hello? imagination?

i'm sure every generation has said this: "kids these days have no imagination." and here i am at 32 making this claim.

this rant comes because of the new movie, "bridge to terabithia." i read that book when i was about 10. i was a complete book nerd when i was a kid and i'm not ashamed to admit it. when i was bored, had to drive long distances, sit in a waiting room, or just wanted to sit out on the back porch in the summer... i would read a book. sure, we had cable when i was 8 or 9 (i watched my fair share of MTV), we had a VCR when i was 10 or so (the remote control was not wireless) and we had a computer and video games. so i wasn't bereft of occular stimulus. but i enjoyed so much just to sit down and read about people and imagine what they looked like, what they sounded like.

movies ruin that.

so now i see this commercial for "bridge." those kids are nothing what i had imagined them to be 22 years ago, nor are any of the surroundings or places. but what really kills me is that now all these kids are going to go out and sit in front of some huge screen and have the imagery spoon-fed to them once for $9-10 a ticket, when their parents could have bought them the book for $10, which they could have enjoyed over and over for free.

sure, some books just make better movies. star wars was a book (or graphic novel) before it was a movie. so was pride and prejudice and some of those classics. for me, watching those movies is better than reading the books because i find those books kind of boring. i'm sure many people don't share my opinionand that's fine. but the books i'm talking about are about 100-150 pages long, quick, easy reads that usually deal with hard issues for kids at that age.

*spoiler alert*

"bridge" deals with a kid and his friend, a girl, who ends up dying. i loved the friendship and the turmoil. i read to the end to find out how he dealt with his loss. this book was voted the Newbery Medal Winner of 1978.

so, here is my list of favorite childhood books, in no particular order:
• Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
• Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary (deals with a young boy whose parents are divorced and doesn't have much a relationship with his father. told thru letters to the boy's favorite author)
• skinnybones by Barbara Park (told in the 1st person by a hilarious kid who has to deal with being the runt of his class)
• any of the ramona quimby books
• the secret garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• are you there, god? it's me, margaret by judy blume (ok, i had a hard time with this one because 1) she was jewish and i had never known anyone jewish and b) she was 16 and skinny and really wanted to get her period, which i just couldn't understand)
• actually, a lot by judy blume: Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, Superfudge, Just As Long As We're Together, Blubber, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

the point to all of this is i am very happy that i have an imagination to rely on. it helps me through some boring moments. and it also gives depth to my sense of humor. and i think you can tell those who read a lot as kids and those who would rather watch the movie. they're the ones with that dead look in their eyes on the train, the ones who can't live without their TV and who don't get dry or sarcastic senses of humor.

cute mitten paws

interesting twist

on an over-used, "box-of-chocolate," forest gump reference:

"you never know what you're gonna get", unless you are a dog, in which case you get a brief period of enjoyment followed by a slow painful death.

taken from this blog.

diamond rant

this is a post that i wrote the day after we went ring shopping. scott didn't want me to post about it until he gave it to me, so i saved it until now. enjoy!

ps. the ring in the previous post is NOT a diamond. it is an aquamarine, which is my birthstone.

so, the boyfriend and i went shopping for a little something-something yesterday. how about a hint?

ok, it's not a diamond, but that doesn't matter because i didn't want a diamond. it's because i didn't want to give DeBeers anymore money and i know that the whole "diamonds are forever" bullshit is just that: bullshit. i found this excerpt from a diamond wholesale website, which is ironic, considering they're admitting that the idea is made up by DeBeers, but they're selling them anyway because they know people are sheep. read on:

The 20th Century
From 1880 De Beers were able to control the supply (and price) of diamonds but how were they going to control demand during a period when sales began dropping dramatically (up to 50%) in the 20s and 30s onwards through the great depression? Just as platinum started to become popular in diamond engagement rings, diamonds were becoming less valued. Platinum was banned for all but war use during WWII and so the platinum diamond engagement rings as we know them today almost died out.

The answer to the problem was a new marketing campaign commissioned by De Beers that began in 1947. Perhaps you've heard the slogan "A Diamond is forever"? This was to mark the beginning of a change in the history of the engagement ring.

Subsequent campaigns would convince families to hold on to their diamonds as family heirlooms... and it worked! Used diamonds were not being released back into the industry which in turn created the demand that De Beers were seeking.

Jewelers were unofficially educated by De Beers to instruct men that two to three months personal wages were an ideal price to pay for the diamond engagement ring that their prospective fiancée's would gladly accept.

In 1953 the world's two most glamorous women of the time Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell were the stars of the hit film musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

The plot involves Monroe and Russell chasing potential husbands on a cruise to France. The movie also features a very famous song sung by the blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe, Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend.

This film would have undoubtedly influenced public opinion at the time and will have advanced the popularity of diamonds for years afterwards through Hollywood glamour.

The film is now 50 years old but it's still a firm favorite of all who love Hollywood and the legend of Monroe. (Of course there are others: High Society, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Diamonds Are Forever among them)

This is where the tradition of the diamond engagement ring really started, all from an advertising campaign. So you see buying a diamond engagement ring isn't really a popular ancient tradition.

It's more a combination of "dreaming of being a princess", a clever marketing campaign and compelling Hollywood glamour that ultimately promotes diamonds as the only jewels with which to furnish your loved one as a sign of engagement.

The 21st Century
The history of the engagement ring has moved on and demand for diamonds and platinum diamond engagement rings is still rising. The tradition is here to stay. Estimated 78% of all engagement rings sold every year are diamond.
It would seem that no matter what you personally decide, she'll be expecting a diamond!

so, everytime you see someone with a diamond ring on their finger, think of this yeah, 99% of diamonds no longer have blood on them like most major corporations don't use sweat shops to manufacture their goods. if you have good importers, they can hide anything bad for a buck.

if you think i'm just finding fluff to support my soapbox, National Geographic wrote a story about diamonds a few years ago. it's long (and if you already have a diamond, you'll probably ignore it), but it's a good read.

betrothed

he* proposed on saturday night, while we were listening to his friends play a set at Strange Maine. Sneaky boy just slid the ring on my finger and whispered in my ear, "will you marry me?" i said "Yes." WEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

and what's so great about this is that he's so excited. and i keep giggling. hee-hee!

so if any of you have any suggestions for an inexpensive wedding, lay it on us. or send me your weirdest wedding experience. i want to spend the the rest of my life in love, not in debt.

*he=scott, the most wonderful "beyonce" in the world. :)

maine

today, scott and i leave for maine, america's cowboy hat. i'll be there until tuesday night, but he'll be staying there until next saturday. *sigh*

it's supposed to snow there today, so hopefully our flight(s) won't be delayed. we fly into JFK then into Portland. i have a four-hour layover at JFK on the way back and i was hoping to have enough time to see some sights, but rumor has it that it takes an hour or more to take the subway to manhattan from JFK. so f*ck that idea. maybe i can take some pictures from the airport.

we'll be going to his grandmother's birthday tomorrow. and then tomrrow night, scott has a show with some friends, so that will be fun. the rest of the time, we're going to lay around and do a lot of nothing.

but the sad thing is that i won't have my laptop with me. i don't feel like lugging it around and i don't have a case for it so... it stays behind. i'm going to have a little separation anxiety, i'm sure, so i'll have to take notes on what i want to blog about when i get back. and i'll be taking lots of pictures. so stay tuned.

beauty in gingerbread

i failed to post about my sister's work of art over the holiday. she set out to make a gingerbread house of the pilgrim baptist church. most of you have seen the pictures of the gingerbread wonder or even seen it in person. the actual pilgrim church burned down last year in January, and only four walls are standing. but now the persons that be are thinking of rebuilding it. i suggested that they use the gingerbread building as a blueprint.

my anacondo don't want none unless it's got a dishwasher, beeyatch*

scott and i looked at "houses" yesterday. i use this term loosely. the first one was a brick beauty from 1898. it was on the south side. there were about 10 people living in it. and they used contact paper as wallpaper. two cool things about it: it had a ceiling medallion for this really ugly chandelier and it had pocket doors that were painted over so many times that they wouldn't move.

the second house was not as cool, but it was in a little better shape. it had an unfinished attic and basement, the latter which had a huge gaping hole with a broken pipe and a water leak dripping from somewhere.

the third house was by far in the best condition. it was totally rehabbed, but it was done in the cheapest way possible. it was completely gutted and those fake, cheap laminate hardwood floors were put in, going the short length of the room. the kitchen had nice granite tops and stainless steel appliances (in case they need to put in an autoclave), but there was one glaring omission: no dishwasher. what the fuck? oh, and there was a half bath on the first floor, but none upstairs where the master bedroom was. and the full bathroom? in the basement. the upstairs and basement were completely carpeted in that crappy berber that looks like an office building. so, these "developers" (some russian guys with nothing else to do) ripped the charm out of this cute house and made it a great haven for some cookie-cutter, uber-vanilla white couple. not us.

so we'll be looking at a 2 bedroom condo on leland tomorrow. which cost twice as much as an entire house on the south side. location, location, location.

* quote by scott

karma. kaaarrrrmmmmmaaaaa

in the last 6 months, i've done a lot of nice things. i returned a guy's wallet who lived in new jersey. i found a CTA card on the ground before our 5k walk on new year's day and i returned that. there have been other things that i've done that i feel are just genuinely nice things to do, like hold open a door for someone or give an old person a train seat.

i think i'm the only one.

yesterday, i lost my cta card. it fell out of my pocket during the morning commute and i had to pay cash to get home, which sucks because it's 25 cents more than using the CTA card. i asked the guy at the damen stop if anyone had turned in a CTA card. "not to me, they haven't." thanks for looking, pal. he told me that the end-of-the-line stop, kimball, has a lost and found i could check out, but that station's closed due to repairs. of course. i went home.

this morning, i went to see if any activity had been posted to my CTA account. of course it had! someone had used my card at 6:22 last night to take the red line. so i had to cancel it and i'll pick up a new one on friday.

here's my question: why do i bother? why am i not turning into an asshole like the rest of the people who live here? ii see this total lack of respect for all things human everyday in the city and it makes me so damn angry. how hard is it to do something nice once and while? how hard would it have been to turn in my card to a CTA employee? not that hard. but i've come to the conclusion that no one in this city has a conscious. 'cause that's the only reason people do nice things for strangers, because it's the "right" thing to do. but the "right" thing is different to everyone.

all i have to say is that karma's a bitch and payback is hell. so be nice when you can, because you don't know what shitty things you've done over the course of your life that you'll have to pay back when it's all over.

yet another dumb-ass thing i've done

today, i went to register for a chemistry class at truman. i was there at 9am, with scott, ready to advance my knowledge and better myself. it went quickly. i got a registration card, filled it out with the info they needed and sat down with an advisor (who are really just teachers getting comp-time) who signed me up. i paid my money and got my class list and we left. we went out to breakfast at pauline's. then we went home and i bid on my textbooks on ebay, hoping i could really spend $90 on my books. i was relaxing when i thought, i should check to make sure that advisor signed me up for the right class. of course, he didn't. i was so happy to be actually registering for that chem class that i totally cheesed it on checking the info. of course. that's such a kim-thing to do.

so i got off the couch, put my coat on and went back out there. i got there, stood in a very short line and explained my case. the guy was very nice, but told me the class i wanted was closed... all filled up. 'what about this class?' nope, that's full up, too. sigh. of course. and i wondered if it had been open when i was there at 9am. i doubt it. of course, i bet it was open before the holiday season, when i wasn't sure if i wanted to take it or not.

but have no fear! i found another class that i signed up for. biology 122. i had taken bio 121 a few years ago and i had to take 122 at some point. so... i guess now is the time. maybe it's devine intervention. we'll see.

and so far, one of my auctions has been outbid. cross your fingers that the other one goes, too.

now, if you'll excuse me, i have to go bid on my new biology textbook.

old

i found these in the supply cabinet at work. the date on the envelope was 12/5/88. that should tell you how long some of the stuff around here has been sitting around.

i hope that book doesn't ever need to reprinted. unless someone around here has a 5.25" floppy drive in the computer. cross your fingers that they don't.

post from another blog

some of you might know, i have a blog about cemeteries that i only posted on once. i am moving that one post here and deleting the blog so i can make room for something i'm excited about but will probably neglect in the near future. hey, at least i'm trying to do something new, right?

st. johannes is one of the cemeteries about to be bulldozed by daley if o'hare get its federal funding. it was really bizarre to be standing there, in an open field, right next to fed ex planes. also, there were train tracks we had to cross to get to st. johannes, and while we were there, a freight came past. i thought we were going to get stuck in there, as that road with the tracks were the only ones out. here are some images:

the sign that tells of st. johannes' emminent destruction	an old water pump that still worked. pretty cool!
grave markings. i was impressed with how undamaged this cemetery was.	a plane landing in the distance.

interesting

i saw this article on yahoo.com and thought it was pretty cool. i should try this. i would probably go insane because i love to shop. but i get pretty bad buyers remorse and usually end up taking stuff back.

and i realized the ironic thing about not purchasing anything new over the course of a year is that, if you rely on thrift stores, you rely on other people buying new stuff and donating their old stuff. so what if everyone in the country stopped purchasing new items? our economy (and china's) economy would collapse. that would be pretty cool to see. christ, people in this country can't even stand to buy a HOUSE that's been lived in before. it's so digusting, our consumerism.

anyway, consider how much crap you buy that you don't need. i think of my apartment, filled to the brim with toys, books, cds, dvds, shoes, clothes, that i never play with, read, listen to, watch, or wear. why don't get rid of it all? because i spent a lot of money on them, that's why.

and another thing: just because you restrict yourself to thrift stores doesn't mean that you'll be item-free. it just gives me more reason to buy something i may not need. "this purse is only $2? it's puke-green and the strap is missing, but it's got a great flower pattern. i'll take it!" ok, i'm not that bad, but i have a huge bin full of purses i can't carry all at once. what's the point of having them all?

this will be incorporated into my new year's resolutions. coming soon.

a new year's dissolution recap

many of you may remember my resolutions for 2006. let's go over that and see how i did.

1. eat better.
sweet jesus, i eat like shit. i don't think i've had a vegetable in a week. but chocolate.... 5 servings a day.
i joined weight watchers in march, i think. it helped me eat healthier, but over the months, i've figured out ways to compromise that diet back into being just chocolate and carbs. but in this last week (i.e., before the new year) i have been eating more fruit and veggies. but i'll ramble on about this later.

2. stop chewing my nails.
i'm not doing too bad with this one, actually. i chew the skin around the nail and i've been doing it since i was 10. i guess it's been pretty bad, since scott proclaimed, "what the hell have you been doing to your nails?!?!" i realize that they did indeed look really bad. so i'm moisturizing. we'll see how long that lasts.
so, the reason i chew the skin around my nails is because i have an obsession with loose, dry skin. if there are any white, dead pieces of skin, i have to chew them off. and the more i chew off, the more there are white, dead hangy pieces of skin. it's a never-ending cycle. i bought some cuticle cream from burt's bees and that helps, but i have to put it on several times a day. so, some weeks are better at non-skin-chewing than others.

3. lose 10 pounds by march.
ten lousy pounds. that's all. no more, no less.
i lost 9.5, then gained 3 back. i think i have a fear of hitting that 10-pound mark. i don't know what it is, but i feel this tenseness in the back of my neck when i think about it. hey freud, figure that one out.


4. take more photos with my REAL camera.
i'd also like to set up my darkroom again. you can see some of my photos here. most of those photos were taken pre-1998. the first two were taken from my first roll of film ever developed by my hand in 1993.
i don't think this ever happened. it's just easier to take my smaller, lighter digital camera with me when i go places. and film costs money.

5. open the damn coffee shop.
dammit.
if any of you out there are wondering what happened with this, let me tell you. we went to 5 banks (roughly) and none of them would approve a loan for us. neither of us had collateral or made enough money. plus, a lot of the banks wanted to see us already doing the coffee thing, which is why i went to work at starbucks. but after we got denied repeatedly, we lost steam. then we realized that it would probably have been a failing endeavor and we would have lost a lot of money and owed a ton of money. the business still exists on paper, it just never made into building form

6. build freelance business.
to keep me afloat while we open coffee shop.
ironically enough, i did build my freelance business, but out of necessity, as i lost my job 18 days into 2006. it kept me afloat until the end of august, when i got my current job. another irony, my point person at my biggest client lost his job about two weeks after our last project.

7. run a 5K.
i used to run. but now i am pretty out of shape, and i'm feeling guilty about it. i've ran a few 5Ks, but it's been a while. so... why the hell not? my saddlebags will thank me one day.
i started running again for about a week, then lost my momentum. i consulted with a personal trainer, who tried to kill me with my own lungs, which is when i decided working out is for suckers. and i am a sucker. so yesterday, annette, shannon and i walked a 5k fun walk. it's a start, but i hope to carry this resolution on into 2007.

8. watch less TV.
i'll probably do this once i move in with the boy, but then we'll have 3 TVs between the two of us. and he wants to buy a flat panel once we move in. so... 4 TVs. maybe i should resolve to watch more TV?
the flat panel never happened, which is a good thing. and in the beginning of us living together, i watched a lot less television. while i was unemployed, i watched little house on the prairie and maybe a handful of others, but i didn't have "my shows" that i always had to be home to watch. but in the last few months, i've gotten scott hooked on law and order, which is a bad thing. that has increased my tv watching time to nasa-like proportions. but i am of the short-attention-span group that loves to have background noise when she works, so if i'm not really paying attention, does it really count? ;)

9. make an effort to keep in touch with friends.
and email doesn't (shouldn't) count. i like to write letters and i'd like to do that more often.
i didn't write any letters, except one to my grandma, who doesn't have a computer. but an old friend wrote to me recently, which was really cool, and i sent a bunch of ecards to people i had lost touch with. so i think i'll revise the "email doesn't count" part, since that is the preferred method of communication for 90% of people my age.

10. save $3000 toward down payment on new house.
i did this, thanks to my freelancing business.

so let this sink in and my next post will be my new resolutions for 2007.