, there is no way I have enough time for a frivolity like that. I'll be so glad when summer comes.