oh · sister

With an essay on Matrix II.
Zuzana Licko, I love you.

Edit: From the LJ "home" page: "What Do You Have To Say?
Customize and print your own Sweet Escape Tour book, Harajuku paper dolls and other Gwen Stefani-inspired projects exclusively from HP."

Fucking awesome thanks HP I needed more help with the racist fetishization of Japanese culture by a white celebrity.

Hands smell like curry powder and tobacco.
Redying my hair.
Waking up to someone else's elbow hitting the top of my head.
Your Ex-Lover is Dead.
No one here denies what assholes we are.

I'm still a quiet atheist.
But due to my Bible as Lit class, I have a greatly increased respect for both Judaism and Christianity. I never one of those "HURR religion is DUM" atheists, but I'll admit I was kind of a condescending jerk, in my head, at least.
My professor (James Miller), however, has been nothing but professional- he doesn't push anything on us, but you can tell he believes what he's talking about. And he knows his shit, too. And his interpretaion of the Bible is so much more interesting (but valid) than anything I ever learned going to catechism. He explores the meaning of the Bible, with regard to context ("a text without a context is a pretext", he tells us), language, culture, and history. I don't want to get into it too much (there's simply too much to cover), but here's something that really stuck with me:

When Moses asks God's name, the answer, in Hebrew, is ehyeh asher ehyeh. This is usually translated as "I am who I am". Miller, however, through his own knowledge of Hebrew, translates it as "I am here as the one who will be there."

"I am here as the one who will be there."

That's just fucking beautiful, I don't care what your religion is.

(You can get his book, Listen Up- God Talking! (I know, I know, dumb title, and the description on the back sucks but it's really quite a fascinating book) at Amazon. there's even some used copies for sale.)

Photos and art!!!

( Look at me I still remember how to make a cut )

HI KIDS

Still living at 5 Lyon obviously because the lease runs till early next August. But then I swear I am gonna get a place somewhere else.

HERE IS THINGS I FEEL YOU SHOULD KNOW.

-I have crushes on everyone. Everyone. My new friend Jodi, some of the other tenants in the building, a girl in my Graphic Studios I class, a boy on the 8th floor who looks like a slightly slimmer Mo Rocca (my secret semi-celebrity crush), friends in various states, random people whom I have never met, innocent passerbys, etc. I think this is a reflection of my greater love for life in general now that I'm on my own.

-Still vegetarian. I make lots of soup now that it's winter. And sammiches. and whatever the hell else I want. I have four packages of Bob's Red Mill brand TVP and you can't stop me!

-Teeeeee veeeee is crazy shit yo. I've almost finished watching Six Feet Under, to my dismay. I love this show. I am crazy about it and will go so far as to yell if the room mates get too loud when I watch it ("SHUT UP I CAN'T HEAR MY SHOW") and now and then it makes me cry and then I IM Nate (not Mr. Nate McDonough, this is my newer Nate friend and depending on which of them I am talking to, I will refer to the opposite Nate as "other Nate") and tell him I will walk to Louisville and find him and punch him for reccomending a show that makes me cry. On the other hand, I turned him into a House MD addict.
Next on my list of shows: Deadwood.

-Knitting. KNITTING.
If you don't knit you aint shit.
I'm working on: a hat for Shawn (see below), some sort of weird cowl thing (or perhaps it is knitted sculpture? I do not yet know. I am a process knitter through and through), a shawl, and a lacy neck warmer thingy. Eventually I will begin work on a sweater for- who else?- Beck. As a dog, she will not complain if it looks a little funny or lopsided or such. Dogs are good test subjects for knitters.

-SHAWN is right now my friend. My really cute friend who encourages my knitting and lets me grab his hand sometimes and as of last night he watches Six Feet Under with me (no one else will, the assholes). We talked about it and despite HORMONES we're going to go pretty slow and start out as friends, because that is what we each need. Both of us moved here from the Lansing area (me from Dimondale, Shawn from Waverly) into a city where we knew no one (poor Shawn moved in during the summer and spent it alone with his art and his fat fat cat Chicago- he has no room mates). I am knitting him a hat currently.

-I dyed my hair. It's slightly auburn now (no dumb colors for me, that's too rage into the art school conformity machine) and while it looks cute, I don't think it's going to be a regular thing. Costs too much for my poor art student budget (even when I buy the really permanent stuff).

-I VOTED. I was so excited to do it, too! Absentee ballot, since I'm registered in Eaton County. I voted NO on dove hunting, NO to anti affirmative action legislation (which sadly passed anyway), and I helped Dick DeVos before he dicked Michigan.

-Speaking of DeVos, I have a new pet cause- saying "fuck you" to Amway. Amway is one of the country's biggest pyramid schemes, founded by a pair of dishonest social conservatives. Dick Devos, by the way, failed to clean up the problems his own father had admitted existed in Amway, during his time running the company. And this guy wanted to be governor of Michigan?
The really sad part? Half the shit in Grand Rapids is named after Amway or the DeVos or Van Andel families.

-The Lake Effect seems like a mythical beast when you live inland in Michigan. But o, you lucky souls, let me tell you; it certainly is a real thing. Snow in early October, freezing my ass off in a 75 degree apartment, etc. Fuck you too, Lake Michigan!

- I got drunk for real for the first time on Halloween. It was pleasent- I laid on the floor, on the shag carpet of Kelly and Stumple and Jodi's apartment, singing Wolf Parade songs and yelling "woo!" Then 5:30 am swung around and I puked every half hour or so for the next 10 hours (while freezing my ass off because I was dressed as Marla from Fight Club and so I was wearing just a shredded lime green dress)! SURPRISE, that's why you aren't supposed to drink while on Paxil. I had the oppurtunity to drink again last night (at Jodi's birthday) and I actually hadn't taken Paxil for a couple of days just in case, but I realized that the mere thought of alcohol still makes me shudder after that experiance. Plus Shawn, being on probation, can't drink. Solidarity etc.

-The Grand Rapids Public Library and I are having a love affair. Here's what I'll be reading for the next few weeks:

Daily Candy A to Z: An Insider's Guide to the Sweet Life by the editors of dailycandy
I'm a fucking sucker for fashion these days.

The Dorm Room Diet: The 8-Step Program for Creating a Healthy Lifestyle Plan That Really Works by Daphne Oz
Well, why the fuck not? I've actually lost an inch off my waist since moving (probably from having to walk everywhere), but I have to keep my muscles in good shape for my joints, and eating healty on the cheap is my goal anyway.

Food Plants of the World by Ben-Erik Van Wyk
This is for fun but also because I want to look at plants and go "cool, I wanna eat that".

Among Whales by Roger Payne
Whales are so neat. They have to think to breathe, so they only rest one hemisphere of their brain at a time.

Life-Histories of African Game Animals (Vol I) by Theodore Roosevelt
Why the fuck is this out of print?!

Ghosts of Tsavo: stalking the Mystery Lions of East Africa by Philip Caputo
This has been on my "read this" list for a while.

I just got back from Riverbank Books. On the elevator, I realized I should probably update this bitch, so here I am.

My bedroom is small. It is, however, tidy and cozy, especially now that I have some bookshelves up in here. There is a giant hill outside my window, one that, at its peak, probably reaches as high as the fifth floor. We are right near one of the city's major hospitals, so we get about 8 sirens of varying type each night. This doesn't bother me, though, possibly because I grew up about 5 miles from the train tracks. The brightness at night did bug me, but my mom brought some curtains on Thursday that I can pull shut over the blinds at night.

My wardrobe currently is very tame compared to what other people have, but I don't expect this to last long, because the Goodwill is not too far down Division street and I have sewing supplies. My hair, however, will NOT be dyed a weird color, because damn it I like being a cute-and-clever looking brunette.

Since I moved here, I've been threatened by a loud man in the park (but it wasn't that scary because he was standing on the fountain yelling at everyone who went by), walked a mile and a half to a bus stop, trimmed my hair with scissors I got in second grade, gotten a big commission, and talked to a homeless guy about his brand new sleeping bag.

I fucking love it here.

Classes start tomorrow.

There is nothing I love more than my dog, Beck.
You may recall how I adopted beck from the Eaton County Animal Control last August when my childhood dog, Splash, died unexpectedly last August at the age of seven. She began hemmoraging during a tumor removal, a sign that the tumor was cancerous. Instead of having the vet rush her to MSU's small animal clinic as an emergancy, I opted to have her put down while she was still asleep. Splash never felt any pain.
I was devastated, and even moreso, my sister's dog Skylar was thrown into hyesterics without Splash. Skylar was four years old at the time, and they had been together since the day we brought her home as a three month old puppy. I wanted another dog. Skylar was screaming all night without another dog. I went and found another dog.

I knew I wanted a pit bull mix. Splash was a lab/pit cross, and she had been the gentlest dog I've ever met. She was also intelligent and polite- so polite we almost never had to give her any commands. She was tolerant of anything we could dole out, be it my fondness for making her wear hats, or my 3 year old cousin's insistance of putting handfuls of grass directly in Splash's mouth. Because of Splash and other pits and pit mixes I had met volunteering at the capital Area Humane Society, I had unwittingly been converted into a pit bull devotee.

Beck had no name at animal control, just a number. She was skinny and gangly-looking. Her snout was oversized, and her legs were too long. She looked like someone had a pit bull coat two sizes too large on some sort of shepherd regect, then slapped a horse's nose on it. I had reservations about it, but I paid the fee, and took her home.

She no longer looks funny. The shepherd-like lankiness filled out into a slim version of the typical pit body, with some shar pei features for good measure. She doesn't run away from large looming objects or the sound of a shaking plastic bag- instead, she lays across my legs on the couch and growls when anyone steps too close to the camera when we watch Indiana Jones movies. Skylar fawns over her.

On June 11th of the year, The Lansing State Journal published what seems to be a well-meaning article. In truth, it only endangers my dog.
Splashed across the front page was a photo of a growling, lunging dog that may or may not be one of the "bull breeds". Farther down was a photo of another threatening-looking dog, this one looking more like an American Bulldog than anything else.
The article, "Blood Sport", written by Kevin Grasha, is purportedly about dog fighting in Ingham County. But if it is, why was so little space devoted to the connections between dog fighting and drug use? Or the connection to violent crimes against humans? Or the damaging effect on children in dog-fighting homes? Or the victims themselves- the dogs?

There was plenty about the dogs- plenty to encourage prejudices already in place about "dangerous" breeds.

Fostering Misconceptions

From the article: About two badly scarred or maimed dogs come in every week to the Ing-ham County shelter, McAloon Lampman said.
Myth: Scarred dogs have been fought.
See below for more information on this myth.

From the article: The shelter devotes 1 1/2 wards just to pit bulls, the most common breed used for fighting. If unclaimed, the dogs are euthanized.
Myth: Pit bulls and other "bad breeds" are unadoptable and take up space that should be devoted to "better" dogs.
This reasoning is what the "animal rights" group PETA uses to justify its desire to see all bull breeds or "pit bull" dogs outlawed and killed. However, geneticists and dog behavior experts state that aggression towards other dogs is seperate from agression towards humans. Fighting dogs can display both kinds of aggression, but one does not gurantee the other.

From the article: Eaton Rapids Police Chief Paul Malewski, whose department broke up a dogfighting ring more than a decade ago, said pit bull ownership is on the rise, meaning almost certainly that dogfighting is, too...Ownership of the pit bull breed declined about eight years ago, he said, when police began cracking down.
Myth: People own pit bulls only to fight them.
Pit bulls make up a large percentage of the canine population in many urban areas. If humane organizations are adopting out these dogs, why wouldn't ownership be on the rise? Yes, pit bulls are "the" breed for fighters. But many people, from well-to-do professionals to suburban families, are discovering that pit bulls are smart, loyal, and sturdy. They are an all-purpose dog. In recent years, pit bulls have been used as herding dogs, in weight pull sports, as search-and-rescue dogs, as therapy dogs, and above all, as companions.

From the article: Plus, there is street cred to be gained from towing a pit bull down the street, she said.
Myth: People get pit bulls as vanity items.
While there is something to be said for the reactions you will get when walking a pit bull, many people own them because they love them. Common sense tells you that eventually, every dog needs to go outside.

From the article: "Nine out of 10 people want pit bulls for the wrong reasons," McAloon Lampman said.
Myth: Only criminals own pit bulls.
And only shepherds own collies, I suppose. The Ingham County Animal Shelter doesn't adopt out pit bulls, so how can they know that the only people who want them are looking for a fighting dog? As explained above, pit bulls are all-purpose companions.

According To The Signs, I'm A Dog Fighter

Not shown in the online article is a handy list of "signs" that the paper claims may point to someone who is fighting dogs. If my neighbors were to fall for this, I'd have had a visit from animal control by now. Thankfully, they're smarter than that. The list, which was a condensed version of most lists like it, made the following claims that point to me mistreating Beck.

Dogs which have the appearance and characteristics of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, American Pit Bull Terrier or any other breed commonly known as pit bull, may be used in dog fighting activities. Other large breeds of dogs may also be used for dog fighting.
Beck is a pit bull/shar pei mix. According to this "sign", she must be a fighting dog. Skylar, our lab/dalmation mix, is a "large breed", so she's probably one as well.

Recent or long-standing wounds and abscesses
While I would normally agree that a long-standing wound is a good sign of cruelty in general, not all wounds are made equal. Beck often has a few abrasions or scrapes from the way she jumps, climbs, and runs. She plays hard. Recently, Skylar recovered from lick dermatitis- a wound caused by compulsive licking.

Scars on the head, throat, legs, and ears
Pit bulls play hard. Really hard. Sometimes, we'll hear a loud THWUNK when the dogs are playing- that's one of them, usually Beck, getting slammed against the side of the house by the other dog. She'll climb fences, skid to a stop and scrape her legs while playing fetch, dive nose-first into a wading pool, and display all kinds of reckless behavior.
Yes, my dog has scars. She's a pit bull. She heals quickly and never really injures herself, but she has gained a few small scars on her throat and sides since we got her. She also has some larger, more sinister scars.
As far as we can tell, Beck originally came from an abusive owner. She is shy of large, noisy objects or things like boards being lifted near her. The one time she's had an accident inside, she cowered when approached. She has multiple large scars on her shoulders and sides, and some around her muzzle, which appear to have been cause by someone wrapping wire around it. My dog is a rescue dog, but this list does not make allowances for that.

Wide leather or heavy collars
Whoever wrote this list has never owned a large dog. Many owners of large breeds will purchase special wide leather collars- some even have them custom made for their dogs. These collars can be expensive, but if you have a large or strong dog, its the kindest thing to do. Most commercial collars will dig into the throat of a strang or large dog who is pulling at the leash, which is painful and in some cases cause injury. Beck has a tenedancy to pull when she spots another dog and wants to go meet them. Because I can't afford one of these collars, I walk her in a harness to give me better control and keep her comfortable. Still, if I had the money, she'd have a big old collar.

Tires or other items suspended from trees to provide jaw strengthening activities
The proper name for this item is a "springpole". Last time I checked, it wasn't a crime to build your dog a toy. Diane Jessup, a dog trainer and author of multiple books about pit bulls, adovocates their use for any dog with a prey drive. Have you ever played tug with a dog that refused to let go, even when lifted into the air? This is a toy for those dogs. You don't have to be a dog fighter to use one.
Beck's favorite toy is an old tire we brought home for her. Now that it's in pieces, we're working on hanging it up so she can grab and pull to her heart's content.

Hand walking, jogging or using a treadmill
Who doesn't walk their dog?
Furthermore, treadmills are a good way for a high-energy dog to let off steam. However, they don't take the place of walks- in fact, you will need to walk the dog on leash for the same amount of time it was on the treadmill afterwards to let the dog cool down. Some people will buy specially made dog treadmills, but I have seen dog trainers on TV use treadmills designed for humans.

Pure Bull

I love Beck. Beck loves me. Articles like the State Journal's encourage prejudice against certain breeds and can influance local governments to create laws banning ownership of those breeds. These bans break up families, cause the death of thousands of dogs, and deprive people of their loving companions. Such articles also deter people from adopting dogs that "look dangerous", even if the dog is a wonderful match for them. They lead to the death of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of homeless dogs each year.

Resources for dog owners (especially pit owners)
The Working Pit Bull Diane Jessup's site, full of great care and training information that is helpful for any dog owner, as well as lots of in-depth information on pit bulls. Jessup is possibly the best source of pit bull information.
Pit Bull Rescue Central Looking for a pibble? Also includes "found" listings, and a list of low-cost neuter programs by state.
Pet Pit Bull A sort of "PR" website for the breed, and a source of good information (including historical) and news.
Pit Bull Press News, articles, activism.
BAD RAP Pit bull rescue in California's Bay area. Also refutes myths and links to pit-friendly resources in the area.
Dog Watch BSL alerts.
Flying Dog Press Dog training articles, using positive reward and relationship methods. Good articles on aggression, too.
Can We Help Advice on solving all kinds of issues that may cause someone to give up their pet.

Cleaning supplies
Textbooks
a new scanner
more RAM

My parents went and got me a cell phone. Watch, I'll use the damn thing maybe once a month.

My fingertips are sliced up from cutting stencils.

edit: oh yeah I made this goddamn layout and I fuckin like it

I MAKE $200 FOR SHOWIN BITCHES HOW TO MAKE A HYPERLINK IN MICROSOFT FRONTPAGE

it's a goddamn scam I tell you and i swear to god none of you will ever be as sucessful as me look at me I am fucking golden!!!

New journal for college life.

Took the dogs to Fitzgerald Park this morning to walk the trails. Beck had never seen a river before, and she really liked it. Skylar was nervous at first (she hates travelling) but got into it. One thing I discovered: Beck doesn't like to walk in front in new situations. I tried to walk in front with her because she kept tripping up Dad by walking right beside him, but she was very nervous. We did get down one of the flights of stairs built into the hills before we switched places again, but only managed this because I was urging her along.
We got mixed up on the trails a few times but it wasn't bad. It's really to hot out even in the morning to be hiking with dogs, though. We only saw one other pair of people with their dog, who Beck made friends with. Yesterday I went and saw Pirates again, this time with Smuj, so I guess today is my hiking/heavy lifting day to make up for how lazy I was yesterday.

Things I need to get for the apartment:
trashcans
toilet brush