Let's Move to Canada!

Hooray for Canada! They've legalized gay marriage in the entire country! Why can't we be more like them? For that matter, why can't anybody? Also, apparently there have been new developments with gay marriage rights in Massachusetts. I'm sadly behind in this news, but when I know more I'll post about it.

CANADA IS COOL.

Bread and Circuses

Well...I don't know exactly what my bread is. I guess my lunch break. But here are some ways I entertain myself all day. Check them out. And check back, I'll keep updating the list.

http://games.yahoo.com - I recommend JT's Blocks.
http://zone.msn.com/en/root/default.htm - I recommend Hexic, Bespelled and Word Mojo.
http://weirdweb.net/hints/ - Links to fun games, and hints too! Try Samorost. Also La Piedra de Anamara. First one is fun, second one is creepy!
http://www.albartus.com/motas/ - Fantastic, but it there's always a long wait for new levels.
http://www.albartus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=308 - Links to some more games; the ones I like best will be posted here, but try the others if you're bored.
http://normandcompany.com/STICKMAN/ - Endearingly bad graphics and fun mystery!
http://www.stickee.co.uk/stickee/index.html - Slight mystery, games, great graphics!
http://www.questfortherest.com/ - Interesting music, cute graphics; short but fun.
http://www.neopets.com - Corny, but lots of fun games and cute pets. It could suck you in.
http://www.snood.com - Shame on you if you've never heard of Snood!!
http://www.thepolyphonicspree.com/main2.html - Some fun stuff hidden in here. :)

Also:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ - Check out the banned books section! This is great if you need to look like you're doing work, or at least not look like you're totally goofing off on a game site somewhere. But no good if you can't read the screen for long periods of time, these are full books.
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/indexsnt.htm - Maybe I'm the only one who finds this entertaining--but I doubt it.

Go! Play! Be merry!

Rainy Day

All I can say is...

*SIGH*

Sad Events.

All right, even though my two faithful readers are up on all this, I'm going to give some background. Becky and a bunch of our friends have a theater group (www.uncutpages.org) and they're performing in the NY and Phila fringe festivals this year.
One member of this fine organization has, as of yesterday, been forbidden by her parents from performing. There are several problems with this. One, she is a college graduate, and old enough that her parents have no right to forbid anything. Two, their reasons for this forbidding have no basis in reality. Three, they honestly have no right to cause such problems; the show has already been cast, and now a replacement will have to be found for the forcibly abandoned part.
I won't go on and on. In short, parental muscle-flexing really, REALLY upsets me. It's even worse in this case, where it's not just psychological power, it's grad school tuition being waved and pulled back like a dollar on a string. To make it perfectly clear, this is a bad, upsetting and horrid event. Not to mention very sad for the actress in question. Who, I seem to have decided on the spur of the moment, shall remain nameless.
The interesting factor in all of this is that, among a few options ranging from decent to bad, recruiting ME to play the missing part has been discussed. True, only discussed by Becky and I, but she's the director, so that's probably the discussion that counts. I have to say, I'm rather pleased by this development, despite my frustration about the situation as a whole. Acting is not a hat I often wear, but I always hope for some random chance to dust it off. Though it might be better to bring in a person with more (or more recent, at least) experience, I'll be disappointed if it turns out I'm not needed.

The other bit of sad news (as if we needed more, right?) is that my delicate and charming anole friend, Anna, has moved on to catch crickets in Heaven. She died last night, in a freshly-cleaned cage and the thoughts of Becky and I and my mother accompanying her. I hope Eustace the Dragon carried her off himself, in one big clawed hand.

Wow.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8219892/

TGIF

Ahh, the end of the week at last. Just knowing that in a few hours I'll be free is enough to overcome the aggravation of yesterday's post. I feel more like a human being today, and not some sort of crazy, snarling animal who has somehow learned to use a telephone. And other than that I haven't much to say, but it seems silly to have a whole post just to say that I feel less insane than yesterday, so I'll think of something.
I know! How about the Wonder Woman novel I just finished reading? It was as dramatic as any comic book, and had some flaws, but you can't really pick up a novel based on a comic book and expect it to be more than junk food. But it was good junk food, I must say. More about religion than I thought it was going to be, which was... well, it made me realize that either my religious and cosmic ideas have been shaped by comic books, or I just have comic-book mind... ;)
Anyway, the main conflict of the novel was between WW and this televangelist named Rebecca. Rebecca's conviction is that WW is blasphemous and that her existence is an affront to Christian society. *laughs* which isn't actually a far cry from the insanity of real televangelists, but let's move on with the story here. Rebecca believes this because WW says she was brought to life from clay by a bunch of Greek gods, and attests that she has visited Olympus many times and seen them, spoken to them. Rebecca can't handle any old gods being proven real, so she wages this campaign to bring WW down.
You don't really need a plot layout or anything here--the point is that the book spends some time trying to reconcile Christianity and Olympian mythology, and in a broader sense, reconcile polytheistic ideas with monotheistic ideas. The author seems to suggest, by the end, that all these ideas can coexist. Which is my thought about it, precisely.
Maybe it's a the bias of being raised with a monotheistic background, but I like to think that maybe there's a difference between God and gods. Maybe gods are like saints... they're powerful in some non-human way, they're divine in some way. Or maybe they're more like angels and demons, some good, some bad, all more than human. Maybe God, anybody's one God, is a power higher than that. Overseeing it all. Maybe, by worshipping many gods, polytheistic societies are actually worshipping seperate parts of a greater whole, or... steps, on the way to the highest divinity.
And now that I've said my strange and confusing piece, I'll leave you to chew on it or spit it out as you will. One last thought, though. If Wonder Woman is Greek Amazon, brought to life from clay by a host of Greek gods, why the heck did her mother name her Diana?

Distraction, Confusion (What am I doing?)

I feel drained. Aggravated. Frustrated, and confused. And let's not forget distracted! Maybe it's just the day. Maybe it's the heat, or the end-of-the-week slump, or some sort of hormonal thing that I don't understand. Or maybe it's just the fact that I don't like what I'm doing. I don't like my job, but it tires me out too much to do a whole lot else when I get home from work, and the weekends are just too short. Maybe the mundane everyday is crashing down on me harder than usual. But really, every single time the phone rings, I want to throw it across the room and strangle whoever is on the other end. Which is ridiculous. My job is to answer the phone. I'm lucky that on a Thursday it's slow, and I can goof off, read online books, write in my blog. I'd rather that than have it be extremely busy. Still, when that phone starts to ring and I'm in the middle of a sentence in my blog, or trying to write an e-mail to a friend, or just getting into a good bit of Lady Chatterly's Lover, I feel as though I've been rudely interrupted, and my voice comes out in this weird, tired, hopeless sort of tone that always makes me feel sorry for phone operators, because I can tell when I hear it that they're bored out of their brains.
And I am bored. But I'm getting paid to do it, so maybe I shouldn't really complain.

And in the middle of all that, I got two really bizarre and frustrating calls, and now my head hurts just from thinking about continuing in this line of work for another week. Or day. Or few hours until I can go home.
And I hate it when I put people on hold and they sigh frustratedly in my ear. Or when I tell them their product is backordered, or that it takes at least three weeks to ship internationally, usually more like six weeks. I feel trapped. I can't fix the problems that I know are happening all over the place with this company, the website, the shipping, anything. All I can do is be the scapegoat for people who call and are (usually rightfully) frustrated and angry. And a day full of frustrated, angry people, peppered here and there with some actual sales, can really take it out of me. I think it's time for lunch.

Fucking Hot.

Somehow the heat wave requires an expletivous adjective. I hope that expletivous isn't already a word, because I just coined it. How am I supposed to begin an exercise regime, lose 30 pounds, and be totally beautiful by the time the Fringe Festivals roll around, if the apartment is 10,000 degrees of temperature? But at least I don't have to wear a wool coat, or something, like John Adams. Maybe that's why he was so obnoxious and disliked back in 1776. At any rate, if it wasn't for my fondness for the idea that Hell is freezing cold, I'd say it's as hot as Hell in Philadelphia.
Clearly, I've got 1776 on my mind today. And not much else.
Let's try another font! Except this one looks too much like the last. How about this one? OOh, typewriter. I like that. And this? Hmm, rather large. Webdings!
That last was Webdings. I think I'll stick with Courier, and hope that these font changes appear in the blog, otherwise my faithful readers will think I'm insane.

Let's talk about my latest dilemma. School.
I want to go back to school. Very badly. But I think there are too many things I want to do. The first option is U of Sussex in England. They have a fantastic English MA, all about sexuality and the lesbian subject, good stuff like that. I want to go there and take their MA, and then I want to get a PhD somewhere and teach at the college level. The hitch is, to go to school in England, you have to have all the money you'll need (to pay tuition and living expenses, a total of around $36,000 in US money) BEFORE you even arrive there, otherwise they won't let you in the country. Like I'm ever gonna have that much money on hand! I can certainly apply for loans, but will Federal aid loan me money for living expenses too? There's also a slim chance of a tiny scholarship from Sussex, but it would hardly even scratch the surface of the money I'd have to have on hand.
Given this hardship, I've decided to consider other possibilities. I could certainly investigate other schools with English MA's that focus on gender and sexuality. But my research always seems fruitless, and Sussex always sticks in my mind.
The other option that's been interesting me lately is art school. Specifically, either Moore College of Art and Design here in Philly, and NYU's Studio Art program. In either school, I'd end up starting over again as an undergrad. Which isn't such a bad thing, honestly, and I'm sure that a good deal of my liberal arts credits will count towards a BFA degree. And if the government will consider me as seperate from my parents, then they'll have to give me lots of financial aid, because I'm rather poor. So maybe there are a lot of plus signs in that course of action.
I think the problem, really, is that I'm searching for something, or somethings, but I don't know what they are. I want to take steps in a direction, any direction, but I have to consider what my final destinations might be. Do I want to be a professional artist? Do I want to be a professor in college? Do I want to be a writer? Do I want to be all of these things? Can I be all of these things? I think that I can. But it'll take a hell of a lot of loans.

Sound off, all two of you who read my blog. Should I go to art school, and perhaps someday find a better job, or perhaps even get some studio time, and save up for Sussex later on in my life? Or should I seek out some other trail altogether? Not that either of you know what you're doing any more than I do. But give me your thoughts. :)