Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Study Abroad

So I would love probably more than anything to study abroad somewhere in Europe. For the most part financial aide covers the same as going to school here, but the only thing holding me back is airfare. I don't have $400 lying around plus whatever expenses i would have while i'm there. They should make a program for students that is all inclusive so everyone has a chance to see the world before all the responsibilites of careers and adulthood hold them back.

Bad housing...

So Stony Brook is clearly overcrowded and under-housed. I had no idea how reapplying for housing since this was my first year here. I missed my deposit date AND my "housing appointment" - i had no idea that this even exhisted. So now in order to MAYBE somehow get housing next year. Since freshman are guaranteed housing, the uppder classmen can easily get dicked out of living here at all at one misstep. This is truly unfair since the freshman class is typically cut in half by the next year due to dropouts and transfers. Something should be done to be more fair for people who actually need housing and plan on staying.
Walmart Pays Up.




So walmart has owned up to their fuck-up and paid $2 million in New York to improve safety in their stores. I hope they have to pay more than that in the long run. I've seen how they let people in on black friday in 2007, they open the doors and everybody runs. Its amazing that only one person was killed.

Some kid thought he was cool.



So some kid thought he was doing a cool trick... didn't turn out that way. Epic failure. I could kill so much time on these sites.


My suitemate's girlfriend performed this in the Tabler drag show... was the funniest shit i've ever seen.

"LETS DO THE FORK IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL!"
Yeah nice one...




Too bad for all the dumb bitches trying to lose weight in the entirely wrong way.

Cinco De Mayo

Cinco De Mayo was yesterday. I spent it working on videos, blogs, papers, and lacking sleep. It was actually my roomates birthday. She spent her day with her mom and uncle, typical dinner and a movie type spiel. She then spent the night making out with her alcohol reeking girlfriend. No problem there. hah.

This summer

So this summer starts officially after your last final, and mine is tuesday May 19th at 9:30am. Directly after that I will finish emptying my dorm room, load up my boyfriend's truck and spend the day at his house unpacking dorm junk and repacking stuff to leave that night for North Carolina. We'll most likely leave at about 11pm in order to miss traffic. The drive will take approximately 11 hours with about 4-5 stops for bathroom, gas, and food breaks. Coming with us is our good friend and his girlfriend. Once down there hopefully I will be there for the birth of my new baby sister, Samantha. My mom is due any day now. The rest of my two weeks down there will consist of sleeping, beaching, and pool side sun-bathing. No cares. No responsibility. Just sunshine and family.

La, la la la, la la la.



My all time favorite song.

Hey darling, I hope you're good tonight
And I know you don't feel right when I'm leaving
Yeah, I want it but no, I don't need it
Tell me something sweet to get me by
'Cause I can't come back home 'til they're singin'

La, la la la, la la la
'Til everyone is singin'

If you can wait 'til I get home
Then I swear to you that we can make this last
(La la la)
If you can wait 'til I get home
Then I swear come tomorrow, this will all be in our past
It might be for the best

Hey sweetie, I need you here tonight
And I know that you don't wanna be leaving
Yeah, you want it but I can't help it
I just feel complete when you're by my side
But I know you can't come home 'til they're singin'

La, la la la, la la la
'Til everyone is singin'
La, la la la, la la la

If you can wait 'til I get home
Then I swear to you that we can make this last
(La la la)
If you can wait 'til I get home
Then I swear come tomorrow, this will all be in our past
It might be for the best

You know you can't give me what I need
And even though you mean so much to me
I can wait through everything
Is this really happening?
I swear I'll never be happy again
And don't you dare say we can just be friends
I'm not some boy that you can sway
We knew it'd happen eventually

La, la la la, la la la
Now everybody's singin'
La, la la la, la la la
Now everybody's singin'
(If you can wait 'til I get home)
La, la la la, la la la
Now everybody's singin'
(Then I swear we can make this last)
La, la la la, la la la
Now everybody's singin'

If you can wait 'til I get home
Then I swear we can make this last

Cell phones

So i've developed the bad habit of texting everything i want to say to people rather than just calling them. I pay an extra $10 a month just so i can text to my hearts content (which is never) I can't even think of what i need to say to people anymore when i do talk on the phone. I've become visually dependent on seeing my text to arrange my thoughts so the next thought comes to me clearly. This is most likely an unhealthy thing.

Half the time i don't even text anymore, i just go on facebook and talk or message people there. I don't know if this is worse or better, all i know is technology is become more and more of a necessity than a luxery.

Grad school

So i have a year left of college and i still havent decided what the hell to do once i'm out of here. I've seriously contemplated grad school but this is giving me doubts:

A recession is typically a good time for graduate schools. Their application pool goes up because people see them as safe shelter from the storm. The scariest part of a down economy is the idea of having no income. Of course, graduate school does not solve for that. But graduate school does solve the second most scary thing about a bad economy: lack of a learning curve.

The more desperate you are for a job, the more likely you are to take a job that doesn’t teach you what you want to learn. And then you get to that job and you think, “Grad school could solve this problem.” But in fact, grad school creates larger, and more insurmountable problems. And some the problems you’re trying to solve with grad school might not be problems at all.

1. Grad school pointlessly delays adulthood.
The best thing you can do for yourself is take time to figure out who you are and where you fit in the world. No one teaches you that in school. You need to do it yourself. Grad school is a way to delay this process, rather than move you forward, according to Thomas Benton of the Chronicle of Higher Education. So instead of dodging tough questions by going back to school, try being lost. It’s normal, and honest, and you will end up with more self-knowledge and less debt than your grad-school counterparts, and in many cases, you will be similarly qualified for your next big job.

2. PhD programs are pyramid schemes
It’s very hard to get a job teaching at a university. And if you are not going to teach, why are you getting a degree? You don’t need a piece of paper to show that you are learning. Go read books after work. Because look: In the arts, you would have a better chance of surviving the Titanic than getting a tenure-track position; and once you adjust for IQ, education, and working hours, post-PhD science jobs are among the most low-paying jobs you could get.

(Skipped 3-5 since they are inapplicable)

6. Going to grad school is like going into the military.
Applications to the military increase in a bad economy in a disturbingly similar way that applications to graduate school do. For the most part, both alternatives are bad. They limit your future in ways you can’t even imagine, and they are not likely to open the kind of doors you really want. Military is the terrible escape hatch for poor kids, and grad school is the terrible escape hatch for rich kids.

7. Most jobs are better than they seem: You can learn from any job.
When I worked on a French chicken farm, I thought I’d learn French, but I didn’t, because I was so foreign to the French farm family that they couldn’t talk to me. However I did learn a lot of other things, like how to bargain to get the best job in the chicken coop, and how to get out of killing the bunnies. You don’t need to be learning the perfect thing in your job. You just need to be learning. Don’t tell yourself you need a job that gives your life meaning. Jobs don’t do that; doesn’t that make you feel better? Suddenly being in the workplace doesn’t seem so bad.

8. Graduate school forces you to overinvest: It’s too high risk.
In a world where people did not change careers, grad school made sense. Today, grad school is antiquated. You invest three to six extra years in school in order to get your dream career. But the problem is that not only are the old dream careers deteriorating, but even if you have a dream career, it won’t last. You’ll want to change because you can. Because that’s normal for today’s workplace. People who are in their twenties today will change careers about four times in their life. Which means that grad school is a steep investment for such a short period of time. The grad school model needs to change to adapt to the new workplace. Until then. Stay away.

Italy

I want to go here....


Brooklyn sights



I don't know why but this statue is still empty of water. Its really pretty, too pretty to be sitting isolated on the median-like island that looks like no one uses anymore.

CODEPENDENCY



Just because professor love to talk about him so much.... hahahahah.

Roots

I would love to know more about what my grandfather did in his lifetime, maybe one day with enough persistence I can get my dad to break down those barriers. There's just something about Italians, or even cops for that matter, and their value of secrecy and privacy. Their background makes it very hard to trust anyone with any sort of information, and this makes me sort of sad because myself and my brother lose out in the process.

Not truly knowing anything about your roots makes you feel disconnected to your present.

Into the Woods

These are some pictures from the independent study project I am working on. They're mostly research. Some of them are actual pictures in my model.




New wave musical?

Are the magical genre of musicals on the stage being taking over by a genre of musical movies? I'm sure the movie version of Mamma Mia! made more money than the broadway version. Other movies such as Across the Universe, Chicago, and Moulin Rogue are also huge hits.



I dunno I like anything musical, movie or on the stage.

Retail

Not Always Right




So i work in retail, I have in the same place for about three and a half years now. Its a little shithole called Stop & Shop where the customer is always fucking right. Not. Not even close. I've done it all at that store, was head cashier, customer service, and health and beauty care. So one can only bitch so much about their crappy low-paying job, so this website has compiled a set of stories updated daily of others working in customer service hell. Highly reccomended.


So there seems to be a trend in music nowadays that no one has any original content anymore. People are remaking and remastiering music of genres new and old. As much as I like this video (and this band for that matter) I wish other stars didn't steal from others so often! Its one thing to be inspired by another person's work and and another to copy it completely. It's ruining the creativity of the world when famous artists participate in this.


So there seems to be a trend in music nowadays that no one has any original content anymore. People are remaking and remastiering music of genres new and old. As much as I like this video (and this band for that matter) I wish other stars didn't steal from others so often! Its one thing to be inspired by another person's work and and another to copy it completely. It's ruining the creativity of the world when famous artists participate in this.

Ancient Egyptian Porn



Hah the video speaks for itself. This was in the Brooklyn Museum in the Ancient Egyptian exhibit, no joke.

Hah...



Me and my boyfriend as we truly are... lol.

Brownstone



Really old building in brooklyn across from a really new building. I like juxtaposition.

BQE



This is my drive into brooklyn in full, over the BQE (for the first time ever, sadly) Please ignore what my boyfriend and I are talking about, I have a potty mouth =D

Breath-taking



This is my existential "last video ever". Hope you like it!

Just plain ignorant.

MMORPG

For those of you who don't know, an MMORPG is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Examples of this would be World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Everquest, Vanguard, etc. I know this because my boyfriend and his friends are massively addicted to said game genre. Throw in the Xbox on top of them and they'd never leave the house. What is the appeal of these highly addicting games? I think it's because communication with people who tend to be a bit eccentric is easie, taking off the pressures and social anxiety that many people tend to go through.

I too sadly have taken part in these games on occasion, mostly because when you're broke and stuck at home, you might as well lose yourself in a digital world and make the time go by.

Summer 2008

This coaster was the biggest and best adrenaline rush of my life.  It is Nitro from Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, and we managed to get in the front row.  It was so fast that it pulled the tears from my eyes!  I think thrill rides that boost your adrenaline are the best and healthiest form of stress relief that is out there, I highly reccomend it!



Museum 3

Museum 2

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Museums

So i spend my saturday in a different way... i went to the Brooklyn Museum for my Ancient Egypt class. After driving around for about an hour and a half looking for parking, i was left with only about an hour inside before i had to rush home for work. I ended up being an hour and a half late anyway due to idiots rubber-necking on the BQE. In order to save myself some time i had the ingenius idea of making quick videos of the exhibit so when i had more time i could review them at my own pace. Here are a few of them.


Monday, May 4, 2009

Globe Trekker

"Having a very limited exposure to public space and public activity I gained a thirst for ‘what it might be’ in the big cities of the world. Watching these specials on PBS of the cities of Europe I questioned my response to specific agendas within: why are
people there?"

Reading this in Professor's City Semiotic reading, i immediately knew what show he was speaking of, Globe Trekker. I also watched this show because i had a thirst for the outside world. I grew up in the rural coast of North Carolina, in a neighborhood devoid of other kids. TV was my education and my escape, and Globe Trekker was one of my shows on my late-night insomniac tv repertoire. I would see all of these beautiful cities, and even third-world countries appear to be more interesting than the place i felt trapped in. As i've gotten older and more wisened, i feel as though i am still trapped, though i escaped the barren south; trapped in responsibility and obligations, rather than just location. I miss when a TV show could make me forget where i was.

Hailey

Hailey is the very first dog that i can call my own. I've had childhood pets such as my dad's dog Kelli but they always had that extra loyalty towards my parents before myself. Hailey my boyfriend Justin and I bought a little under a year after i moved to NY. She's our baby and she sort of symbolizes my indepence and is the first sort of being i have total responsibility over.