Scott Brown

I think I need to say something about the election of Scott Brown because if I don't write how I feel, I keep it all bottled up inside, so here it goes: No, the election of Scott Brown isn't the end of the world. It might not mean the end of the Health Care movement, and it doesn't mean the start of another Republican tyranny. Republicans are still outnumbered. What the election of Scott Brown does do, however, is send a frustrating, disappointing, saddening, and belittling message to millions of Americans who are still fighting for the same rights and freedoms their heterosexual neighbors enjoy. It sends the message that most of America is more concerned with their bank accounts than they are with the rights of all of its tax-paying citizens. Gay marriage and gay rights, and minority rights in general were forgotten during the campaign for Ted Kennedy's senate seat in Massachusetts.

People in Massachusetts will say that they voted for Scott Brown because of his fiscal responsibility and his economic smarts, and that that type of candidate is what we need to get us out of the economic mess we are in, which is all fine; I've never really had a problem with fiscal conservatives (aside from their pretty apparent lack of sympathy for other human beings, but separate issue), because they tend not to bang on about the Bible and God and all that useless, adult fairy-tale, sky pixie shit. I even used to support fiscal conservatives. The Mitt Romneys, the Scott Browns, the (formerly) John McCains I actually supported at one time. But the problem I see with MA having elected Scott Brown over Martha Coakley is that the American public just doesn't give a shit about what should be first on their political priorities list: the civil rights of all human beings. The economy can wait; our citizens should come first, but MA has shown what is true of most of the country: Americans don't really give a shit about anything else other than the cash they stuff into their pockets. Fuck gay rights, women's rights, minority rights, is what MA said yesterday.

Forget all of the arguments that are happening in Massachusetts and across the country about healthcare and communists and socialists and the evil, communist Obama supporters vs. the win-one-for-Jesus Republicans, and all the arguments about the economy and how to go about fixing it, and about the pathetic state of your average Joe the Plumber's bank account. Shouldn't all of this self-indulgent wankery be quickly set aside in favor of the most important and devastating problem facing The United States: the fact that millions of its citizens still don't have equal protection and equal rights under United States law? Electing Scott Brown has done nothing to solve this problem. Electing to the United States senate a man who says proudly that marriage is between a man and a woman only, and who has the balls to say that the rights and liberties of a stifled, stomped-over, and forgotten minority should be left to the hands of the majority in a popular vote does not do anything to protect the tax-paying minority of gays, lesbians and bisexuals whose rights are slowly eroding away in 45 out of 50 states in America. Only in Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Iowa, and New Hampshire do gays and lesbians have full and equal protection under the laws of their states. In the rest of the states in the country we see instead attempts to lessen the rights of gays and lesbians. There are attempts at passing laws that limit the rights of gays and lesbians. Laws which tell them that they are not full citizens and therefore will not enjoy the same marriage rights as the rest of the nation, and laws which unconstitutional as dictated by the Constitution of the United States. And in Scott Brown's case, leaving the rights and liberties of millions of people who are a part of a minority to a majority vote is totally illogical, and he and everyone else in the nation knows that. Minority rights being left up to a popular vote will never work.

For Scott Brown to say that the matter of gay rights is a states issue is absolutely fucking ridiculous, selfish, and arrogant. If civil rights for blacks in the 1960s had been left to the states to decide, do we really think Obama would be our current president? It took The Civil Rights Act in 1964 to force states to comply with the banning of racial segregation. It took The Civil Rights Act to invalidate the Jim Crows laws, laws which were put into place by individual states. It took a sweeping, federal action to guarantee civil rights for a minority group. It's no different for gays and lesbians and their rights as tax paying citizens in America. And yet the most liberal state in the entire country elected a Republican into the bluest seat in the Senate: Ted Kennedy's former seat. Why? Because people were bored by Martha Coakley? Because Martha Coakley was an idiot during her campaign, underestimating the wrath of Boston sports fans? Please. Martha Coakley lost because America, and more specially, Massachusetts, is more concerned with the current status of their bank accounts instead of the current status of the rights of their neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens. When I was walking away from Franklin High School after I voted yesterday, a Scott Brown supporter yelled to other Brown supporters, "That's right! Let's hope they get the message!" Yes, Brown supporters, I get your message: money is far more important to and your country than the rights, liberties, and happiness of a group of millions of Americans who still don't enjoy the same rights and freedoms that you do.

Turning up the music and pretending the noises in the hallway are background noises in "Taking the Farm" or "Shine a Light"

Wolf Parade says, "And I'm content, I'm content, I'm content to be quiet/ Some will sink and some will get called to the light."  I'm sitting in my bed, quiet, in my room, and my parents are fighting about where my Dad put his inhaler.  He can't find it.  My mother says he needs to be more responsible with his medication, and he needs to put it away when he is done with it.  That is, he shouldn't leave it in the kids room, in their drawer, on top of their desk, etc.  My father yells back that he needs his inhaler, or he can't breathe at night.  And besides, where is he going to put it?  "In a fucking safe?"  Etc, etc.  The wailing in the background of "Taking the Farm" can't be distinguished from the wailing outside my bedroom door, so I'm quiet, content.

When I am cleaning out the grease traps at work, or emptying the friolators through the fry-filter, I still get comments that I am not smiling, or that I don't look happy.  Why do I need to have a smile on my face when I am covered in grease, and while I am filtering that, if handled irresponsibly, could give me third degree burns on my arms?  Those too are occasions for smiling and chipper conversations?

A vicodin inspired rambling

On my bike ride today I saw a real estate sign in front of a house on the top of a hill, under power lines, that said: "For Sale: 21 Acres."  I shook my head in disgust, and thought, "great, a soccer mom and her robot husband and 2 robot, zombie children with penciled in schedules on the refrigerator are going to buy it, not use the 21 acres, because they think they need a sprawling yard in sprawling suburbs.  What a waste," because I've been thinking lately that our sprawling suburbs idea has not been the best long term plan.  Anyways, after I shook my head in disgust, I shook my head in disgust again, because I realized I too would want 21 acres of land.  But why?  What would I do with 21 acres of land?  Do I need that much land?  Does anyone, besides farmers, need 21 acres of land?  If we don't need it, why do we buy it?  Why do we buy anything we don't need?  Why do we buy anything?  

Randy Travis is on David Letterman right now singing a song from his new album.  He's sold 21 million albums and I've never heard of him.  Do people from other countries listen to country music?

You know our hearts beat time they're waiting for something that'll never arrive

Franklin smelled like a stogy last week.  I don't know why.  Driving through the center of town, past Devitas, I smelled a stogy, and thought it was coming from the psuedo-Italian men working at Deviats at 10:30 at night, mopping up the deli floor, but when I stopped at the stop lights in front of St. Mary's church, I still smelled stogies.  

I'm riding my bike.  Sometimes I get migraines afterwards, sometimes I don't.  There is no rhyme or reason to it.   I've conducted so many experiments on myself while riding.  I have an appointment August 5 with a neurologist.  This neurologist is supposed to be really good.  The office sent me a packet of information about migraines, neurology, etc, and a packet of information about my migraines that I need to fill out before arriving on August 5, and I have to bring a copy of my MRI.  At the other neurologist I went to, I didn't have to do any of that.  I think I got the ghetto migraine treatment.

I want to know what people are thinking when they leave their Dunkin Donuts iced coffee cups on the side of the roads.  I've been keeping track on every ride.  While I am riding my bike, I see medium sized ice coffee cups sitting inside the white lines on streets. They have remnants of cream and sugar, tinted with a little bit of coffee sitting at the bottom of the cup, tilted, spilling over onto the white line, or into a pothole.  There are more Dunkin Donuts iced coffee cups on the side of the road than any other kind of litter.  In fact, I bet there are more Dunkin Donuts iced coffee cups than old condom wrappers, empty bottles of water, McDonald's cheeseburger wrappers, and empty soda bottles combined.  The side of the road is not a trash barrel.

I haven't updated in a while, and I am going to bitch and whine and complain and look for sympathy

I haven't updated this blog in a while. I've been having a frustrating summer so far, and all of the frustration is a direct result of my migraines.

A month ago I realized that my post-exercise migraines were coming back after being absent for a year. I thought that maybe they were returning because of other circumstances: maybe I was dehydrated, fatigued, maybe I hadn't eaten enough before exercising. But the more I exercised, the more I realized I was getting a regular migraine that has no obvious cause whatsoever. Great. Same position I was in last winter and spring.

Last winter and spring I went to Milford to see a neurologist, Dr. Pearson. She said that a medication, Topamax, commonly used as an anti-seizure medication, has also recently been used in the few rare cases of migraine patients getting migraines for no obvious reason after exercise. So I started taking Topamax, and hey! the post-exercise migraines stopped immediately. Now, however, they are back, and they are back with a vengeance.

It makes sense. Prescribing me Topamax was like putting one of those tiny little circular Scooby-Doo bandaids on a gaping, profusely bleeding wound that requires immediate surgery and blood transfusions: it stopped my pain for a little while, but there is some bigger, more horrible and serious issue lurking deeper within my body that is causing me to be in excruciating pain and agony every time I attempt to exercise.

To complicate my whole migraine affair even more, any pain medication I was taking to alleviate the pain from the migraines has also stopped working. I can't take Imitrex because that was giving me cardiovascular problems, and Tylenol and Advil no longer work. I would have to take 10 Tylenol or 15 Advil for my brain to feel even the slightest cessation in pain. Excedrin migraine sometimes works, I think because of the caffeine that is in it, but it will dull the pain for about 3o minutes. After that, the migraine is back in full force. My doctor also prescribed some other pain medications specific to migraines, and those did even less than Tylenol or Advil. So I decided I would try a Vicodin. A friend of mine gets migraines frequently, and she takes Vicodin, and she says it gets rid of her migraines, so I figured I would try it. Anything to stop the pain.

I took Vicodin one day after I had my post-exercise migraine, and the pain stopped. It was GONE. ALL the pain in my head was GONE. The only medication to have done that before was Imitrex, but that caused so many other complications that I had to stop taking it. Vicodin got rid of my migraines. But after taking Vicodin whenever I got a migraine, which, without exercise, was at least once a week, my tolerance for the medication started to build. Now I have to take 3 Vicodin to get rid of a migraine. I've developed a nasty little habit according to my mother, but what am I supposed to do when I am in excruciating pain?

I also want to know why more research has not been done on migraines. All of the neurologist I've seen have bitched about the lack of research on migraines. The ones who have done the little research there is neurologists who are migraine sufferers themselves.

I have an appointment to see a new neurologist on August 4. Until then, Vicodin is the only thing I can take to get rid of my migraines. I can't really exercise. The only exercise I do now is walking. I'd rather be out of shape for a while than be in excruciating pain all the time. It would be nice, though, if this new doctor could find the reason why I get these migraines after I exercise, instead of giving me a bandaid to put over a more serious and complicated problem.



So what else is going on in my life? I've been trying to read a lot. Today all attempts at reading have failed, though, because, what a surprise, I feel a migraine coming on. This one hasn't even been triggered by anything I can think of, either.

I've been working a lot at Papa Gino's.



I've come to accept that I have no long term plans, no career goals other than getting out of the food service industry by the time I am 30 and becoming an English teacher, and I am ok with that now. I don't need direction in my life, and I don't want it. And it's nice finally to accept that my career (or lack thereof) and my grades should not have any affect on my self-worth.


There's my monthly emo-post.

summer goals

1. Complete my summer reading list.
2. Lose ten pounds by June 7.
3. Write/extend my Orange Line Construction Worker project.
4. Complete the Conversations project.
5. Let's toss in a few 50 mile rides on my bike.


Numbers 3 and 4 are writing projects I am doing. The Orange Line Construction Worker is a 26 page creative essay I did for a creative non-fiction class. I want to work on it more, extend it, and explore things I wrote it in more fully over the summer. The goal is 60 pages.

I hope I can do all of this. I did well last summer with my goals. I work at Papa Gino's around 30 hours a week, and it wipes me out, and I work out a lot in the summer, so the summer always goes by so fast!

When the Elephants Dance- Tess Uriza Holthe
Expensive People- Joyce Carol Oates
A Garden of Earthly Delights- Joyce Carol
OatesSong of Solomon- Toni Morrison
A Portait of the Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce
Chance- Joseph Conrad
The City and the Pilar- Gore Vidal (I've already read it, but I want to read it again)
It- Stephen King (I might not actually get to this one. It's fucking long)
Ulysses- James Joyce (same with this one. I have a feeling I am going to have to pick either It or Ulysses, but not both)
The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde
Nobody Writes to the Colonel- Garcia Marquez (I've read it in Spanish, so it's time to read it in English!)
Stone Butch Blues- Leslie Feinberg (It was on the syllabus for my gay and lesbian lit class last semester but we didn't have time to read it so now I want to read it)
The Blind Assasin- Margaret Atwood (I have owned this book forever and every time I start it I can't get past the first few pages! I want to read it!!!)
Water For Elephants-Sara Gruen (the sign on the big bug in Providence told me to read it so I am going to)
The Chronicles of Narnia -C.S. Lewis

calorie counting

So as a part of this new diet I've gone off bagels. I have completely stopped eating bagels (for a certain period of time) to get the whole bagel thing out of my system, because let's face it, eating a bagel for breakfast every morning is actually fairly unhealthy. You get the bagel, which is like 400 calories, then cream cheese, which is like 200 calories. Pretty intense. And the crazy part is that I would eat this breakfast, which is a 500-600 calorie breakfast, and then I would be hungry again an hour later because it's empty calories. There's no substance to it. It's just carbs. Now I've been eating yogurt with cereal mixed in it, so I get protein, a few carbs, and a little bit of fat (like 3g) all under 300 calories, AND I don't feel hungry until around 12 if I eat at 7:30. If I ate a bagel at 7:30 I'd be hungry again at 8:30. Eventually I'll eat a bagel here and there, cuz bagels can be AWESOME sometimes, but for now, not so much. Especially since they have helped in the gaining of 12-13 pounds since the summer :( :(

I'm trying to be as efficient as possible with calories too now that I am riding my bike again, because I hate getting fatigued on the bike or hitting a wall. I really have to make sure I eat enough protein, fat and carbs. I can't go no carb, or no protein, or especially no fat. I tried cutting back on fat last year and that did not work out. If I am cycling, I must eat some fat SOMETIMES.

Life is so complicated.

Really, I'm not in my bedroom slitting my wrists, I swear!

For my entire life I have been taught that since I have had the potential and the brains to do well in school, that I need to make school my entire life, and that I need to make school the path by which I reach my career. I have also been taught that once I have my career figured out, and once I have a career in mind, I have my life figured out, I have solved who I am and what I want to do with my life.

Life and career are two different words.

Life (n.) 1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.

2. the animate existence or period of animate existence of an individual

Career (n.) 1. an occupation or profession, esp. one requiring special training, followed as one's lifework

2. success in a profession, occupation, etc.

A career is a subheading in one’s life. It is not the main title. It is a sidebar. An indentation. Even if you decide that you are going to make your career your entire “life” (and keep in mind, when you say your entire “life,” you mean only after a certain point, only after you have made the decision to make your career your entire “life” (think of this as a linear timeline)), you cannot escape that it is still a subheading, and not the main title. When you were born, you were not “Dan, English teacher.” You were a squirmy, wet, dripping little baby with nothing attached to you anymore. You were out of your mother’s womb and thus not attached to her no longer, and perhaps your parents had not even named you yet. You existed. You were life. You career came later, and thus it is not the main title of your life. It may be the first subheading of your life, but it is not the main title.

That said, why do our guidance counselors, our parents, our grandparents, our peers, our teachers all insist that “career” is the main title of everyone’s life?

In kindergarten, the first step on the path to your career, your teachers have career days. You can bring your parents into school so they can tell your peers about their careers, how they got there, and why they love it. The association begins: school=career; life=career; school=life=career. They are all synonymous, and yet you are 4 or 5 years old. Your teacher then teaches you “stay in school if you want to get a good paying job.” School=career. If you don’t have a good paying job, or a normal job, or the job that the parents of your peers have, you are unsucessful. School=life=career. These three words are all synonymous at the age of five. FIVE!

And so you graduate on to 1^st grade, then to 2^nd, and then to 3^rd, working to pass each grade thinking that your schooling is also your career, and without it, you don’t have a career, and thus without school, you also don’t have a life, because your career is synonymous with your life.

In the 3^rd grade, however, you probably have not decided “what you want to be when you grow up” (remember that phrase?). Once you graduate on into high school, and you sit down with your guidance counselors, and you decide “what you want to be when you grow up,” you can put a period at the end of that sentence. You’ve figured out your life. You are all set. Your guidance counselor can move to his next 15 minute appointment.

So you graduate on to college knowing that you have your entire life figured out, and you have your entire life ahead of you SOLVED! AHA.

Only, you don’t work 168 hours a week (the number of hours in a week). What are you supposed to do with the rest of the time you have off? Even if you have an 80 hour a week job, there are still 88 hours a week left. But most people are content with a 40-50 hour a week job. So that leaves over 120 hours a week! What do you like to do in your spare time?

I am only writing this because the pressure that is placed on children and high school students to define their lives at such a young age is so harmful, and so ridiculous. If someone is the type of person in high school who does know exactly what he wants to do with his career, that means he is that one specific type of person, and yes, that may work very well for him to set a goal for his career, and to work towards that, and to work and work and work towards that. But, there are 6.5 billion people in this world. There is not only one singular type of person. The world would be a far less interesting place if there were only one type of human being. We are all different, but school puts us into little boxes that are all the same size, and are all designed to carry the same weight, and are sent off to the same destination: career (and please, note that career is different from job (or a means to support yourself and to eat)).

It is only now, my third year of college, that I am realizing that, even though I have a career in mind (English teacher) I DON’T know what I want to do with my life, and that is something that is so hard for some people to understand. I say, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” and they respond, “I thought you wanted to be an English teacher?” (again, life=career). They are not the same thing. And I don’t know what I want to do with my life, and that is ok, but to realize that when I am 21 years old, after years and years and years of people telling me that I do in fact know what I want to do with my life since I have a career chosen, is very troubling.

So now the question is: what do I want to do? (AND DON’T SAY ENGLISH TEACHER).

I don’t know. I only have vague ideas.

Vague ideas like: I want to drink beer on summer nights outside. I want to ride my bike. I want to buy a beagle and name him Maurice. I want to wear flip flops. I want to have sex on Saturday afternoons. I want to live near the ocean. I want to write. I want to read. I want to drink tea. I want to drink black coffee. I want to wake up early and sit in my backyard. I want to walk around barefoot.

They are vague ideas, but they seem like pretty good ideas, no? And imagine, after all the years I have been in school (let’s see, since I was 4, so that 17 years!) I have never really sat down with myself and thought these things out until now. That is a shame. The things we do while we are living define our lives. And I don’t care what you say, you cannot possibly work 168 hours a week, so you must be doing other things, and if you’ve never thought about those, or don’t care about those, I feel sorry.

My cousin's Catholic high school is giving him a graded test on why homosexuality is wrong.

Y Tu Mama Tambien

I watched a movie the other night. It made me think. If I found out I had cancer, and I knew I was going to die in a month, what will I have left behind? Will I be happy with what I've done and experienced?

I want to go here:











(Bolivia)


And I want to go here:










(Santa Cruz, Bolivia)



I also want to go to Alaska, California, Nepal, France, England, and Germany. And I want to do it before I am 30. And I want to write about it, for me.

I also want to move somewhere outside of New England. But where? And when? When will I travel? Will I travel by myself? Would it be better for me to travel by myself?

When can I do all of this? I also need to get a teaching job right away out of school and start paying off my student loans. I get so stressed out about these things, and I know I shouldn't.

I just don't want to be that person who always says, "I'm going to do this, and this, and this, and that!" but never does any of it, and instead goes through the same dance every day of work, some necessary socializing with other humans, and sleep. I don't want to be that person, but I have been that person so far.

In the movie Little Miss Sunshine, one of the characters, Dwayne, says towards the end of the movie, "You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work... Fuck that. And fuck the Air Force Academy. If I want to fly, I'll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and fuck the rest. "

Life is one (fucking) beauty contest after another. Where is the time to do what you love, or to do SOMETHING else? You have to make time, and when you make time, people label you as a "slacker," or "irresponsible," or a "dreamer," or "silly," or as "living in his/her own fantasy land" (or something like that, you know what I mean). People think I don't live in the "real world," whatever the "real world" is, like I am somehow living in an alternate universe.

Well, I'm not living in an alternate universe. I just hate that I'm stuck doing some stupid dance, or going through one beauty contest after another, when I shouldn't be wasting my time with that. I should be doing other things, but instead I write about it in a blog, or in a notebook, and then close the notebook, and go back to work, back to the same dance, the same beauty contest. Once I graduate, fuck it, I'm taking a road trip somewhere, and everybody can suck it.

Spring break work

I have so much work I've been doing this spring break, but I am actually getting a lot of it done!

For spring break I have to:
-(re)read The Awakening
-Read 7 critical essays written about The Awakening
-Read When I Was Puerto Rican (memoir)
-Read Madame Bovary
-Read The Warden
-Read 3 essays in literary theory
-Summarize the 3 essays on literary theory
-Write 2 pages of writing project, do memo sheet
-Write 15 pages of writing project for WMS 490 (its a 30 page project)
-Research for Madame Bovary presentation

The things in bold are the things I've done so far. So all the big things are out of the way. Now I just have to finish the rest! Yay for spring breaks to get caught up on work.