Deep Thoughts

I'm tired and sickly, but luckily I wrote most of this on Friday, so I won't have to type much, bwaha. On Friday night, Antoine had his birthday party (he is 25 now! Which is kind of weird but also cool that he was born and stuff, because I can get date him). There were lots of people at his apartment, and some of the people brought good food, so it was very pwn. An enjoyable time was had by all! I'm glad Antoine has nice friends. It would suck to have to pretend to like people.

Saturday I didn't do much because I was up until like, 5am the night before. I didn't stay long at Anime Club, and went to sleep relatively early.

Today, I've been working on this 10-page draft I have due Tuesday. I have about 6 pages done and am throwing in the towel for tonight. I need sleep because I'm sick. There's some weird respiratory bug going around campus and the Capitol, and I think I've got it. Some people have bronchitis, so I don't know if that's what it is. My cough is slowly getting worse (or better, I guess, as it's a more "productive" cough because it's breaking stuff up), but I did find some cough syrup in my cupboard. It expired in February of 2004, but hopefully it won't kill me! One would think that with cough syrup, it would just lose its effectiveness and not become a destructive elixir.

OMG the Battlestar Galactica season finale was on tonight and I didn't see it! I already know the major spoilers, though. LiveJournal ruins my soul, :D

Thinking Ahead
Old people like playing Nintendo Wii. Man, I can't wait for retirement. I'm going to play so many video games and watch so much anime.....think about how weird it will be when our generation retires. Like, my mom just retired and seems to have some trouble finding stuff to do with herself every day (most days are fine, but some days I think she gets bored). But when we retire? It'll be like middle school all over again, everyone on AIM all the time, playing video games, etc. In fact, I often wonder what life will be like once the majority of my friends and I become married and spawn babies. Will we still have away messages up on AIM all of the time? "Dropping the kids off at school, brb, lolz!" I think it's pretty cool that our generation is the first one to "grow up" with the Internet. Of course, I might be biased as I spend so much time on it, ;)

Thinking Ahead Some More, but Possibly Not as Far-Off
I find this article interesting because it's a conversation topic that came up amongst some co-workers and I. A couple got married, and the man adopted his wife's last name. "Naming" is a weird thing, and an important thing, but is also a thing that most people don't give much conscious thought to. Still, there is something inherently creepy about the fact that women give up their family name when they get married. This derives, of course, to not-so-long-ago when women didn't have many, if any, rights. You get married, and you are the physical property of your husband. You are a member of his family now, and no longer a member of your own. He owns you - and thus, what is his last name is now yours - so people know to which male you "owe allegiance to."

Of course, this phenomenon is changing. Now, many women opt to hyphenate their last names upon marriage - they keep their own family name, but also connect it to a future they choose with a husband they choose. I think this is wonderful, but I personally think that I would find it annoying to have a hyphenated name. Even when this happens, though, it is usually the female half (and throughout this blog post I am referring to heterosexual relationships) that hyphenates the last name, while the male retains what he had all along, without addition.

In reference to a similar circumstance, a radio station broadcasted a story. A listener called in and said, "...[T]urn in your man card." What does that mean? That it is masculine, a reference to power, to retain your name? And then in turn, what does that mean about women? Are we bowing to the "power" of the other sex by being submissive and adopting a new name? In order to retain our femininity, must we disown our familial heritage upon marriage and rename ourselves, adopting our husband's family's name?

Naming is a complicated issue. And even though I'm not sure what I would like to do, when and if I get married, I'm glad that at least I will give serious thought to the matter. Times are changing, and that is encouraging.

My Voice
My Anne Frank class discussed this topic briefly, but I find it interesting that people write differently than they speak. They use different words that they wouldn't use normally in conversation. When I write in my diary, I use "bigger" words than I do when I'm speaking with someone. When I write papers for school, I am often surprised because "big" words (and I don't necessarily mean ones of many syllables, but even just words that are a tad archaic for every-day use) spill out from my fingers and into the keyboard. As for this blog, I really think that it reflects my general speech patterns. It's why there are so many questions, why there are so many sentence fragments, why there are so many dashes, why there are so many parentheticals. Although, I should say that I generally don't speak as many words all at once as I would ever write in a blog entry, bwahaha.v

Amusement

So, it's hot outside again. Not really - more like 70ish, but it's hot upstairs here in my room. So last night I put on shorts to sleep in and opened two of my windows. Then, at 6:00 am, the sound of a bird! Cheeeeeeeeeer, Cheeeeeeer, whit-whit-whit-whit.......Cheeeeeeeeeer, Cheeeeeeer, whit-whit-whit-whit ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Why are birds so loud? How are my windows that good at deflecting sound waves when closed? I don't know, but eventually those windows had to be closed. Bastards. When I stick the window fan into the window and leave it on all night, it had better cover up the sound of birds, or I might have to requisition my father's blow gun.

Antoine is a man of many talents (well duh, why else would I be dating him?), and one of those talents is editing my papers. He has no qualms about crying bullshit, and believe me, there is a lot of it. But he is so cute about doing it! For example, here is an aside he wrote while editing my paper for my Victorian Novel class: While reading the preceding sentence I felt as if you had crossed the limit of how often the words "passion" and "rational" may occur in a passage. MAYBE I NEED A THESUARUS, KTHX.

I just found my high school on Wikipedia, and the sections there are hilarious. My personal favorite is the stuff about Bunkelman. Man, I almost kind of miss it....for about 10 seconds. It's kind of sad that they finally cracked down on students playing flash games during computer time, though. I know that I used to blog from school, bwaha. In fact, if I ever put the archives for this blog back on the sidebar, you can read it yourself!