Category: Journal

Last night, steve and i went on an all-day date to lawrence and kansas city. it was nice to spend time with him and for the most part we had an awesome time. however, the last part (or second-to-last part) in kansas city was where it got bad. we had dinner at houston’s on the plaza at my request because they have really delicious veggie burgers, and we waited with ryan and jackie for about an hour to be seated. then, when we’re eating there the waiter decided it would be a good day for the patriarchy. first, he always asks “ladies?” first on drink orders. now, this could very easily be a company policy and it isn’t too terribly offensive by itself. logically, however, it offends me because there is absolutely no reason why he would start with jackie and i. the position furthest from the waiter with no specific recalling of right or left just doesn’t seem like a logical starting point. at this point, i decide i’m paying for the meal despite the aggreement that i would spend the money for the gas to get us there and back and he would buy the meal. when it comes time to pay, we clear a spot in the middle of the table for him to set the check. our waiter returns at puts the checks in front of steve and ryan. at this point, i’m mostly livid. so the waiter walks way and i dig up my credit card and put it in the center of the table. the waiter returns and leaves with ryan’s cash and my credit card. when he comes back for the final time with my credit receipt he asks for me by last name and i respond about three times before he actually acknowledges that i am the person associated with the card. luckily, i have the power of tip and the wonderful people of houston’s conveniently calculate the tip based on percentage of the check and give the options of 15, 18, and 20 percent. so i tipped 15 because i didn’t want to be incredibly uncordial and i think he did about 15 percent of necessary work. i left a note on the back about how he shouldn’t put the check in front of my boyfriend because it makes me feel like my dollar isn’t able to pay for the meal. and if my dollar can’t pay for the meal then it probably won’t cover much of a tip either. i also suggested he try for the middle of the table and pointed out that we had cleared a spot for him. go jess.

this morning, i had a RYLA preperation day that consisted in part of choosing the junior counselors for next year. the first activity the applicants were evaluated on was called “Who Should Survive?” It gave a list of 11 people and a little bit of background on them. They were then informed that the ship these eleven people were on was sinking and the life boat could only get 7 to an unoccupied island where they may be able to survive. The task was to decide who should live and who should die. The group I observed chose to kill the only three Spanish-American individuals on board the ship. Their other victim was a young boy (maybe 12?) who was Jewish and was mentally handicapped. The exercise really made me think about how people view other people. For instance, two of the Spanish-Americans were a mother and child. The mother was about 23 and had worked as a prostitute but was currently employed doing something legal. The child was 3 months old and healthy. Most of the reason for the mother being killed was that she was a prostitute at one time, but they ignored the fact that she was in college and that a hard life probably means that she has more to offer than a lot of the people they saved by way of physical strength and emotional health (or at least the ability to deal with harsh surroundings). Meanwhile they saved a girl whose description was “Black, 18, Protestant, trade school degree, artistic.” because they could identify with her age I think. and the Mormon who “sympathized with anti-black sentiment.” awesome. Because that won’t clash. Plus, out of the people they chose to save the religious breakdown looked like this: Protestant, daughter of a Protestant Minister, atheist, Jew, Jew, Catholic priest, Mormon. So It looks to me like they weren’t too logical. It also made me realize how utopic some people can be and how I’m not as much of a utopian as I once thought. I think mostly people just look at the flaws of these individuals and choose their fate based on random analysis that probably has more to do with their own subconcious views of race and religion. The argument was made that these people would get along because really all religion boils down to one god. Too bad the word Protest in Protestant comes from anti-Catholic movements. and too bad all sects of Christianity outside of the LDS (That’s latter day saints, my children) deny the validity of the Mormon church. And where will the Jews be in this religious debate that is bound to take place? The atheist would be the only safe one except he’s also maybe a homosexual and the only doctor that lived. There goes that theory of saftey. Oi. I guess the Catholic priest is pretty liberal though. So they should probably team up (the priest and the gay man) and try to have a crusade or something.

i spent too much money today. but that is besides the point of this entry.

today there were these kids on campus (8th graders for a career fair) and i almost had to throw down because one of the little bitches was making fun of something steve said. but then i realized she was a minority and a woman and would be perpetually damned to swimming back and forth the rio grande trying to have little babies on american soil before she got shot. tsk tsk. anyway. joe, jaquelyn, brandon, steve, and cari (who was doing her campus visit before transfering and living with me next year) were all sitting at the same table as i, next to these children. so someone asks the kids where they’re from and one is like “JCN, what what?” and i thought about poking her eyes out or pointing out their horendous basketball record because this is usually the theme with me talking about schools with whom i dont’ have direct forensics ties. so then one of them says some school near atchison (could be JCN as far as I know) and i say “Joe LOVES Atchison.” so they start talking to Joe. then they swarm our table. I’m not kidding. we had to have all of the 8th graders in Kansas gathering like Joe was Hitler for the current proclamation of the status of Youth under the Third Reich. and they get all weird and get Joe’s autograph and Brandon tries to get head from one of the girls. anyway, 1 o’clock approaches and Joe and I have class so steve and cari and joe and i walk to class after parting the sea of middleschoolers.

This ends the majority of the journeys involving middleschoolers for the day, but not mine. It turns out their career day festivities are in Stauffer where I have my next class. So I get to ST and the leaders of their pack are like “hey we remember you from lunch!” and i was like “um it was about 2 minutes ago. i hope you wouldn’t have forgotten…” and then they ask the name of the kid in the green shirt. so i said “Joe. Do you want his email address?” and they all say yes of course because Joe has this weird cult at Miege where he graduated and I desired to expand it to Atchison as well. Anyway. I give them the email address and the proper spelling of the first and last name then I decide they probably should get his phone number too. So i start to write his celly down then realize that’s probably a bad idea cos Caitlin’s mom pays for that and write the number for the Jeff Phone down instead.

So far he has only received one phone call and it was a girl giggling who said she had a wrong number. Hot.

I feel bad for these kids because they’re going to grow up thinking Joe is cool and then they’ll be douchebags and this legitimization of joe’s small penis could actually stunt the growth of their penises which could mean an influx of lesbians which equals nazi-ism which means the only happy people will be trista who likes nazis and me who likes lesbians. sounds like a good time.

*note: trista is no more a nazi than lesbians cause nazi-ism.

so i feel a lot better about NFA than i did yesterday. i’m just gonna mostly work my ass off so that next year there is no question about whether this girl gets to go or not. whee. also, i told them i want to be a platformer and interper. because platforming is where its at right now and because interping means reading poetry and poetry is for fools and hippies and i am a member of the latter category. i also told them i’d kill them if they tried to split up brandon and i. brandon also echoed similar sentiment. this is good. because i want to debate with brandon more than almost anything else. and they don’t want to split up jotto and stevis nor tonya and sarah nor annaleigh and marcus nor joe and jackie nor ryan and colleague x. i think we should all start calling whoever ryan’s colleague becomes “colleague x” and never explain why. this person will just have to get an xanga like the rest of us.

women’s studies went well. it got me all psyched up about defeating the hetero-normative paradigm. consequently, this is my new favorite phrase and scapegoat of oppression. “Clitorectomies in Africa? Sounds like the hetero-normative paradigm to me.” Also, someone used the word whore house (bethanee) and someone got offended (jessica). this is mostly ridiculous. i like the word whore because it derives from high priestess. and the role these women would fulfill in our society is to show us unconditional love.

my night was pretty much insane in terms of drama and other violence that insued. by violence i mean word violence. like really angry instant messages.

i’ve been thinking about the neutrality theory espoused by my friend daniel. and i think perhaps its mostly right. the key is to not specify everything. rape is probably not neutral. but sex is. and rape is just violent sex or nonconsensual or you know non-neutral-in-the-bad-way sex. and i had a conversation with courtney last night about how i think that even though rape is a really ugly word it still tries to foucault us into thinking its something different than sex. and then society doesn’t understand all of the sexual issues that are later associated with rape victims because they are like “whoa rape isn’t sex.” i find myself unable to develop this argument. but i’ll work on it some more.

this past weekend was novi-nats and i had a great time mostly. 5th in extemp, 9th in parli, 5th in ld and only about 340 put downs from kevin. and washburn took 1st which was really amazing. we had a great time too. i think jotto and i are a lot closer now or at least have realized that jokes cross all of our ideological differences. and it doesn’t matter that sometimes we think differently anyway cos she’s a yankee fan and baseball should trump politics in everyones book. (oh fuck, i voted for a redsox fan in 2004! i might go cut myself.) so that was really good. also we had tons of fun adventures and meanwhile we performed well. the “talking ichabods” definitely fulfill that desire for family that i had when i joined the squad. and we’re all pretty ridiculous and insane. but i have a theory to describe this: basically, when you’re in high school you do forensics and debate because of scholarship opportunity. like colleges are like “whoa that looks good on her resume” and independent organizations are the same way. so you join the squad and you have fun while you do it and there is at least some rationale why you chose what you chose. in college though, this rationale goes away.. sure you have a scholarship in most situations. but we figured it out and our best paid squad members make about 17 cents an hour. and that doesn’t include time outside of the meetings working. so you have to just be completely insane. and it doesn’t matter if you’re an interper or a platformer or a debater or any combination of the three. you’re insane. deal with it. this is why we also all get along so well. because there’s no logic behind our actions. so we love each other because someone has to put up with our insanity. and its awesome.

kentucky was also really good for steve and i. we’d been having some issues lately mostly concerned with my relationship with joe and i think that being in kentucky helped us both realize a slew of things. but probably me moreso than him. i think he realized that i’ve been making concious efforts to keep my relationship with joe in the unquestionably not cheating side of the spectrum and it helped me realize that i should do more work there. joe and i have a really good friendship and we’re naturally both flirty (read: slutty) so sometimes what we think is okay in a relationship is not seen the same by those around us. and even though steve doesn’t necessarily mind most of it because he knew about my flirty personality before we started dating, i think i need to put myself in check a lot more than i do. and just be like “alright jess, the jokes about you cheating on steve with joe should stop.” and staying the night in his apartment a lot is probably out too. but i think these are all going to be good changes because it shows that i’m no longer trying to push steve away which was what i was doing for the past few weeks or so. mostly i just get really afraid to let someone know everything about me and give them the power over how my heart feels. i’m better about that. so that’s good. a lot of this process was overcoming my pattern of keeping alternative boyfriends to the ready. or girlfriends. whatever. generally, i think i lead people on as a way of making myself feel safe that my relationship could end and i wouldn’t be alone. but i think this pattern has changed along with my fear of being alone. in fact, i think that if i weren’t seeing steve right now i’d want to just not see anyone. first because i’d be absolutely devastated, but also because i think that it’s important for me to spend some time outside of relationships in between them. so i’m really happy with steve. go jess.

on other unhappy notes i apparently got cut from the NFA list which i’m really angry about. first because i think a lot of it is on gender lines not on merit lines and because it sucks that bad budgeting means we don’t get to go to NFA. and i dont’ think i’d be that angry about it but both coaches told me this weekend that i could go. and they told steve, jotto, and sleepy the same thing. so this is pretty much a bitchy stunt to pull. and whats worse is that at shoney’s we were ordering an unnecessary dessert on the school’s tab and i suggested “why don’t we just get a couple of pies for like 8 dollars each instead of like 15 slices at 2.49 each?” and then i got made fun of for being like kevin’s dad. maybe i’d rather go to NFA than eat a goddamn slice of shoney’s pie that isn’t even that good because their crust is bizarre. i want to go to nfa really badly because i’d like to do a couple of platforms next year.. like maybe an inform and a persuade and prose or impromptu in addition to extemp. i want to be a forensicator/debater that they can put anywhere and feel confident that i’ll win there. mostly because i want to be an asset to the squad and i want to work hard to prove myself. but all they show me is that they’re not willing to make the investment in me. i think we’d kill in sweeps with no question of anything if we were all working for the squad. we have the talent. and we have the desire to win. but halfway through the tournament you throw off my mind game and get all condescending because brandon and i don’t break to quarters when the flow judge picks us up and you’ve never fucking criticized our style in debate and even gone so far as to stifle any comments from the coach attempting to coach our performance and see how well i do in the first round of LD?

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
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you would think that i would try to get a full night’s sleep last night due to my being ill with the flu. while this may have been an initial goal that was held on to even as a “full night’s sleep” became an “adequate ammount of sleep”, i did not manage to get close to either. mostly this comes from me making bizarre decisions and always getting into really intense debates with joe. last night, for some reason, i just decided to go ahead and let him debate abortion. and i think we kind of both came out of it alive. i don’t know. i got offended at least once but i know he was kind of offended by my position. i may write some sort of statement of my beliefs concerning abortion later in the week or at least sometime just because i think it would help my position in similar debates later. anyway. this debate took all night. and i kind of love this about college. how it means staying up for the entire night and debating really intelligently. or really stupidly, depending on how you look at it or what part of the conversation you enter. oi.

we ended up at IHOP at like 6:30 for lack of better options and we overheard one of the best snippets of a conversation ever. it went like this: “what you got to do is get her legs on either side of you and then push her to the ground.” i think they were talking about birthing horses or something. but it was a bizarre story. crazy nascar dads. crazy, crazy nascar dads.

also, my roommates boyfriend SOMEHOW ended up sleeping in my room again. AUGH!!! GET THE FUCK OUT!!! DAMMIT!!! AUGH!!! i really really want to just scream at her right now but my lack of sleep doesn’t guarantee fluent english for this yelling.

i got sick with the flu on friday night at about seven. suddenly, my entire body was chilling and achy and i felt pretty sick in other ways too. i mostly just didn’t want to move at all. but i was almost on my way to work at the time that this started at 7 would be a little late to call off so i went into work. i got progressively sicker as the night continued. i called mom around 9:30 to tell her that i planned on sleeping at home and asked if she could put another comforter on my bed because sometimes i need another comforter to fight the chills. i got home at about midnight and crawled into my double-comfortered bed and didn’t really remove myself from it until i had a paper to write last night (due this morning, but have no fear it was only like a 17 sentence composition for french). ugh. saturday i slept until like noon or so then i laid around and watched “As Good As It Gets” which was pretty decent. I don’t know. I pretty much was just annoyed with the actions of all of the characters at the time. Joe brought me juice stop because steve was at work and he’s a nice kid. then he stayed with me because he was pretty violently ill as well and we watched the entire season three of family guy. i was forced to call into work that night (Rather my mom did becxause i was insistent that i should go and still feel bad about not going kind of). i threw up some which wasn’t any fun. but i managed to only vomit once and only dry heave once throughout the entire illness. so i’m pretty much proud of myself for that feat alone.

i haven’t eaten more than a few bites of spaghetti since i got sick. well actually i had maybe some hash browns on friday morning and some macaroni and cheese around 2:45 in the afternoon. and that’s all i consumed for the weekend until those like 5 spaghetti bites last night. i’ve just felt horrible. this has negatively affected my weight. i’m guessing i’m down about five pounds because that’s a reasonable amount to lose following a weekend of starvation. augh! i don’t really like losing weight much. not because i think i’m this perfect skinny body type to begin with but just because it always puts me in a weird mood. like i don’t want to gain it back, etc. it also probably factors in that i havne’t had soda all weekend. that alone with no food cutout can drop me about five pounds. well i guess i was doing a lot of walking that weekend too… so five pounds is probably still my guess and we’ll find out for sure on wednesday when i go to doctor for that weird side pain which has been considerably worse during my flu. i wish they could get me in earlier. not to mention.. fucking kevin is making us leave for kentucky at like 5pm on wednesday. and there’s a good chance a 2:15 appointment for a mystery disease will last till three and then require blood work if not x-rays also or a sonagram.. this means at like 15 minutes travel time from doctor to lab. then about 20 minutes or so waiting because the minor acute people seem to be the only people with enough clout to get me in quickly to that place. then the actual blood or scans. at least 15-30 minutes. more if its both. so this is going to push my time a lot, as you can see. and making it there by 5:00 seems highly unlikely. but whatever kevin. if you think its possible i’ll see you there at 5:15 and you can deal with my tardiness by yourself because i’ve had this appointment for a month and i’m going to do whatever they want me too. the bright side is that if they want a sonagram which kind of makes more sense given the location of the pain then they will have to set up a seperate sonagram appointment which will most likely be after i return. unless it suddenly moves itself into emergency category and then i’ll be alright.

the good news about my disease is that my stomach is probably capable of holding about 8 oz at this point. so starving myself all through novi-nats won’t be nearly as hard as i expected.

dammit. dammit dammit. i hate the flu.

ani was really fucking wonderful. it was pretty much like a constant clitoral orgasm. she’s like the cutest little jumpiest thing in the world. and her music is amazing. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a performer who sounds so much like her studio work. she preformed “gravel”, “little plastic castle”, “manhole”, “marrow” and a lot of educated guess’ songs. i had an awesome time.

the opening guy was pretty much awesome too. i think i’m going to try tofind his album online soon. though, i’m not sure if his live show would be repeatable as an album. he played a mouth harp too and now i’d really love to learn the mouth harp. it’s awesome.

madeline found me after the opening act via calling me and getting my coordinates then standing by me. that was nice. i think it would have been extremely weird for her to not be right next to me during an ani concert while she was in the room. and i only sobbed during marrow. and it probably would have been a lot worse if she wasn’t there, i suppose. though she got weird after the concert.

oh she also performed my favorite poem from evolve. augh! it was awesome! augh!

after the show, svd and ryan (who i rode to lawrence with) dropped me off at java break and i hung out with amelia and some of her friends for a while then we went to her dorm and hung out with woods, schreiner and steve. that was pretty insane. they were a little unsettled by my unannounced arrival, but not so much in that bad way. we watched the end of the grudge and smoked orange hookah tobacco. yummy. if i had a hookah i’d probably be a tobacco smoker.

around the time the grudge ended joe and caitlin got back from the movie they went to see and picked me up at lewis. then we ended up back at java break and i had a peach melba which was delicious.

alright. ani in like 5 minutes! yay!

but first, i’d like to preface with some thoughts on oppression. i believe in this country especially among white feminist females oppression is self-inflicted. we’re like goddamn self-loathers or something. i sat in my class today for womens studies and the other day as well and it basically feels like a support group for women. what the hell!? monday we talked about how unfair it is that society makes us be skinny and today we talked about how we overcome that. i say that we don’t acknowledge it. you give power to things and social constructs when you say they’re real and act like its impossible to escape. try this: you’re not fat. you don’t care if you are fat. you just want to be healthy. or you don’t even care about that. so you just say “society doesn’t say that I have to be fat. I created that idea in my mind. I’m not going to do it anymore.” AUGH! You’ve got fiat over yourself. try it on for size, pun intended.

I mostly think american feminists are missing the point. Let’s start a fourth-wave of feminism. This one wants Equality Everywhere, Dammit. I am going to make an honest effort to be less concerned with the ability of my daughter to become a Boy Scout and more concerned with that Muslim woman whose testimony counts as half that of a man.

also, when i hear battered womens task force i think “Augh! Gender Language! Augh!” since when are men never battered? and what kind of feminist is pro-generalization?

today at work i had to do regional wrestling results by myself. regional wrestling consists of about 5 huge wrestling tournaments that are done in a relatively simple version of AP style. However, tonight… i was not prepped to arrive to regional wrestling mess and i really shoudln’t be working alone on a night this busy. so i finish the first meet which was like 5a regionals at salina and then eric comes back here (eric is my editor who didn’t schedule enough of us to work tonight) to say that Rick basically did it the wrong way and put it in the way we would do an actual wrestling meet. but we’re supposed to just do top 4 for regionals because they qualify to state. this would also have been much cooler because it doesn’t take nearly as long as all of the “Bob the Builder, KSU, pinned Lorne Michaels, SNL, 3:04” does. so that’s not fun at all. and its really shitty that instead of just having someone up front fix what rick did wrong they made me change everything about the format. and so we dont’ even have complete lines for the matches like we’re supposed to have. dammit dammit dammit.
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my mom discovered instant messaging and all of its joys today. completely unannounced.

mom suddenly on my brothers screen name: jess, remind me how we do the fish thing. We ned to clean the tank.
me: is that mom?
mom: yes
me: um. you get the water (distilled) and then you put the fish in a different bowl or cup and clean out his bowl really really well then you put him back in the new water. but the water has to be room temperature
me: do you want me to take him back or are you still attached to him?
me: i miss him.
mom: I don’t mind caring for him. I just want tomake sure I do the right thing. This is so cool, talking to you on the inernet.
devon: k im back
devon: shes so amazed by this
me: alright. that’s funny
devon: yeah
devon: she just sat here and stared at the screen waitin for u to type back
me: that’s so funny
me: i can just picture her doing it.
devon: yeah
devon: when i watch skate videos i play them really loud so they will move the computer downstairs
devon: mom wants to talk to u
me: mk
me: hey lady.
mom: Jess, you need to get out somewhere and get a plant to put in withthe fish. I don’t know what happened tothe one you had but it’s gone so we need another one for yourfish to hide under and also helps keep the bowl clean.
me: okay i will.
me: what kind should i get?
mom: Love you and miss you. mommy and daddy
mom: whatever you had before
me: i love and miss both of you too.
me: alright.
mom: Will we see you this weekend. Devon will be at Midwest Skate on a school project tomorow.
me: i might be around tomorrow if we get done kind of early
mom: Are you back at Seaman tomorrow
me: yeah. you could bring me lunch although james did offer me a double meat italian sandwich today. jerk.
mom: Since I am not still well, i dont think so but what abut the meat, ms. vegeterian.
me: i didn’t eat it.
mom: Way to go. I love you and I will return the computer to Devon.
me: alright. goodbye mom, sleep well and get well soon.
devon: k im back
me: alright.
devon: shes so wierd

lol.