Death and the Science of Nostalgia

Note to self: don't marry anyone who will murder you.
My aunt's sister (so not an actual relation of mine, but her kids are my cousins' cousins) was stabbed to death a few days ago by her husband. She was 36. The kids, boys ages 2 and 4, were in daycare. The husband is claiming self-defense, but he stabbed her a lot of times for it to be self-defense. Totally fucked up. Apparently the husband called his father after he killed his wife to say "holy shit, I just killed my wife, what do I do?" and the dad had the sense to say call the police and do NOT pick the kids up from daycare, they do not need to see their dead mother on the kitchen floor. Just. So. Fucked. Up.

In lighter news, (move over water-skiing squirrels) I became a member at the Museum of Science and Industry today. They had a student rate and membership includes free passes to the Omnimax movies and special exhibits, so as long as I go one other time with a friend this year, it's worth it. Not that I really had $55 to blow, but I do love my museums. It also got us into the CSI exhibit, which was conceptually very cool but pretty lame when you got down to it. I dragged NBF with me, and he's ex-navy, so the whole navy exhibit and U-505 thing became more interesting for me with his bonus commentary. Some of you may remember from childhood when the submarine sat outside the museum and you had to go down this weird long hallway and you could look through the periscope and see Lake Shore Drive. Your tour guide was the one who told the story of the sub's capture and explained the enigma machine, which you could stare at while you waited in line to enter the hallway. Now, U-505 has its own big huge impressive (and entirely indoor) exhibit and they restored the ship and the story is all interactive but non-human and they charge an extra $5 to tour the sub itself and the periscope just looks around the exhibit room. Oh, the price of progress.
Another kick in the groin of nostalgia, the big sparkly thing that somehow used sunlight to spin around (the sunnier, the faster) in one of the stairwells is gone. I was terribly distraught, and asked a number of museum personnel what happened to it. They didn't know, but the museum changes exhibits more frequently than, say, the aquarium or Art Institute, because science tends to evolve faster than, say, art or fish. Still, I don't understand why they haven't gotten rid of the fucking circus exhibit. I hate that thing. It's stupid and dark and creepy and clown-laden. Fuck that shit, I want my sparkly back.

fathungryboredneedtostartschoolorgetlifeorgetfriendsorgetout

absolution

Recently, a number of people from my distant past have contacted me via Facebook. While all of these people have been Decent Human Beings, following links of friends-of-friends and whatnot yielded many people I'd rather forget. But with time and distance on my side, it's a bit easier to see why I was so miserable growing up: I went to school with some absolutely dreadful excuses for human beings. Those of you who read this who grew up with me know exactly what I'm talking about: we were surrounded by truly cruel, terrible children/adolescents with disgusting values systems. The Future Greek System Cookie Cutter Whores (male and female alike). The dim, shallow twats who weren't content to just be dim and shallow themselves but found it necessary to belittle and berate anything that didn't fit neatly into the box. God forbid you wore the wrong clothes or "acted smart" or thought independently. Every time I opened my mouth, they sneered and rolled their eyes and told me to shut it. Maybe I would have come out less scathed had I listened, but to me that was surrender, so I fought back tooth and nail. I fought just. so. hard. to be true to myself while they told me I was annoying and stupid and why did I have to be "like that" all the time and shut up, you fucking freak. I was aware of my parents' impotence by the time I was 7. Every time they tried to help (talking to the teachers or other parents or giving me advice on how to handle mean little children) it got worse. No wonder I didn't trust them with anything, taking the burden of my own pain completely on my own shoulders. No wonder I'm so inclined towards loner-ism in my sad, hurt, self-hating way. I learned very young that people were either mean or useless. It was the perfect recipe for a hard, thin outer shell and complete mush on the inside.
Self-help gurus and therapists are always saying to take responsibility for your own life and misery, but maybe my problem is that I've been taking that responsibility for the better part of 25 years when in fact it's an undeserved burden. Nobody deserves to be treated the way I was treated, and while I was fighting and fighting and fighting, I never accepted the fact that I was actually a victim. I hate the victim mentality, but at the same time, if I never recognize that they injured me deeply, I can never tend to my wounds. And I've been out of the thick of the shit for seven years now and I'm clearly not yet healed. I'm convinced people don't like me or shouldn't like me. I have a terrible time trusting people and it takes very little for them to hurt me a whole lot. And then I'm perpetually single because Why would anyone love me when I am so undeserving of love? The shit runs deep and it hurts it hurts it hurts. But no child deserves the mistreatment and burden I carried. It wasn't my fault. These were bad people doing bad things and I didn't deserve them. It wasn't my fault. It isn't my fault. My pain is justified and real and not my fault.

kvetch

Addendum to the personality test psych you/psych me thing: to "psych me" it will ask you to paste in the link I sent you. That link is
http://personaldna.com/psychyou-psychme.php?for=5d222b6ed639
so copy paste, baby.

The barometer in my head is going nuts. I hate this weather. My dog has also been less than happy, particularly when he saw the turtle wandering around in its cage.

My grandma called me yesterday to thank me for the little stuffed dog I sent her in the mail. Also my parents are on vacation so she didn't have my mom to talk to and I think she decided I'm the next best thing. For as much as I complain about my own mother, my grandmother is at least 100 times more difficult. I don't think I've had a single conversation with her in the past year during which she didn't bring up her greatest regret in life: never going to college. And everything she says is either a blatant or a thinly veiled complaint. I've learned to plaster her comments with Shiny Happy Optimism, but I think that's more to keep myself out of her self-enforced wretched abyss than anything else. After all, the woman has been saying "At my age, you don't buy bulk packs of toilet paper any more because, well, you never know!" for almost 20 years. In that time, she could have saved a lot on toilet paper.

Stupid stupid head. How many chemicals do I have to feed you before you shut up?

blah

We never made it to Lansing. After it took an hour and a half to go 9 miles on the Dan Ryan there was no way we'd get there in time for the wedding and maybe not even the reception. Disappointing after I was all ready for an adventure, but the weather was gorgeous and we went to a completely lame Middle Eastern music fest thing and then wandered around the Lincoln Park Zoo, so it was a lovely day with lovely company in Chicago.

I'm going through my old rejected greeting cards to submit them to other companies that pay $50-$100 for accepted freelance card copy. I still think I'm funny.

I've been infinitely tired today. I think I have scurvy because I am craving fruit, but I have no fruit. Perhaps I will put on pants and go buy fruit. Perhaps.

Also, I retook the test thing and this time it says I'm a benevolent builder. So I'm a little of both. More importantly, there's this lovely feature that lets you "assess other people's personalities, and ask other peopleto assess yours!" So assess me and if you want I'll assess you!

"Well, she has a great personality."

I'm going to Lansing. Crazy shit.

Also, I've taken many a personality test in my day, but I like this one becaused the way they split up categories and ask questions got closer to the heart of things for me than most. I tend to have a handful of paradoxical traits that end up averaging themselves out instead of explaining how I am on most tests (i.e. I am quite capable of shmoozing with strangers but I prefer to have just a few close friends and I absolutely need both alone time and social interaction, so the whole introvert/extrovert thing gets mushy). This test didn't have so much of that problem. Here's my report. Whats yours? You should leave it on my comments. Mostly because I want comments. They validate my typing into the void all the time.

Please Advise!

Earlier today, I called a male friend from high school who is in town to see if he wanted to do anything tonight. He called back around 8:30 to say he's too tired, but if had absolutely nothing better to do tomorrow, would I want to go to a wedding with him in Lansing, Michigan. I do, in fact, have absolutely nothing better to do, but is it too weird to drive five hours each direction to go to a wedding where I know no one? Sunny goes to school out there, so if I could see her for a few minutes, that would be excuse enough to go, and NBF said he'd stop by my apartment at some point to walk my dog so I don't have to worry about him (the dog) exploding. So it's very tempting to go, except is that completely weird? And what if it turns out my friend and I can't actually stand eachother for that many hours alone? Thoughts?

Like the Jackson 5 without any Jacksons

It's a party in my apartment. NBF is here playing his stupid nerdy online dork game because his internet at home is still down from yesterday's storm. Add to that me playing Chicken Invaders, NBF's dog snarfing at the turtle, and my dog snarfing at NBF's dog, and all you need are a disco ball and spiked punch.

My brain is misbehaving again as usual.

Party Animals

There is a turtle in my bathtub. I put him there. He is my brother's, but my brother left for college and never really cared for the turtle in the first place, and my mother hates animals. The turtle's terrarium thing (big aquarium with wood chip bedding and two plastic bowls that are supposed to look like they're made out of rocks) is still in my car, because five minutes after I drove away from my parents' house with the aforementioned turtle, it started storming. Then the tornado sirens went, and the radio news kept saying for people in areas moving ever closer to me should all abandon their cars and get into basements. Two seconds later black clouds swallowed everything and branches flew past and rain came down in sheets. I kept looking at the businesses along North Avenue for reasonable shelter and to the sky to see if it turned orange or green (it usually turns weird colors before an actual tornado touches down). Between the wet and the fact I was a little white girl with turtle in tow in the shittier parts of Chicago's west side, I decided not to stop unless the sky turned, and it didn't. Now, I am in my apartment and refusing to leave until the weather clears and my dog is freaking out (as per usual...he had a particularly rough night last night with the thunder) and the turtle is in my bathtub, hiding under his wood thing. It's a party.

geography

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from the Harder Than I Thought Dept.

I'm trying to make my mom's webpage not suck, but without knowing any more than the most basic HTML and not having access to the code or software that built what it looks like so far. This was so much easier when I was just trying to put together something from scratch for my phonesex using yahoo's free pagebuilder thing.

10 Things I Hate About Me

It's official: I'm ready to start school or something again. The freedom was nice for a bit, but now I'm losing it. With nothing to regularly force me out of the house and keep me occupied on a regular basis, the Vast Eternal Loneliness has kicked in. I spent much of last night crying at NBF and feeling unworthy of friendship and love. Good times. I still have a very hard time believing I am a likable person, and the constant paranoia that I'm just hanging around and annoying people and they don't really want to be my friends tends to loom long after they've proven otherwise. I guess I find myself annoying, stupid, tiresome, and not pretty or smooth enough to get away with it and still be liked. I want to like myself, but I don't know how without tons of really genuine, convincing external validation. It took a pair of highly judgmental, critical parents and a good 5-6 years of little kids constantly telling me I'm a piece of shit for it to really sink in, I just hope it doesn't take the rest of my life to believe otherwise.

I'll have the communications sampler, please

I'm bored. Play with me.

Does anyone know about submitting writing under a pen name? I want to use "Annabell" for the things I wrote about my family, but Annabell does not have a bank account or social security number.

I got a new phone today. It's totally hot. It has a QWERTY keyboard but is the size of a Razor and weighs less than my old phone. Also, I am now on my family's plan, so I have unlimited texting, but I have to be a bit more careful about my minutes or my parents will beat me. Basically, if you are not a Verizon customer, I am no longer your friend until after 9 PM. Ever. I don't care if you're dying, you can text me or shove it.

I said goodbye to my brother today since I'm not going to see him again before he goes off to college this weekend. My baby is all grown up. I just hope it's half as wonderful as he expects it to be and my mother gets used to her empty nest and doesn't start [s]mothering me to death instead.

I left my journal at a bar on Sunday. Not smart. Fortunately, they still had it when my friend who lives right there went back. I should probably be more mortified that they put it with the board games, but a) what do I care if a bunch of strangers read my dumb rambling shit and b) my deepest darkest secret gleanable from my journal is that I'm actually a boy-crazy flake, and that's not much of a secret. I tend not to have secrets. Hell, I don't even have discretion.

I'm going to go make out with my phone now.

"I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."

uggos need not apply

Tonight I hung out with my friend who is the singularly most gorgeous male person I've known ever, to whom I am inexplicably not attracted. I've known him since we were in second grade, so that may have something to do with the lack of attraction, but I emphasize here that he is a truly beautiful specimen of a human being and a really great person, too. Tonight, he was hitting on me a lot and even though he has a girlfriend and we would never "tap" one another's "shit," it was infinitely flattering. Clearly, the opinions of beautiful people are worth more than the uggos. Gotta love external validation.

exactly

Just saw this on McSweeneys and thought it was fabulous:

Two Things That Aren't Covered by Your Friend With Benefits.
BY MATTHEW SIMMONS

Care for the bitter heartbreak and depression that will inevitably occur when your friend moves on to a real relationship with a mature partner actually worthy of commitment.

Dental.

for what it's worth...

...and it probably isn't worth much, but I was just filling out birthdays and such on my google calendar thing and I noticed how many of my favorite people ever are scorpios.So I looked up the Scorpio stuff on Wikipedia for shits and giggles, and lo and behold:

Scorpio is the eighth sign of the Zodiac and associated with intensity, passion, and power. Individuals born under this sign are thought to be complex, analytical, loyal, patient, keenly perceptive, humorous, inquisitive, hypnotic, and of great moral character. The Scorpio person is secretive, powerful, penetrating, determined, purposeful, deep, complex, resourceful, ambitious, magnetic, hypnotic, sexual, creative and mysterious. They can also sometimes be cunning, suspicious, compulsive, aggressive, jealous, and controlling and be prone to extremity, secretiveness, and possessiveness.

So then I looked up my own Taurus-ness:

Taurus is the second sign of the Zodiac and associated with material and emotional security. Individuals born under this sign are thought to have a calm, patient, reliable, loyal, affectionate, sensuous, ambitious, and determined character. Generally, there is something distinctly sensual about the appearance. The Taurus person is resourceful, thorough, dependable, responsible, placid, stable, comfortable, solid, earthy, strong, money-oriented, practical, productive, cautious, musical, and artistic. They can also sometimes be stubborn, indulgent, insecure, acquisitive, possessive, rigid, stodgy and slow, and prone to hedonism, laziness, inflexibility, habituality, jealousy, and antipathy.
Taurus is traditionally ruled by the planet Venus, the planet of love, desire, femininity, peace and harmony. Taurus represents the feminine sheath of Venus, and as such, is intensely magnetic. It is also the most feminine sign in the zodiac. The opposite sign to Taurus is Scorpio and the two signs are widely considered to be the most sexually responsive of all zodiacal members.

There you go. If you're a scorpio and my friend, it is clearly because fate tells me to like people conceived in February-ish. If you are not a scorpio, I don't want to talk to you ever again.

In other news, my body and I are fighting again for the first time in many weeks. It is unpleasant and I am out of food. You should bring me food.

I just more or less slept through today. Migraine induced, but still, a very strange feeling to wake up and notice it's late afternoon.

yes, I AM this nerdy

I checked on the crime stats thing...in 2005, Rogers Park and Lincoln Park had about the same total populations (63,282 and 64,320 respectively). Lincoln park actually had a greater total number of reported crimes - 3,719 to Rogers Park's 2,497. That's the thing that gets quoted all the time. But Lincoln Park's crimes are heavily property crimes (burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson) whereas the fun stuff like aggravated assault and battery and murder are much higher in Rogers Park.

I crunched a bunch of numbers from the 2005 Chicago Police Department's annual report because I am a huge dork. For those of you from out of town, Rogers Park is a neighborhood that's as far north as you can go along the lake and still be in Chicago and where I plan to move. Lakeview is where I currently live and is fairly yuppie, but it also contains Boystown (gay area) and Wrigglyville (frat-boy land). Lincoln Park is Yuppie Central. All the shops are boutiques and chains. It's very nice, but pure gentry. Austin is the lovely ghetto just east of where I grew up (Oak Park). It's a big sprawling piece of shit that's one of the worst areas of the city, arguably worse than the south side since it lacks any sense of cohesive community.

per capita crime rates
Rogers Park: 3.93%
Lakeview: 4.14%
Lincoln Park: 5.78%
Austin: 6.63%

per capita crime rate for crimes against people*
Rogers Park: 0.88%
Lakeview: 0.45%
Lincoln Park: 0.43%
Austin: 1.98%

per capita crime rate for crimes against property**
Rogers Park: 2.90%
Lakeview: 3.70%
Lincoln Park: 5.36%
Austin: 4.66%

per capita sexual assault rates
Rogers Park: 0.04%
Lakeview: 0.02%
Lincoln Park: 0.03%
Austin: 0.10% (with 117! holy hell, Austin)

...and what dorky stats project would be complete without charts!
(please pardon the craptacularity and inconsistent size and clarity of the charts...I made them all the same exact way on the same exact program, but thank you Microsoft Works for being a cheap piece of crap and thank you me for being a cheap piece of crap and refusing to pay for Microsoft Office)



*murder, criminal sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and aggravated battery
**burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson

ohfortheloveofgod

For those of you who don't look at my comments, an anonymous person posted the following:

You should really keep an eye on this RP website. Good luck to you. http://morsehellhole.blogspot.com/

So I went to the website, and 90% of it is people bitching and moaning about and blaming the aldermen and local politicians for the "gangbanging and drunks" "plaguing" Rogers Park. Yes, there are gangs. Yes, there are drunks. Have a problem with it? Then fucking do something about it. I'm aware of "power of the pen," but this is just bitching and moaning with at most the power to scare away residents fortunate enough to have the time to sit around reading blogs. So shut up and/or do something. If you're going to complain about being afraid to walk home from the el at night, try to organize groups to walk home together (like a walk-pool instead of a carpool), or take a self-defense class, or just learn how to walk past people who probably want to have as little to do with you as you do with them. Because homeless people are not necessarily dangerous people. And neither are groups of more than two young black males. So don't be stupid, stop whining, and do something.

movin' on up

I'm moving! They were going to raise my rent by $45 a month so that I'd be paying $840 (including my $25 monthly pet rent and heat, but not gas or electric, which run me an average of $45/month). My apartment is tiny, an ok size for a studio in this area, but not a lot of room to breathe, and my neighborhood has become significantly more yuppie/frat boy in the two years I've lived here. I started apartment looking on craigslist and I also used Chicago Apartment Finders (it's a free service and I used them to find my current place), and then my landlord agreed to raise my rent to only* $815 and moving is a pain in the ass, but today I saw this place that is triple the size of my current apartment and completely beautiful and charming and half a block from the beach. It's way the hell north, up by the Jarvis stop in Rogers Park, but I like the feel of Rogers Park a lot and the immediate neighborhood is super-cute and the specific apartment has a living room and dining room in addition to a bedroom probably the size of my one room now. Oh, and the whole thing is like $800-$820 a month with all utilities and dog rent included and the building is wired for cable that most apartments can tap for free. And we met a number of other residents and they were all extremely nice and around my age (give or take) and I want it. I couldn't sign anything today, but theoretically when they open on Monday I'll get to stake my claim. Fingers crossed.

For those of you who have previously been afraid to visit me thanks to my current mess and dog, this apartment would allow me to keep my mess and dog in a separate room from company. I could have company! I could be social! Amazing!

All I need is love

I don't normally cry when I get pulled over, but tonight I was crying before I got pulled over, which is why I didn't notice the street switch to one-way. The cops were extremely nice and let me go with a "be careful and take care of yourself," so thank you to the three officers who recognized an honest mistake and a sad little girl.

And why am I such a sad little girl, you ask? Some combination of PMS, withdrawal from my College Try #1 friends and the wonderful time we had, an overabundance of being loved but not Loved by boys, and the usual self-doubt. It's a party in my heart and everyone's invited, just bring your own pitchforks and barbecue sauce, 'cause it's rare and tender in there. Yeesh, I'm such a kvetch. Things could be so much worse.

Too much to ask?

I want to be the kind of girl who can make people happy and whole again without even trying. I want to change someone's life, just by existing. I want to be the greatest thing to happen to a boy, ever. Do you think there's a class or a book somewhere that can teach me to be that?