Tag Archives: school

That Girl Who Talks About Vaginas A Lot

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Someone please explain to me why I cannot get this song out of my head. I think it has something to do with Matthew Morrison’s dancing. Because, mm.

This is one of those weeks where I step out of my room for lunch and then suddenly I look up and, oh wait, it’s 10pm and I haven’t been back and I have to do homework and look my RA bulletin board is due in an hour.* It’s a great week–I’ve organized two programs and the Vagina Monologues production that I’m directing  is this Thursday and Friday and then it’s my birthday and then it’s SXSWi–but it’s also kind of maybe a little insane. I used to think freshman year that I knew what busy was. I did not. I know I did not, because freshman year I had friends I saw outside of Lil’s and went to bed at 11pm. Good memories.

However, freshman year I did not get to make these sorts of things:

Vagina Week Poster

Yes. Yes it is a Georgia O'Keefe painting.

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Reevaluating Facebook

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New Year's Eve

Seriously. They're awesome parties.

I removed my Facebook wall today. I’m going to try to avoid Facebook as much as I can, and see if that goes well. I think it will. Realistically, there are very few people I interact with regularly, and I have redundant systems–email for my friends who don’t got to school with me, phone for my family, and running into people at my little tiny school if they need me. My contact information is still up there, if someone needs to text me.

While my wall is gone, I’m going to reevaluate what I’m using Facebook for. I’m not one of those people who truly wants to delete my profile; for one, I have had useful and good things come of Facebook, and it is by far the thing that gets me the most hits on this site or on my HackCollege articles. It’s a great way to distribute content I find interesting or useful (or–to be honest–that I create). There are links that I routinely want to send to individuals, and I think it’s probably ruder and more intrusive to send those via email. The reusable K-cup that I found the other day is totally awesome for my friend with a Kurig, but that doesn’t make it worth an email. And, oftentimes, it’s the way that I find out about parties friends are throwing–real-life events that I want to attend because my friends throw awesome parties.

Perhaps the way to use it is to reevaluate the Facebook ettiquette. Currently, I’m like most people; I friend pretty much anyone who requests me, regardless of degree of intimacy. Perhaps if I knocked that back down to the 50 or so people I actually care about, Facebook would become useful for me again. It is difficult to go through the 500-ish friends I have accumulated, though, and rearrange my settings so that I’m back where I want to be. And, because I’m a worrier, I’m always somewhat afraid that I’ll unfriend someone who I really will want to get in touch with at some point. The fact that I possess about 800 ways to do this outside of Facebook (or, with Facebook messages, within Facebook) does not seem to appease my lizard brain. And, if I lost those contacts I would have difficulty keeping people up-to-date with things I write, which is something I want to do.

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Global Warming FTW!

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Screenshot from Weather.com showing that it was 46 degrees in Tulsa, OK today.

This is freaking me out.

On Saturday, the family and I ventured up to Winslow, AR to stay with my grandparents for Christmas. After the 14-hour drive (complete with our very own simple dog) to my grandparents’ my family loaded back up into the car for the 2 1/2 hour drive to Tulsa, OK that we make every year in order to placate my sister and me. It may have been 8 years ago, but dammit, we are still bitter about being uprooted.

In Tulsa I got to see a few of my friends who were in town and eat some Mexican fusion, so it was good times all around. We spent part of the day wandering around Utica Square, in December, in Tulsa, without jackets. You guys, this is freaking me out. The first year we went back to Tulsa, my friends and I hung out at the zoo because we were 12 and what the hell else were we going to do. We had to cower inside the rain forest exhibit to restore feeling to our extremities. This weather is unseasonably nice, is what I’m saying.

Because I am from the Midwest, this mostly makes me idly wonder what God is going to do in order to even the karmic scales. I’m thinking a hail storm, tomorrow. Given that my grandparents’ power just went out (they live on a mountain in a town with 399 people), this may, in fact, be the route that He has chosen to go. Still not worse than a tornado! Continue reading →

Dead Fish and Atheism

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My late fish.

RIP, Bertrand. You will be missed.

This weekend, while I was at Clairmont Campus, my fish died. I also won $200 in a trivia competition. Things pair good and bad, I suppose.

So, on a slightly less macabre note: Biological Anthropology tshirts.

“Zygomatic: it’s a process!”

“I was reproductively isolated and all I got was this lousy dwarf elephant.”

Wholphin versus grizzpole, with the text “Hybridize this!”

A hobbit anthropologist uncovering a human skeleton. “They’re so big!”

“Alas poor Yorrick, I drew thee well.”

Anthropology: the most warped of the sexy, sexy sciences.

Other than that, I’ve been enjoying spending my trivia winnings on Etsy purchases–specifically a custom dress from this woman, who sews in Thailand, as part of my attempt to build an ethical, adult wardrobe, and a wine bottle serving tray from this woman as a gift from my mother, which was well-received. The purchases give me hope that I can, as I age, keep myself reasonably well-appointed without tearing my conscience apart too badly. My only worry is shoes. My Sociology course (Social Problems–we spent the first class watching a documentary on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which was super fun) is rubbing off on me.

Tonight also marked the first Interfaith Council meeting. We ate Thai food with a group of 30 students and two professors, and we talked about faith in college. I was asked a question about how I–as an atheist–handle being alone in the world, without a God to pray to. There was also a hint of “how are you a good person without faith?” For the latter, I simply said that I strive to be the best person I can be, and to go to bed thinking that I have done as much as I can to make the world better and done as little as possible which harms anyone. It’s never been a fear of God which kept me from doing bad things–just a fear of disappointing those who love me.

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Shit My Textbook Says

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The bush baby watches you sleep.

Biological anthropology is full of bitter, bitter anthropologists. And bush babies. Image courtesy of Flickr user Joachim S. Mueller under CC 2.0 BY-NC-SA.

“Generally, it was a good idea to avoid being accused of heresy because it was a crime that could be punished by a nasty and potentially fiery death (Fig. 2-1). (p. 25)

“Many people think of paleontology as pretty boring and only interesting to overly serious academics.” (p. 110)

“How do we deal scientifically with all this diversity? As humans, biologists approach complexity by simplifying it.” (p. 110, emphasis mine)

“It’s no wonder that people resist the concept of deep time; it not only stupefies our reason, but implies a sense of collective meaninglessness and reinforces our individual mortality.” (p. 128)

“Moreover, as we have already pointed out (see Chapter 2), the creationist perspective fundamentally fails to understand the nature of science itself.” (p. 134)

— Physical Anthropology, Jurmain et. al

My Biological Anthropology textbook is written by bitter, bitter anthropologists. The figure 2-1 cited in the first quote was a painting of someone being burned at the stake for heresy. Science comes alive!