What's your function, Conjunction Junction?

I lost my voice today. It started to wander off yesterday when I was talking to a friend of mine over the Internet and hasn't really returned en masse. Perhaps it likes vacationing - if I was a voice, I would want to leave during this sort of weather too.

But while vacations may be nice to take, living without a voice is no fun - especially for me.

I've always loved talking; whether arguing with my Dad or hanging out with my friends, I always am verbally active. I whisper, project, cackle, persuade, inform, argue, excite, and shout. My life has always been full of speech - and hopefully always will be.

But today I am silent.

My function in life, to verbalize, to evoke emotion from dry, dusty words, is bereft. I can barely squeak a sentence out without attempting to hack out my lungs. My main activity is unavailable to me - how will I function?

It seems like this happens to many others as well - athletes who injure themselves, artists who go blind, intellectuals who get dementia. My grandmother, whose goal in life is to feed all who cross her path, can't do more than shuffle across her kitchen floor. She broke her hip last spring by dropping a carton of milk on it. She can no longer taste her cooking creations. Pretty soon, she's going to have to stop doing what she loves, what she identifies with. How will she identify herself then? As the woman who used to feed others?

That seems like a shitty label to me.

I don't get it.

I'm currently sitting in the library at th3 Goofball's college and trying to figure out the difference between his school and mine. He attends a small, liberal arts college in Colorado. I go to a fairly large community college in California. His school charges almost $50,000 for room, board, and tuition per year. Mine? About $800 per year for a full load. His school is full of rich (or upper-class), white kids (really). My school, due to the serious cheapness and accessibility, is heavily middle- and low-income people of all ages and backgrounds. Facility-wise, I think my school has more available computers, but th3 goofball's has more library tech. and more staff. The food here is decent, but it has to be (I bring my own lunch to campus, so I have no real frame of reference to judge on this). I think that there is a par on professor/student relations, but his school has better student to teacher ratios. California weather is clearly superior to Colorado's - snow is not acceptable.

Conclusion: This private college has great facilities, and devotes time to it's students. But this treatment is not worth paying $42,000 more for tuition and extras. In addition, the bland "mixture" of students does not add to the level of education received.

...

I don't get it.

Somebody is living on Writer's Block

And I'm not talking about the one here.

I think I should tell some story, but my life is currently boring and/or classified. (Damn pinky promises.)

So you should comment with some sort of suggestion as to what I should write about. Because I need the help.

Things I have learned from attending college

• Showing up to class is the easiest way to get a good grade.
• Communism is good.
• The appearance of thought is more important than thinking.
• Capitalism is bad.
• Other people may or may not be intelligent.
• Tenure is good.
• Professors overestimate how much effort students put in to their class.
• Apathy is bad.
• Professors can -and do- get pissed. The only difference is that they have a captive audience to rant to.
• Critical thinking is good.
• (Provided the end result is what the professor believes).
• Forgetting about sections of America's history is bad.
• Focusing on sections of America's history is good.

I haven't figured out if cynicism is good or not.

Not really awkward sounding, but the best I got.

At my college, there is a hang-out room for students in the honors program. As a newb freshman with no honors classes this semester, I didn't discover the lounge on my own - my friend J was kind enough to show me where it was.

As an honors student with no honors classes, I really didn't know the ropes of the program. My friend, the Music Man, was kind enough to show me where the honors hang-out room (classified as a "study area") was. He had to go talk to the adviser in the next room, so I sat down and was waiting for him in this room for honored people with hard classes. I felt like a fraud.

Due to my boredom and ill ease, I started to look around the room and noticed a whiteboard entitled the "Wall of Quotes". Hmm. As I began to peruse the mix of Nietzsche, Chomsky, and the bloke who sits next to me in English class, a girl flounces down into the chair across from me and surveys the Wall. "Ugh. Why are all the Nietzsche quotes lame?" Now, I was pretty sure that I was not being addressed, due to my fraudulent status as a student with a non-honors class workload. So I pretended to ignore her, while looking around the room, trying to avoid eye-contact, and desperately wishing that the Music Man didn't need to talk to advisers, especially of the honors variety, ever.

But then she went on. "And that Banksy quote - who quotes Banksy?"
And that crossed a line in my soul. This quote - "Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can't even finish my second apple pie." was wonderfully cynical and relevant. Besides, Banksy's work is just amazing. I rose up in protest, against this girl and her opinions, against snobby attitudes and opinions, and against the existence of honor lounges. I created an eloquent protest, citing the problem of globalization of crass consumerism, of world wide poverty, of apathy. I stood on my soap-box and let this spout of bourgeoisie origin have it. or something like that.

"Banksy's cool."

She turned her beady eyes on to me, (Ahhh! Eye contact with an actual honors student! They'll find out and disappear me into a secret room in the library!) and stared at the strange girl who dared to have an alternate opinion to her disdain.

"Did you write that?"

I looked at the floor, but it didn't seem to be swallowing me into a pit of doom. Yet.
It seems as though she thought that I might have the authority to participate in the honors activities. The pressure on my breathing passages (minimizing the amount of non-honors breath loosed in the general area) lessened. But I wasn't safe yet - I needed a quick, yet clever retort to re-establish the cool, I-belong-here vibe that I must be giving out. Aha! I had it.

"No."

"Oh." And she turned away.

The End.

Visiting th3 goofball

In a week and a half, I get to go see Goofball for the weekend. Since we haven't seen each other for 4 months, we're both very excited. The only snag is that, in order to go see him, I have to physically change location. This means that I will have to enter the territory of one of my oldest foes.

Winter.

In southern California, we manage to stave off this dreaded beast with smog, car exhaust, forest fires, and failing all else, heaters. But elsewhere does not fair as well as we. If I am to go a'visiting, then I will need to be ready for combat.

And believe me, I SHALL be prepared.

It is just waiting to snatch the poor innocents unaware of its powerful clutches. You know them - those people that like to go outside in the snow, who volunteer to make snowmen, those people who snowshoe for fun. Them. The rosy-cheeked masses permanently corrupted by the icy-fingered ice personified as a smiling snowman. Don't believe those coal-black button eyes- it's just a front for the cruel being that resides inside. Know why snowmen always smiles? Because they know that you are getting frost bite.

So people of the Internet, send me your warmest thoughts - if I can't get conquer the winter for the weekend you'll never see another blog post again.

Jagged honed down

I found a new site that is purported to help stimulate distracted writers. This site, Write or Die, provides negative stimuli (text boxes, screech-y violin music, or deleting what you wrote permanently word by word) whenever you stop working. This leads to some hasty writing, with no breaks for as long as was designated. However, at least for me, this process is infuriating. I like to sit and plan what I am going to write. If the sentence doesn't work, I rewrite it, giving it time to come to fruition. This is a luxury that isn't available on the website. My misspellings, illogical phrases, and unorganized thoughts are scattered about the document. This means that I have to completely ignore this rough sketch and redo whatever I was trying to say. Which defeats the whole purpose of the site.

However, I have discovered that the site can have some alternative uses - as a sounding board for ideas. As I have a paper due tomorrow that has a fairly vague topic, I was hunting around for a thesis that both fits the statement that I was supposed to respond to and that was also vaguely interesting and easy. This was quite hard. However, after surfing Facebook for most of the afternoon, I wrote out this on the site. As you see, this is fairly crappy writing - it's chaotic, misspelled, boring and lacks a common focus. It just is interesting to see that I eventually did come around to picking a topic. Write or Die may have some potential for me after all.

So clearly some issues are at hand. The prompt is looking at the existance of shock therapy and marketization form the perspective of primitive accumulation. Now. Marx was a smart guy, but could I do a cross analysis with Smith? Hmmm. Or do some cross-evaluation with China and Ussr and Poland. So. Perhaps the real issue at hand is the true nature of shock therapy by Sacchs. But what opinion does Schinke want us to have? This is the important bit.

So. What I could do - cross - analysis of Smith and Marx and then apply to russia

OR Marx :the theory and then Russia vs Poland OR China.

It all depends on how rebellious I'm feeling. And how much research I want to do.

Cohen has some stuff on the evils of shock therepy and has a quote about hoe the manipulating basterds didn't apply the theory correctly. But that may not really be in the prompt.

What do I believe thhe answer is? Perhaps the prob lem is that I don't know enough about the subject and I don't trust most of the information that schinke sends our way. He's much too biased to give us the fulol picture.

What do I know? Shock therapy, as it was applied in Russia was very bad and hurt many people's lifestyles - but not all. Total quality of life? - not sure.

Yeltsin altered the nature of the system and today there are ogliarchies in Russia - big difference in top 1% and rest of country. But I think the real question is if Primitive accumulation is what happened during this time. Beccause that is worth writing about. So Smith said it was gradual and based on worthiness but Marx said it was manipualtion. Basic difference.

What happened in Russia. Does the theory of primitive accumulation of capital apply? Why?

Sw33t. I have something to work off of. Now. Does it? Probably we need to look though some sort of lens. Marxist primitive accumulation would work best, since that is what was advocated in that class. But an explanation of the original idea from Smith would be in order.

Then what? Explain what happened in Russia under abit or Gorbachev and then Yeltsin. But need schok therapy before that;. Because it might make more sense. Explain why there are/aren't true to the theory and then apply Marx's primive accumulation.

Outline accomplished!

Sourcces?

Cohen has some quotes about the evilness of the USSR and Yeltsin's system. And sopme about the deviation of Yeltsin from schock therapy. As he's legit by schinke - use heqavily.

Main hanout. Idiotic to not use.

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Any other handouts? Probably - there are many pages in the collection. Has to be something....

USe scholar google search because something mayturn up. Who knows? Word.