Petty Pyromaniac

Photographs are simply a reminder of what once was, what is not, and what never will be. There is no time machine allowing ourselves to re-experience moments, we are expected to make new memories, or new photographs, to trump the nostalgic power of the others. If this is the case, however, then why does our society love pictures so much? Why are we forcing ourselves out of these true moments to falsely commemorate a specific point in time? I believe the answer is addiction. Society is too afraid of forgetting and too longing of what will be the "future-past" to allow themselves to actually live in the moment. Photographs have evolved to represent memories more than our real memories do. As I've already talked about my photo-walls in a previous post , another really easy example of this phenomenon would be spring break. For my 'stress reliever,' I visited Siesta Key with one of my good friends. Honestly, it was amazing--there's nothing more I love than the ...

Human relationships are destroyed by "sheathing" the truth. One day, you can love a person wholeheartedly, but the next, realize the "doublespeak." You realize that you failed to analyze the tone behind the text messages, or the loopholes imbedded between each sentence uttered to you. We have been beaten at our own game, as conceding to be honest and not follow the societal policy of fake smiles and empty promises is conceding to be fooled. But, as Pinker said, "when all else fails, as it often does, [we] sort out [our] problems without any words at all." So, here I am asking: Is it better not to speak to some, in an effort to not re-open the "fistula"? When things turn sour, as we have meandered too close to the line between indirect speech and lies, we resort to the lack of words altogether. We adopt strong personas, claim certain friends, and pretend as if the things we say to certain people won't make its way back to them. Everythin...

The obsession with eliminating certain "gender-biased" words isn't only not beneficial, but is also ruining the definition of feminism in today's society. If I were to stand in front of one of my classrooms in today's society, and announce, "I am a feminist," I guarantee that half of the classroom would groan. There's no wonder why they would; a feminist today is seen as the carbon copy of Ms. Maggio in The Word Police . Forget about sex trafficking and the lack of education for women in third world countries, we need to change the word "mankind" to " all kind!" We women do not want to be called "gorgeous," that's sexist... we're more than our appearance. Really? "Lazy Susan?" Way to imply that all women are lazy... now let's change the Declaration to "all people are created equal." That's not feminism. I've never even met any women that have ever framed their beliefs as a femi...

There is, in fact, one force that may hold the same amount of power as death.  Karma.  We all love to envision ourselves as being owners of a "pure bead of life." But what meaning goes behind the word 'pure?' Fate most likely plays a role in this: we cannot deem ourselves tainted by immorality if our actions are not under our own control. If our fate is already written in the stars, then what does it matter if we consciously decide to make 'bad' decisions? Isn't it simply our fate to do so? But consider the idea that we don't all have "pure bead[s] of life." Replace the idea of fate with karma. Life is not necessarily spontaneous, per say, but rather our 'fates' are determined by the kindness and agony we inflict upon others. Every happy or sad ending is the result of what we have done in our past. We are not pure. We are intricate.  Woolf continuously emphasized the amount of energy our lives hold throughout her piece,...

Readers: I just wrote the most hilarious blog post of my life, but I do not think this class is ready for it. I think if I post it, I could get in a lot of 'people' drama, so if you are seeing this... I have posted the Alternate Post. I have taken the Safe Route, and I am a chicken. But, onward! When Jourdon Anderson's former slave master " wanted [Jourdon] to come back and live with [him] again, promising to do better for [Jourdon] than anybody else can," he really wasn't all too original. Or at least our generation isn't. Whenever people seriously mess up, but don't care enough to personally fix it, they swindle their way out of apologizing in person. Or whenever they're about to mess up, and are too scared to personally talk their way through it, they avoid being there in the flesh, to personally tell you the truth. His letter-apology was the olden way of what is now done by our screens. Our generation is awful at this. We have this awful...

Can we rank pain? If you were to ask me to think back to all the times I’ve experienced ‘pain’, my mind immediately races to hazily seeing my puffy, pink scleras through thick tears and sticky eyelashes on my phone camera, begging myself to fall asleep in the pitch-blackness of my Chicago hotel room so my mind will finally turn off, opening then closing then reopening the familiar greens blues and greys of old texts in the dead of night, the panic that ensues from letting your emotions overcome you. There’s an oddly specific fear that envelops you when you don’t know how to break your unhealthy-mindset-of-the-month. Knowing all of those lovely experiences personally, however, has made me a bit of a snob. Whenever I hear the daily drama—which essentially always involves some petty fight or someone getting backhanded/judo kicked in the name of life—there’s an immediate trashy ranking I give the people involved: Innocent, Relatable, or Poor Thing, ‘Innocent’ meaning you are idi...

There's this too-common pattern that probably 99% of our society follows, where one will make a long string of decisions that eventually leads to some large, life-altering outcome, which then affects the people around them or causes 'talk', and that person is left defending and glorifying their current life situation to those who don't even deserve an explanation, but granted, there was and is  so much advice being offered to this person, but they were/are too fixated in their mindset of "these are my decisions" to even considering following it. Long story short, humans like getting defensive about their hastily made decisions. Whew. That was a mouthful. Bear with me.  I was reminded of this issue when reading On Dumpster Diving . Lars Eighner neglected to mention what went on behind the scenes, or in other words, the decisions behind how he became homeless. However, while not even knowing the whole story, we all judged him on his glorification of ...

Now, if you didn't know, I'm constantly riding the emotional rollercoaster; my mood swings outrank the average person by far. Some of my best friends call me psychotic and crazy (yes, they're male, how did you guess?) and I hate it more than anything. But to be fair, they're not really too far off..? I prefer the phrase 'emotionally-unbalanced-in-response-to-all-the-crap-I've-gone-through-in-the-last-year' but I guess that's just me. Sorry, I'm done with the shade, I love them, moving forward.  Now in avoidance of another emotional purge like I demonstrated last semester, see this  post  if you're curious, I'll be quick: sometimes I get super mad, sometimes I get super sad, sometimes I'm jealous, clingy, petty, happy, calm, etc.. I feel like I'm about to have an emotional breakdown if a friend is acting weird, after losing a childhood best friend (not by death, by lies...don't worry) in a really awful situation recently. I feel...

There is an invisible list out there that has the name of every person who has ever thought I may be a 'hoe', solely based on how I dress. The list obviously includes strangers, but also family members and friends... people who know me inside-out but still view a crop top or strappy bralette as a telltale sign of a slut. My wardrobe consists of millions of potential stomach-exposing-leg-revealing-shoulders-out-cleavage-hinting-booty-popping outfits. One 'excuse' I could give for this is that I get heat exhaustion in the summer fairly easily, making me more inclined to wear clothes that allow my skin to breathe, therefore preventing myself from getting dizzy midday. Another 'excuse' I could give is that I love being controversial, and by not wearing conservative outfits, I am proving my independence to my overbearing parents. Perhaps my best and most real 'excuse' is that I simply just love that style of fashion, and my outfits genuinely make me happy. ...