mist of plastic

When I was last in school, I was given the assignment to write a 2-3 page paper on Buddhism for extra credit. For some obscure reason, I have decided to go ahead and write this paper even though no one knows when (if ever) I will be able to re-enroll. The research was a little disorienting as I have never been exposed to any but the most mainstream Buddhist concepts. Then I started reading about the four noble truths.

As I understand them, the four noble truths are the original Buddha's convictions about life that one must understand and accept before traveling on the path to nirvana. I was pleasantly surprised and amused to recognize a familiar concept in the first noble truth: "life is dukkah". If you say this aloud, it kind of sounds like "life is dookie" as in poo or shit. and, indeed, dukkah is roughly translated as "suffering" which can be one of the connotations  of "shit". So, in order to find the secret to happiness, one must first realize that life is shit.

This is the same message voiced by the dead milkmen in their song Life is Shit. Perhaps the teachings of Buddha aren't so foreign after all. Or maybe I'm just trying to compress an ancient religious truth into a catchy pop phrase so I can better relate to it.

Life is Shit

I ran into a friend of mine
Said he was gonna take some words and make them rhyme
I said "You can fool some of them some of the time,
But you can only fool half them all of the time"
He said "Yes I do believe this is true,
Would you like to come and sniff some glue?
And we'll fly to where the skies are blue
And look for things both bright and new"

And on a pretty Sunday morning
A bunch of pretty Baptist girls
Linked their pretty hands and they sang
Life is shit, life is shit
The world is shit, the world is shit
This is life as I know it
This is life as I know it

And in the sky I saw Richard Nixon
Smoking a lacey with Mr. Dickson
He said "Son there's something I must say,
I do believe I've found a better way"
And a vision came
And I new it was Bob Crane
And Bob sang:

Life is shit, life is shit
The world is shit, the world is shit
This is life as I know it
This is life as I know it

And when my friend and I were done
We went to rest upon the sun
Cause life takes from us the things we love
And it robs us of the special ones
And it puts them high where we can't climb
And we only miss them all the time

And we sing:
Life is shit, life is shit
The world is shit, the world is shit
This is life as I know it
This is life as I know it…

filarial soup

what is this obsession with "real"?

i think we've all seen those bulletins bemoaning the "fakeness" of people on myspace and threatening to delete people from a friend's list unless they repost. i've had a few people try to entice me into being friends with them by writing me an e-mail stating that they are "real". not that they're good or true or funny or smart or nice to talk to, just "real", like its the only thing that truly matters.

i think when people use the word "real" on the internet, they intend to reflect that they present themselves in virtual reality just as they are in physical reality. i don't put a lot of stock in real. i think people who are "real" in this sense are boring, without imagination, and too easily manipulated by society. these people take great care in representing their physical selves in cyberspace as precisely, accurately, and anally as possible. they don't do this tedious chore for their own sake but, by their own admission, so they won't offend anyone else.
don't get me wrong, i don't believe its right for a person to misrepresent themselves to the detriment of others, like a pedophile who claims he's a 15 year old girl, but i do think that the internet should be a place where people aren't inhibited by their physical lives. this is a place where great experimentation is possible and adhering so closely to the rule of real shuts out vast opportunities for the unreal.

i love the internet because i can say just about anything i want without reprecussions. i can be anyone, i can meet anyone, i can engage anyone in conversation on any level as long as they are willing to meet me in my imaginary plane. if they insist on staying "real" then i doubt we'll ever get any farther than hello, what's your name, and how is the weather?

for the record, my representation of myself on the internet isn't entirely "real". yes, my name is brak, i'm a girl, those pictures are of me, and everything i write here comes from the heart, but i have many different hearts, different personas, and they aren't all given the opportunity of expression in everyday life- mostly due to societal restraints. if i only let my everyday, all-pupose Brak-persona out on the internet i'd be just as boring as i am in real life and how sad that would be. i have a whole villiage's worth of ideas and perspectives inside me and how pathetic and wasteful it would be to block out all but those that most accurately reflect the ideas that i have on a day-to-day basis; my "real" thoughts.

so next time someone claims that they are "real" you can count them as either a coward because they are too afraid to explore their own alternate dimensions, or a simpleton because they have no alternate dimensions. why did we create the social internet (as opposed to the business or information internet) if we were going to restrict it's population to everyday, real-life cowards and simpletons? in other words, people who have no soul, no originality, no vitality. and what good are these people to me? just a waste of virtual space.

superpower hummus

i slept most of this weekend and it made me sad. i was supposed to go to the home depot to get supplies to finish my rat cages up- you know, make them all homey- but i couldn't get up the energy to wheel myself in mah wheely-chair. i usually have ryan wheel me, but since we were planning on getting a large trash can as well, he would've been pushing a shopping cart. (oh... i rented a wheely chair just for the month until the weird pains and fatigues and dizzyness, etc. go away. its not for keeps.) yes, things are getting desperate when the boys can't be men and also when boozehounds like myself can't even get up the energy to make a weekend trip to the home depot, much less down a bottle of tequila. *sigh* oh well, i've been uncool most of my life, i can certainly handle doing it again.

rat update: rei has 5 girls and 5 boys. i'll be putting up pics and naming them in the weeks to come. also, lucy's pneumonia is improving, but penny has a little hernia. nothing can really be done about a small rat hernia except see if it gets better by itself. it doesn't seem to be causing her any trouble so far, but if it gets bad the only option is youth in asia to avoid a horrible, painful death by bowel-twisting.

ok, i saw that movie, 28 weeks later and i just wanted to say wtf?! what kind of zombie has an eye-fetish and knows how to use a key-card?! and he was pretty much the *only* zombie in the whole film. the rest of the "zombies" were just running shadows. its only fun if you can see them rot. i also think there was too much focus on the living in this film. i saw way more scenes of  naive, but pulse-bearing children than the decomposing, flesh-hungry children i was expecting. and there were a lot of tiny plot holes that betrayed the writers' apathy for making a coherent film. actually, it seems to be accepted that horror movies in general are more about the shock value than whether or not the story makes sense. personally, i find this attitude disappointing. a lot of these movies start with an intriguing premise and then instead of building it into a working plot, they just leave the story hanging and fill the space with confusing, jumbled shots that may have been zombies (or the blair witch) or may have just been the camera dude falling over. can't we have a solid, well-planned story and a horde of insatiable undead? overall, i'd say 28 weeks later is good for a one-time viewing in the theater, especially if you have a vivid imagination, but i wouldn't buy it or even illegally download it. it just isn't worth a second look in my opinion.

ryan finally started cleaning up the house yesterday. he made the bedroom clean and got all the laundry off the bed... and when i went over to feed the rats this morning, there's *more laundry on the bed*. LAUNDRY DOES NOT GO ON THE BED!!!!! under any circumstances. unless you are using the bed to fold it, and then it must be quickly relocated before the bed becomes its permamnent resting-place. then you'll be sleeping in your tangled up garments and have to wear sheets like togas because you can't find your clean clothes. and socks get under the mattress and in your ears and its just a tragedy.

infused with german coins

i just watched pan's labyrinth. it was suprisingly violent and suprisingly in spanish. but i suppose if the previews made it plain that everything was subtitled then less people would watch it. i was wondering why it was out of theatres so fast if it was so cool. now i know: because americans are illiterate... or lazy. it *was* cool, though. just don't watch it with your kids. really.

my parents took hayley to the beach for the weekend so i've been having to take care of myself the past few days. i'm down to my last pain pill and i'm not sure where to get more. they have my prescription on file at the walgreen's somewhere, but i can't remember where. i usually go to wal-mart but i'm not sure they'll refill something from walgreen's. i've got plenty of muscle relaxers, though so imma da be fine... *drool*.. huh?

 

as you may have heard, aurelia had her babies. 10 little pinkies in all and they are oh so precious. three of them have dark hoods now. i don't know if that means they're going to be black-hooded like penny's babies or what. i hope i get some that look like their mom and dad and maybe some self (solid-colored) and berkshire (white-bellied) babies. samuel was their dad if i didn't say so before. i think penny's babies had more than one father cause her two berkshire babies are so much bigger than their siblings. especially chelsea. we call her CHELSEA now cause she's so friggin huge. but still cute. i gave them all proper names now since it looks like they're going to be around for awhile. my boys are botero, nebo, gianlorenzo bernini, periwinkle, and godfrick. the girls are janet, lucy, lavender, and CHELSEA. i'm keeping all of aurelia's babies in case you were wondering. i just loves them too much.

in the days of teutonic puppies

i'm a little better. lost a lot of weight. like a lot. i haven't been this small since i was about 13 or 14 and i was kinda anorexic. but i'm eating lots and lots this time. just doesn't seem to help. i take a lot of drugs, mostly for pain and they make me silly. i've got this muscle spasm in my back now and the vicodin doesn't help much so i think i may have to request something stronger just so i can lay down to sleep at night. i've been sleeping sitting up in a chair the past few nights cause i can't deal with the pain. and it still wakes me up a lot. but i think i'm getting better and i'm glad they actually figured out what it was i had this time instead of giving me motrin and sending me home. they initially told me i just had the flu. idiots. they probably thought i was exaggerating how much pain i was in just cause i'm a girl. delicate little girl. mmhmm, that's me. pfft.

i've just been watching an insane amount of television. usually i don't like to do that, but i find it rather enjoyable as long as i have drugs. drugs makes all the difference. still disappointed i didn't get the option to do something more constructive with my forced vacation time. i'm still planning on going back to school in the fall even though this thing won't be completely healed until september probably. i think the pain will stop in about a month or so. i think.

hayley got her hair cut short to keep it out of her face and food better. its cute.

oh my stars

i was in the hospital. that's where i was. i had female troubles and since i don't like reading about other people's female troubles, i won't make you read about mine in any detail. just suffice to say they hurt like a motherfucking kangaroo. whatever that means. i would also like to say that my gyno at the hospital, nice little resident named dr. ronica mcbrayer was pretty good... but only because it takes one to know one.

i'm home now and the only thing keeping me from feeling as bad as i did when i went in are the pills. i have to take a lot and lot of pills. not as good as the stuff i was getting at the hospital (morphine wheeeeeee) but still ok. things are veryvery bad. its all messy and there's no food or clean dishes so i'm eating mostly saltines and applesauce. i haven't fed the rats yet today cause of the excruciating pain and nausea and they've discovered they can escape the bathtub and chew on the walls and play rat-in-your-hair when i'm in there. lovely. i can't clean up after them at all. i tried. ohgodithurtsithurts too much. things are not looking very good. not good at all. i don't know what to do. i really don't. i think i'll just go listen to some linkin park.

get thee to a blasphemy

i went back to the doctor's to look at my blood test results. i brought my dad along to tell her that depression doesn't cause the symptoms i'm experiencing. she said my bloodwork came back fine. all my organs are happy and hardworking. she didn't have any clue what was wrong with me, but instead of letting her send me home without any answers i asked her to test my thyroid. i looked on the webmd to see if it could guess what's wrong because the human doctor seems to be failing miserably, and it said most likely hyperthyroidism. so i gave them more blood and she said she'd call me if it was wrong. she didn't want to make a follow-up appointment unless there was something wrong with my thyroid. she doesn't seem interested in figuring out why i'm losing my hair and my vision and having dizzy spells and back prickles unless its my thyroid being stupid. i suppose if its not my thyroid, i'm just supposed to invest in a good-quality wig and learn to read braile. (i'm muttering obscenities right now)