I’m a little bummed. Scratch that, was.

Today didn’t start off so great. I woke up late – of course, because I got distracted on the computer last night listening to Muse. And nobody wanted to wake up so I was getting ticked. I was nervous because I had a huge stack of papers to go through and look at and write on and turn in and I hardly made a dent in it. I was hoping to finish it today, because we were going to be supervised at work and I was already freaking out as it was. I hadn’t had breakfast, and I hardly had time to brush my hair. So I was on edge.

Well, my hair came out just fine.
I got to work. On time. Which was a relief.
I found out that we were, in fact, not being supervised or monitored in anyway beyond what was normal, which was extraordinarily reassuring to me, because I only just began working there, or anywhere, for that matter, on the seventh.
Got outta work and came home. Swiped the last slice of cheesecake (glorious) and caught an episode of What Not to Wear.
I cleaned.
And everything was all right.

But then plans fell through, and I grew increasingly more bored, the gaping black void that is my molar with a cavity — by now more cavity than tooth — began to throb and ache, and that pain leaked into my eye socket.

I’m okay with all of this. A few minutes ago, I was prepared for dejection. BOHICA, as nobody says.

Forget that. Today was still pretty great, for many reasons, and for no reason. I seemed to just find the bright side of everything, naturally. So I forced myself to do the same. That’s what I’m doing. Why?

“Because the other option is no fun.”

Se me subió el muerto

As I gushed to my friends at school earlier today, I experienced something for the very first time last night that I’d only ever read about. While laying in bed and waiting for sleep to hit me (because that’s how I see it, one second I’m awake and the next… BAM, I’m out), I went through what my mind immediately termed “sleep paralysis”.

You may have heard of it before – all of my friends at school have anyway, and apparently it’s already happened to them all multiple times in the past, so the excitement’s worn off for them, the damn hipsters. Dictionary.com defines it as “a condition in which, upon waking, a person is aware of the surroundings but is unable to move”, but Wikipedia (be jealous of my trustworthy sources) notes that it has also been known to occur when falling asleep, which is what happened to me.

This is how it went down:

1. I was just a-layin’ in my bed, all comfortable and face-down with an arm under the pillow and the blanket pulled over my head; definitely not facing upwards, which Wikipedia tells me may increase the likelihood of experiencing sleep paralysis, when suddenly, I felt a tingle throughout my body. I still have no idea what it was, and what I’ve read hasn’t helped me understand it. Just after it happened, though, I visualized it as a sort of release, as if a gate were opened in the depths of my mind and let something loose. I don’t know.

2. I became overtly aware of the beating of my own heart. The universe was just those thumps being magnified to insane proportions by my mind for what seemed to be eternity, but was probably about thirty seconds. I noticed that my heart was slowing down at an alarming rate. Paranoia seeped in immediately; I was certain I was going to die. I played out what I felt would be the last moments of my life, but when I noticed my heart had stopped slowing down and kept a regular speed instead of going on until it just stopped, I relaxed.

3. This is when I realized I couldn’t move. Strangely enough, I didn’t panic at all. In fact, I found myself thinking, So this is what it’s like. I have a feeling that if I didn’t live in such a scientific society, I might be a little more apprehensive. There’s a lot of folklore surrounding sleep paralysis, and a lot of it is very creepy. It lasted a few minutes, I think, I can’t really remember because I fell asleep shortly after.

I Am the Girl Anachronism

I’ve spent the past week ruminating on what my life would be like if I was born forty-some years before I was. In my mind, it seems like a great idea because all the music and fashion etc. that I love peaked decades ago. But then I thought about the effects a different society would have on me growing up if I was in fact born in the forties. And I think to myself that what I want isn’t to be born earlier, it’s to basically take the current me – who I am now – out of the present year, the year of the dragon and stick me in the year 1965. Just leave me there and let me age as a member of the revolution, if you will.

There were a lot of great things to see back then that no longer exist today, there were people alive that I love to this day even though I’ve never seen them in person – such as Jim Morrison (see above), a man I sometimes consider to be the love of my life, which is kind of sad when you think about it, how can I spend my life pining over a man that died twenty-two years before I was born? Pardon my necrophilia, I don’t understand it either. Besides Jim though; there was Syd, Jimi, Janis, President Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Tura Satana, Elvis… I could go on and on.

I guess I spend so much time thinking about what it would be like if time travel existed (I shouldn’t say exist, because what if we just haven’t figured it out yet?) because music is such an important part of my life and the music that never fails to deeply affect me was created in this era. I do love heavy metal and stuff but I feel like seeing a band like Megadeth live in their early years wouldn’t be as meaningful as seeing a band like The Doors or Pink Floyd live. Sometimes I’ll listen to a song like Wishful Sinful, or Childhood’s End (Pink Floyd, anybody? One of my favorite bands of all time), Since I’ve Been Loving You, and I’ll think of times that I’ve never lived through, and by the end of the song, my face will be drenched in tears.

Speaking of Since I’ve Been Loving You, I have a pretty funny story about that. I was listening to this song one day, and since I’m really emotional about music (as I’ve just mentioned), I was practically bawling my eyes out. And I got caught. I spent the following month trying to explain to my parents that I was not “in love” with some dude at school or whatever. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s not that funny. I guess it just shows how sometimes even our family doesn’t understand us, and that not even those closes to us will never truly know us.

But I digress. What I’m really trying to say is that even though it’s nice to contemplate the past every once in a while, I really think I belong where I am now. Maybe I just need to meet more people like me, because it wouldn’t be such a good idea to abandon the life I have for the life I feel I’m better suited for.

Bye for now, I leave you with a song that seems perfect for this post:

 

“My name was not Eric, but ‘faggot’.”

I came home today from my journalism class, which focuses on race and gender in the media, following a rather long discussion about media’s effect on the society that consumes it. Sexual orientation wasn’t discussed as much as race and gender, but after watching this video, it’s clear that sexual orientation may be just as important as race and gender when considering not only media’s effects, but also society’s response to it. I’ve seen that homophobia can be a truly dangerous thing, and I can only hope that it gets better from here.

Eric James Borges was a gay man who was discriminated against before most people even begin thinking about what their sexual orientation may be. What makes his story even sadder is that his own family rejected him, his mother went so far as to perform an exorcism on him. After coming out, he became an intern at The Trevor Project, an organization that fights to prevent suicide among LGBTQ youth. Despite helping other like him, Eric James decided to end his life yesterday, at the age of nineteen.

“What is it?”

Track no. 2 off the 1987 album, Among the Living, and quite possibly Anthrax’s most famous song… and for good reason. You can’t go wrong with that groovy-as-fuck bassline.

Jessica’s back, tell a friend

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen! I’m back! Just in time for 2012, too. I’m truly excited, because it’s the beginning of my first real year of “adulthood”, if you can call it that. I’m starting college, and hopefully getting a job sometime soon. If I do get employed somewhere – pray for me, readers, we all know how tough it is to get a job lately – then I’ll finally be getting a license and maybe a car. That last one might be a long shot, but hey, I’m a dreamer. Even if I don’t have a car, I’ll have a lot of expendable income, which, if you know me, is something I haven’t been used to for most, if not all, of my life.

I always get a little sad when one era ends and another begins. The friends I’ve made have been separated from me in the past, but the good thing that came out of it was that the ones that I formed meaningful relationships with have been the only ones to find some way or another to keep in touch. I’m a bit scared that as my generation reaches this critical point in its age, that of “growing up” – moving out, starting college, forming life-long friendships and relationships – some of my current friendships won’t last. The winds of time are spreading the seeds farther and farther to be sown, so to speak. I hope that the people that matter most to me feel the same about me so that we can continue sharing our lives together.

I know I should be happy for this new year, but I can’t help feeling a little bittersweet. So I’ll try to focus on the positive. I’m growin’ up, y’all! I can really feel it now. My eighteenth birthday may have been in October, but today is the first day I have felt like an adult.

Last year, I decided to start a habit of keeping track of which song I was listening to at midnight on New Year’s Day. The list began with this song, which is a bit eerie, because it means more to me than most people would think:

Anyway, happy new year to you and yours! I hope you’re as excited for 2012 as I am!

Meppy Chrismahannukwanzaakah!

Today is Christmas Eve. I went to a swap meet with Ruben and managed to get some really cool stuff. Pictures will come later, maybe. Probably not. Anyway, I got a necklace with a metal dreamcatcher on it, and two small patches, of the Misfits and Pink Floyd. They are all beautiful. I also got some candy. It was good. Afterwards, I went to my uncle’s house and got the gifts I picked out for my brothers and sister. The look on their faces warmed my heart. I don’t care how cheesy that sounds because it’s completely true. I stopped by my cousin Shanti’s house, and then by my tia Lupe’s house, got to see not only her, but also my grandma, cousin, and dad. My grandma brought me a beautiful necklace from Mexico. Jordan’s dad picked him up there, so one of my brothers won’t be home for Christmas.

Afterwards, we went to my tia Mari’s house. She made posole, a Mexican Christmas staple, along with tamales, which I also had, just back at Shanti’s house. I had to force myself to stop eating because it was all just so good I didn’t care if I distended my stomach. My cousin Chris, Harlan, and I went outside and started a good old-fashioned pagan fire. Here’s a picture of me and Harlan:

This may sound unrelated, but trust me, it had a good effect on my day: my mom gave me a statuette of a wizard earlier, and after I decided that he would be my spirit animal and guardian angel (maybe not the best word, but whatever), I brought him out and placed him near us. I felt that the brightest star in the sky that night was the eye of the wizard watching over me. Maybe it was just Santa… or the Hannukah armadillo.

 

P.S.: I would say posts have been sporadic, but let’s face it – there haven’t been enough posts for them to classify as sporadic. I’ve been staying at my uncle’s house this past week, and he doesn’t have internet other than on his phone. I haven’t bothered to try and post by using a phone. I’ll be spending the next week with him as well, so this may be the last post you see in a week, give or take a few days. Happy holidays!

The Week in Review

I wrote two posts this week: A Hairy Situation and Where on Earth is somebody who knows who Carmen Sandiego is? I’ve had a total of fifteen page views this week, which may sound like a small number, but doesn’t when I tell you that before this week, I had only had an aggregate of three page views. I also got my first pingback this week, another accomplishment I’m very excited about. It came from Dead Homer Society, a blog which, despite loving older episodes of The Simpsons, now advocated for an ending to the series (which is something I wholeheartedly support). Whatever their views may be, I was flattered that they quoted my reference to a Treehouse of Horror segment in A Hairy Situation… they said it was “excellent”!

Other, non-WordPress-related news: I cut my bangs, finally. They came out a lot better than when I cut them around this time last year. I dyed one of my blond streaks turquoise on a whim and rather recklessly. It looks more washed-out green than turquoise, but I like it. I also watched Candy and cried profusely. I’m excited for next week, Ruben’s coming over, and I may go to a swap meet with my friend Erica, whom I haven’t seen in at least a year.

Where on Earth is somebody who knows who Carmen Sandiego is?

Yesterday was a good day for me. My friend Janice came over! We’ve been friends ever since I was thirteen years old. That’s five years of friendship, for all of you who haven’t bothered to read my about page (shame on you). I was really excited to have an actual conversation with her again after such a long time. We talked for hours, which is saying something, because I’m not much of a talker. Okay, who am I kidding? I totally am.

Anyway, we got to talking about cartoons I think, I can’t really remember, because I probably just brought it up out of the blue without any sort of connection, but I told her about how lately I’ve been watching episodes of one of my favorite childhood cartoons with my younger brother Charlie. She told me she’d never even heard of Carmen Sandiego.

What! A child of the 90s who had never seen even a single episode of Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? I was truly flabbergasted. I didn’t let it bother me, though, because I love Janice and I understand that our childhoods may have been a bit different.

A little later on we ended up talking about Halloween or something, again, I probably just interjected with my super awesome idea for my Halloween costume of 2012 because I’m so excited about it and I wanted to tell her. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably already figured out that I want to be Carmen Sandiego. So I gushed my plans to Janice. And then I saw her deadpan stare. I remembered what she’d told me, and the huge maniacal grin that had deformed my face disappeared.

“Oh. Right. You don’t know who Carmen Sandiego is.”

My dreams of shared happiness were shattered. However, as often happens, out of this disappointment came a very important lesson. I could go on looking for the perfect friend: somebody who loves that same obscure band, somebody who also loathes being bothered while in the bathroom (little-known fact about me), somebody who also wants to buy a white poodle (not the small ones) and dye his (yes, it has to be a boy) fur every color under the sun. Yes, that last bit is something both Janice and I share.

I could try to pick my friends. But picking a friend just because of any random mutual interest is a bad idea. Because somebody’s likes and dislikes would not make them more compatible to me; it’s the chemistry that sparks between two people that forms a true friendship. I’m lucky enough to share that with Janice and a few other people that mean the world to me.

I still want someone to share Carmen Sandiego with, though. Right now, it’s only with Charlie and my older brother, Harlan (who has been one of my best friends for my whole life), but it could be you too! So if there’s anybody out there who knows how awesome Carmen Sandiego – and my costume, by association – are, can you please tell me? It would really make my day.

Also, have you found the yin to your yang, that friend that seems like a polar opposite of you and yet completes you in some strange way? Or have you found that friend who always knows the ending to your sentences, whose brain functions in the exact same way as yours?

A Hairy Situation

I love my hair. It’s thick, black, and incredibly shiny when it’s healthy. That being said, I want to have as much fun with it as I possibly can. Right now, I have two bleached streaks in it, one on the side of my head, à la Christina Perri, the other underneath all my hair. I’ve contemplated dying it several colors (which I haven’t done), and cutting it several different ways (which I have done… by myself).

I’ve never gone too crazy with my experimentation, but I think that at some point in my life, I’m going to have to do it. Realistically speaking, the most appropriate time to do this would probably be in the next couple of years. I’m thinking of dying it teal, or maybe that really cool bright red that a lot of people have and sometimes seems to work on girls with darker skin like mine. There’s always something holding me back, though. It’s my intense love for my natural black hair. I mean, I know it’ll grow back, but sometimes I just can’t stand the idea of not having my black hair. Because everybody loves it, not just me. My friends love it, my family loves it. Strangers on the street love it. It’s become one of my favorite physical features.

A year ago, I decided I wanted super short Bettie Page bangs. So I went for it. They didn’t come out the way I wanted, but I was happy that I had the guts to go through with it. After trimming them every few weeks, I decided I would let them grow out and then decide whether or not to cut them again. Right now, they’re at my nose.

After first cutting my bangs, my hair was still long enough to reach my waist. A few months later, I decided I want short hair. Now my hair is at my shoulders. I really like it, but I miss my long hair. Waiting for it to grow back has been hellish. I’m not a very patient person.

I mentioned earlier that I want to dye it. I haven’t come to a specific decision about that, but I have chosen the cut I want. Have you ever heard of B-movie goddess Tura Satana? If you haven’t, go watch Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and get back to me. It’s okay, I’ll be waiting.

 

Not only did she have an incredible haircut that suited her straight black hair perfectly, but she also had curves that could send even the most experienced speedster veering off track. She had sass, she had class, she had the engagement ring that Elvis Presley had given her back in the day. She was a legend in her own right. Oh yeah, she was also trained in aikido and karate.

Seeing as I can’t just become her completely, I’ll just settle for having her hair. Maybe some aspect of her astounding personality will be passed on to me, somewhat like the way Homer was possessed by Snake’s spirit in Hell Toupée. What? That doesn’t seem at all possible? Oh well, a girl can dream.