Calla's Fifty-Third Post pt. 4

I'm not done with complaining about that movie yet. . . but not the entirety of this post will be dedicated to it. Only part of it will be. It will be this part. OK, so what's with the sun thing? That had NO RELEVANCE to the plot whatsoever. Additionally, most of the movie seemed pretty light. So, they introduce this concept because, the writer or the director or some other moron thought, "hey wouldn't it be cool if they call night day and day night in the future!?" No. In fact that would be a rather uncool thing to do. . . unless, of course, it furthers your story. . . which it does not. So, no.

Also, there were all these random ALMOST themes. I am calling them that because every single theme in this movie is underdeveloped. So much so, that they can't really be called themes. They are more like ALMOST themes. So, one that they attempted was about how our DNA does not define us or whatever. I forgot about this point in my original "better" list from pt. 3 because it was an closer to an ALMOST ALMOST theme than an ALMOST theme. . . and know what does that WAY better!? Guess!! JUST GUESS, because if you can't get this one right you really don't know me at all. Galactica does that a trillion times better. Seriously. It has done that better since Athena fell in love with Helo in the beginning of the first season some time. That is how good at life (and by life I obviously meant story telling) Battlestar Galactica is. (And by Battlestar Galactica I obviously meant the creators of Battlestar Galactica.)

Speaking of which, I owe you a list of things we still need to know:
1. The opera house
2. What Roslin, Hera, and company have to do with the opera house
3. Hera
4. The nature or Starbuck (though she is obviously Aurora)
5. Tigh and Caprica's love child
6. The nature of Baltar (if there is a special one.)
7. The Head Characters
8. More details about the exodus from Kobol (though those may have been deleted from the episode we just saw, cause I think they had to cut some of Anders's dialogue.)
9. More details about the Temple of Hope/Temple of the Five
10. The colony that Cavil mentioned this past episode
11. Is the colony the final resting place of our characters?
12. The Bob Dylan Song (Tori forget to ask Anders about that Frakkin song or we would know already!)
13. How the final 4 got "turned on"
14. What the heck is gonna happen to Caprica when Ellen come back next episode? (Tigh isn't gonna choose Caprica over Ellen. Not in a million years. . . considering he's been with Ellen for a few thousand!)
15. Will the cycle be broken?
16. Miracle from the Angels that Anders spoke of just before surgery.
17. What's gonna happen with the stuff Chief is putting in the ship? Probably there's more. . . This is all I got at right this minute though.

So, what else? My mom sent me a card today with $10 in it. The reason she sent this card was because she thought I might like it cause there's a kitty on the cover and the inside says "cats are people too" and I think my cats are my children. Well, so the weird part is she didn't write on the card. She just wrote a note on a separate piece of paper (which also had kitties on it) and put it in the card in case I wanted to give the card to someone else or something. She is super random sometimes.

So, speaking of kitties, I made cookies shaped like cats. I need a pastry bush super bad because it is always hard for me to ice the cookies I make. I just made them plain vanilla and chocolate that wasn't dyed with chocolate sprinkles and colored sprinkles. I didn't take any pictures of them, but I will do a re-run of my cat pictures to show you the shape. I can do that because one other time when I made cat cookies I spent an exorbitant amount of time making one look like Fuffers and one look like Mama. It was already on here once, but I'll put it on again. I'll do a guest cat to make up for it.


So, Foie Gras is evil. I protested it today and this restaurant actually signed the pledge to stop selling it!!! YAY!! Save the duckies, save the duckies, oh I love to save the duckies. That is a song I just sang in my head. It has never ever been song out loud. Probably no one will ever hear it, not even my own ears unless I sing it sometime. . . which maybe I will.

OH! I forgot to tell you a thing about the card my mom sent me. Guess who was on the outside? Abraham Lincoln!!! He was on a stamp on the envelope. That is an important fact to mention because he is one of the main subjects of this blog, as you well know by now, I'm positive.

UM, I have to tell you more about that fictional kid. But I also have to clean up the mess from the cookies in the kitchen. So I think that will be for story time tomorrow. It is really exciting. HE HAS NO IDEA HE IS FICTIONAL.

Love,
Calla and her kitties.
Guest Cat V This is the Kaylee Cat. She lives with the Fluffy Wuffy Queen Moggy and Tabby's parents. Her favorite past time is, for positive, drinking out of the sink. She will cry for you to turn it on for her!!



oh p.s. I also have to write more about dollhouse and complain a little.

Calla's Forty-Eighth Post

I am procrastinating. I have to write this review of this academic article. And it is boring and stupid and about ska. So, I don't want to write it. But I am listening to No Doubt now (third wave ska and what not). And that makes me mad because of my loss of CDs. :( So what happened is as follows: I never really had a permanent home. My parents got divorced when I was 7. So I guess I had one before that. So, the judge gave them joint custody. This was like as joint as it could get, as in my dad had us Thursday, Friday and every other weekend, my mom had us Mon-Wed and every other weekend. That was the school year. During the summer, it was split right down the middle half and half. Though my dad claimed he was supposed to have us every weekend to make up for the discrepancy during the school year. . . But he didn't start claiming this until, I dunno, I was ten or twelve or something. . . So, I don't know if that's true or not, but regardless we didn't follow it. So my point is this. My dad moved like every other year. When he finally moved into a house he supposedly liked we had to rent another house for like ever anyway as he and one of my crazy ex-stepmoms put a million dollars into remodeling the other house. So anyway, I NEVER knew where my stuff was growing up. This was, to say the least, obnoxious. It is also the reason I never want to leave the East Village despite the expense and the whole gentrification thing that has been going on since the 1980s of which I am clearly a part. 'Cause here is where I finally felt I had a permanent home, ya know? To have only ONE home and live in it all the time and to have kitties and a boyfriend you get to see EVERYDAY and then to work in the same neighborhood and to like to go to the park to look at the puppies and wish you could have a dog as well as two cats. . . well, that is what having an actual home feels like. So, back to the CDs. I took all my favorite CDs to college with me my first year, right? And so what happened was I lived in school housing. This small apartment right on Union Square with 8 of us inside it. RIDICULOUS. Probably, you will hear more about the ridiculousness someday. The kitchen was like 10 square feet the four bedrooms were the size of walk in closets literally. . . SO, it sucked. So I also had to move out right away in May. And I stored some stuff with Tabby (where I live now! It was stupid cause I moved the stuff out of this apartment in September and right back in in January!) OK, so, some stuff I stored with Claudette. . . who I then stopped talking to. . . I hope she is enjoying my green blanket, green lamp with flowered lampshade, laundry basket etc. So the rest of my stuff I managed to lug back to Ohio in two overweight suitcases. Well, there were my CDs. And I had them at my dad's house (the one that had been redone.) And I meant to load them all onto my computer, but didn't get around to it. So, I left them there when I went back to New York because I was trying to bring back every single book I owned, and so there wasn't room for music. (Isn't that depressing, to choose between music and literature!?) OK, so I didn't go back to Ohio until 2 years later. That was this past summer for Cristina's wedding. The summer before, I was supposed to go for a weekend, but my plane got all delayed and then cancelled and Tabby's dad had to get me from the airport at like 3 a.m. OK. So, that one year later I didn't have a chance to get those CDs. By the time I got back to Ohio again, my dad had divorced crazy stepmom #2 and that stupidly expensive house was on the market. While, crazy ex-stepmom had changed the locks on the house, so I couldn't get the CDs. So, that same weekend my dad called and asked if I needed anything from the house because he would be there the next weekend. I told him I needed my CDs. But he never called me and never mentioned them again, so I think it is safe to say he either forgot or they were already gone. Well, I get sad quite often that music collection has vanished. But I still have Tragic Kingdom because Christin rebought it or something and I put it on my computer one time in Arizona. But where is the rest of No Doubt, Outkast, Jewel, TFK, Nickel Creek, etc? (Yes, I have elcectic taste.) I am sad.

Well, I don't have any kitty pictures right now because I have to load them from the camera onto the computer. And I didn't yet. Just deal with it. I'll add two sets to the next post to make up for it. (THE NEXT POST WILL PROBABLY BE ABOUT GALACTICA)

You're only sixteen
Try to cross the line
But your little wings are intertwined no whoa no
Yeah you're only sixteen
And you're such a tease
And there's nothing you do
That can really please no whoa no

love, Calla and her kitties

Calla's Forty-Sixth Post

So, I pretty much hate my class that I just got back from which is called *ahem* Making a Difference: Global, Organizational, and Individual Perspective on Social Change. Now, you may imagine that I hate this class cause it just sounds stupid. But that's not precisely why. The name is actually a misnomer. What it should be called is *ahem* Intro to The New School Ideology: An Indoctrination of Our Postmodern Believes. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with postmodernism. I am a fairly a postmodern girl myself, being unable to help it as I was born in 1986 and all. What is wrong with my partaking in this stupid stupid class is that I have BEEN at the New School for 3.5 years. I already KNOW their postmodern mumbo jumbo. The fact that everyone experiences things based on their own positionality may or may not have seemed ground breaking to me three and a half years ago. (I'm gonna guess that it didn't because I was born in the postmodern era.) But it most definitely is not something I need to hear 3.5 years AFTER I entered the new school. The problem is that this class is supposed to be for first year students at Milano, The New School for Management and Urban Policy. Maybe these newcomers need to be indoctrinated, but I don't. I'm sick of it because I have heard it all before. So I have moved past the discovery of critical thinking and flat out use it without thinking about using it.

Well, here's the other issue. I was asking Tabby the other day, what other kind of thinking is there? How is there a kind of thinking that is not critical? Wouldn't that just be memorization, and repetition of facts and studies. How is there thinking without the critical part? Ok, so my point for this part of the post is that I have always thought critically. It is one advantage of being born in the postmodern era. I question everything. So, I gave up meat at the age of four without prompting from anyone. It was because I did not inherently accept the dominant ideology that meat is a necessary source of nutrients. I thought about killing animals for what it actually is, and just stopped eating them. It's not hard. Another example: In class, when we were discussing the dissemination of dominant ideology onto the masses (get it yet? Why this is so dumb?) someone mentioned the idea of a wedding. How little girls are trained to dream about their wedding day, and they plan it out as soon as they can speak, and when that day comes they are told it is the happiest day of their lives. Someone needs to correct me if I'm wrong, cause I don't have that good a memory about my "formative" years, but I don't remember ever wanting a wedding. I certainly do not want one now and I certainly did not want one during high school. As long as I can remember, they grossed me out. Why are you going to make this intimate, personal vow to spend your life with someone in front of a group of gawking relatives, friends, acquaintances and strangers? (You are not likely to know all of your spouses distant relatives who flew across the country to attend this horrendous display of overexaggerated bliss.) Much to the same point (the point of specified gender roles and household expectancies), know what pisses me off? People's views on adoption. I have always wanted to adopt children. I remember when I was a child I said so to my mom. She said, "you'll change your mind when you get older." Well, turns out I haven't. In fact I am much more strongly convicted that you are pretty much an asshole if you purposefully plan a pregnancy, what with the overpopulation and the hundreds of thousands of children WITHIN THE UNTIED STATES awaiting adoption. So, I am about to get to the part that pisses me off. When I say I want to adopt, people respond, "you don't want to have your own children?" SINCE WHEN DID THE DEFINITION OF "YOUR OWN" CORRELATE WITH A BIRTHING PROSSESS? I did not birth the jeans I am wearing, and yet they are my own. Imagine the idea that one could feel a child is theirs (as much as a child can be "own"ed by anyone in the first place. . . but that's a totally different discussion that pretty much falls to semantics and the limitations of human communication in my opinion.) without sharing DNA. My boyfriend is mine (hence the word "my" in the phrase "my boyfriend") and yet we do not have the same DNA. But seriously, I have even heard other people who plan on adopting say things like "I don't want to have my own kids." EWWW. It makes me want to puke all over the place. I always correct people and respond with "I will have my own children. They won't be biological if that's what you meant." But here's my overarching point: Because I was born in 1986 I have been analyzing the world critically since I was a child, and I have just offered three examples of how I was able to question dominant societal views without taking this dumbass class on social change.

OK, but there's still more to it. (More to why the class is hard for me to sit through.) I am not as postmodern as I could be given my position in life. (haha. That's a joke, get it?) I figure I must be too Christian to be postmodern. Not that some Christians aren't postmodern. Those emerging church people are. . . and I don't like them. Probably because they're too postmodern. But, ya see, I believe in objectivity hardcore. Maybe I view a certain situation as unjust because of the fact that I am a woman. Maybe a man would not question that same situation. Our realities might seem different. . . However, the situation is either just or it is not. One of us is wrong. Our difference in positionality does not automatically validate both of our experiences as true. What I'm getting at, and that was an awful example because I didn't actually give an example, is that not everything is subjective. The reason I figured maybe I'm not postmodern because I'm Christian is because so much of my faith hinges on things happening for real. I can't just accept that maybe the resurrection was spiritual instead of physical or that the incarnation did not truly happen but Christ was adopted by God or that Christ's performed miracles were mere illusions. And people can try to pass off the resurrection as a spiritual occurrence saying that the experience would be different for different people because it has to do with spirituality. . . but that's just bullshit. And also kind of postmodern.

Oh, here's the other thing that's wrong and stupid about The New School. . . shhh. . . it's a secret. I'm not convinced they teach people how to think critically. Some people, such as myself, were drawn to The New School because we already thought critically and so we were drawn to a university that flourished on seminar style instead of lecture and processed regurgitation. BUT those who were drawn to The New School without an already embedded notion of critical reasoning, well, they just regurgitate "progressive" opinions. They listen to their professors in class and just barf back up whatever the professor said. They do this later, in conversations with their non-New School friends so that they can appear enlightened. Really, they are no more enlightened then their friends who attended community college, but they can pretend they are since they are regurgitating well-argued, less-usual opinions instead of boring opinions accepted by the dominant culture as fact.

My school is dumb. The people in it are dumb at least. (Not all of them, some of them came to the school already not dumb.) I cannot precisely express to you what is wrong with all the people who surround me. . . but I can try. They are selfish. I think that is the base of it. They like to pretend that they are liberal, but really they are just mean. I figured this out because they have these weird ideas about spirituality, and finding oneself, and doing what it takes to make yourself happy, and never looking at the outside world for advice (I damn sure hope you're never a rocket scientist!!) because all you need is you typa-attitudes. That wasn't a well argued (or well thought out!) explanation. So. . . Let's try this. I'm liberal. I don't think we would deny this. (I'm vegan, my apartment is powered with green electricity, I voted for Dennis Kucinich in the primaries, I think the war on terror and the war on drugs are both wastes of money, I think the "free-market" was an awful idea as I don't believe it was ever free, I am not homophobic, not racist, not sexist, not sex-negative, I believe the education system needs a complete overhaul, etc. etc. need I continue? You get the point.) So. I am of a liberal political persuasion, I think it is safe to say. Now, the reason WHY? Because I believe it can better society far more easily than a conservative political platform. It is not because I will benefit from a reform in elementary schools and it is not because I personally intend on marrying a woman. Additionally, I am not the one being abused and ultimately slaughtered in industry-factory farms. What I finally figured out is the people at my school are mostly liberal for strikingly different reasons. There are a few possibilities: #1, they are rebelling against their conservative Catholic upbringing and couldn't think of a more creative way than by voting for a pro-choice candidate. #2 They were raised around liberal people and are simply regurgitating. #3 They are selfish. They feel that a liberal agenda will give them more freedom to do what they want, no matter what that want may be. So, well I am against the war on drugs because of depressing sentencing discrepancies, the fact that drug offenders are not rehabilitated but imprisoned, the fact that common policing methods are inherently classist, and the fact that the money could be way better spent fixing our broken infrastructure and failing public schools, a lot of people at my school are against the war on drugs because they want to smoke pot. See the difference? They are not progressive, simply liberal. And there is, I am discovering through my critical reasoning skills, a difference.

In other, ENTIRELY unrelated news, I think my hyena must make me approachable. People are always asking me questions when I am wearing it like, "where's Broadway?" and "is this way north?" (the island is on a tilt, so I think that confuses people. What we call North is really northeast so people like looking towards the sun for directions or something have no idea what's going on.) SO, pretty much I must look irresistably cute in my hyena hat and look like someone with authority. I dunno, I maybe am crazy. But seriously, they always ask me.

Galactica fans are pretty weird about the show still. But I don't feel like explaining it. They must not know how to reason.

Love, Calla and her kitties

Calla's Twenty-Sixth Post

I am not so good at being so very social. This may come as a surprise as I do not shut up if I am ever around you. Also, I am fairly friendly and will talk to anyone about small-talk one on one. But, I am not so very good at going to large groups for socializing purposes. Even one-on-one lots of people make me uncomfortable for various reasons–– either they are stupid, or they think I am stupid, or they don't understand silliness, or they don't understand seriousness, or they don't like kitties, or they don't respect my opinions about social issues, or they choose not to understand my opinions about social issues (this is a big one. Lots of people do this), or they use the word "gay" as a synonym for stupid (or something equally offensive like that), or they think I'm amoral, or I think they're immoral, or they are just this specific personality type that I can't describe in so many words suffice to say they are not content with any aspect of life but not because they are aware of all of the injustice in the world or anything like that, but because they are searching for some abstract notion of fulfilment instead of just getting fulfilled. So, see, I am not so good at being very social. I am good at being social with Tabby, which is why I live with him and am in love with him and what not. I am good at being social with Audrey and Christina because I've known them sense I was a kid. I am good at being social with Leo because he is a weirdo like me. I am good at being social with Chelsea because she is also a weirdo. I am good at being social with my homeless friend who wears a blue sweatshirt because I only ever have to talk to him for five minutes at a time and he's not one of those annoying types mentioned above–– however, notice I am not good enough at being social to know his name. I am good at being social with almost anyone with whom I had to work because if you're with someone enough hours of the day then they just see how you are anyway so there's really no point in not being good at being social. I am good at being social with my sister and her children because I love them the bestest. I am not so good at being social with one of my brothers and I am just ok at being social with the other one (the one who made the FUNNY PICTURE!!!! when he was in eighth grade.) I am dreadfully awful at being social with my mother because the only interest we share is kitty-meow-faces. Other than that we have nothing in common. With my father I am ok at being social like how I am with my one brother. With Tabby's parents I am pretty ok at it as long as I am not in a bad mood, because if I am in a bad mood, Tabby's dad will make my mood worse. This was a list for your reading pleasure. Probably there are other people with whom I am good at being social, but for some reason they are NOT ON THE LIST!? SORRY FRIENDS. Mostly I am ok one-on-one.


(She is saying "hello, will you play with me?"
And he is saying "no because I am an old man
it is scary when you chase me!")

So, anyway the other day I had a dejá vu. (Is that how you spell it?) I get them sometimes a lot, but never write them down, so now I am going to start writing them down. This one is from the class Theory and Practice of Nonprofit Management. We were discussing in small groups some questionable marketing situations. My group was talking about when Mattel offered to make a girl scout barbie doll. (Which is oh so wrong, on oh so many levels. Probably I needn't list them.) So then this is how the dejá vu went: Someone in my group asked a question about merit badges in girl scouts and that is when the dejá vu started, and then the rest of us didn't know about the badges and then someone else asked if when a girl got a merit badge if she would get a badge for her Barbie doll too, like a little tiny badge, and no one knew the answer and then the prof. said to come back together and that is how it ended, the professor broke it up. Do you know I love run-on sentences sometimes? Maybe I already said that before.

BYE!!!

Love,
Calla and her kitties

Calla's Twelfth Post

This Picture of the Mama Kitty is from before she was MY Mama Kitty. Mama Kitty used to live with my mama. . . haha. Isn't that silly!?


"Recognize that you are the truth" is what it said on my tea bag. . . How dumb is that? Really, I would like to know how dumb that is. Do you care to enlighten me on the dumbness? Or defend the dumbness, if you so desire, and tell me that there is actually not an ounce of dumbness in the quote? That would be interesting as well. . . But someone has to tell me something because I think that quote is dumb dumb dumb dumb DUUUUMB! (Those "dumbs" just prior to this parenthetical are to the tune of a song. . . figure it out and you win a bonus point! :] )

Even for someone who doesn't believe that Christ is the truth (which I personally do) "recognize that YOU are the truth"!? Have we really become so self-absorbed? Ok, so in my humble opinion God is like the only inherently existing thing, right? So that would make God truth, no? (If you do not follow that argument, oh well. . . just take my word for it. I've thought much about inherent existence and the likes)

But even if you don't believe in God why would YOU be the truth? I really just can't comprehend this quote. I don't get what it means. My mind cannot wrap itself around something so trivial as an individual (who will die and decay and what not) being (not solely representing actually BEING, "are" is a state-of-being verb and what not) the truth. How can a person be the truth? Above nature or the world or space or time or spacetime or reality or tradition or power or belief or faith or skepticism. . . YOU? REALLY? REALLY!?!? Well, I find that rather absurd personally. Explain to me why that isn't absurd.

Are we each on some great quest for self-discovery? What ARE we? Sixteen-years-olds reading On the Road and experimenting with pot for the first time!? Why is it ok in today's society for everyone to continue to think that THEY THEMSELVES are the end all be all of their problems and of their needs. This is not some stage we are expected to outgrow any longer. . . It is perfectly acceptable. . . IT IS ENCOURAGED (by the yogi tea company) to continue to act this way til death.

YOU are the truth. . . See, relationships and love and caring for one another, THOSE aren't the truth. . . nope just you, solitary and alone. You You You! Embrace your egotism and understand that you are all you need to get by in the world. Realize you needn't see the world as full of social woes or injustice or suffering. . . Just embrace your innerpeace and realize you are the truth.

AHHHH!!! AHHH!!! SERIOUSLY SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHY THIS IS AN OK PHILOSOPHY! Does it really not occur to other people that sharing is caring (hahahaha!)?

No, I mean, for real, for serious, what does it mean to say that you are the truth!? Ignoring that the rest of society, the rest of the universe, the rest of life is truth. I mean I think everything CONTAINS truth because everything contains God. But YOU are NOT THE truth. . . You CONTAIN truth. That is so incredibly different it's not even funny. (Really, some of the stuff I say is funny, but that is not funny.) Do you not see that this is why the world functions so poorly? Everyone thinking that they just need to look inside themselves and find fulfillment and thinking that everyone else should be doing the same so that they also don't have to deal with each other because if EVERYONE'S looking inside themselves for fulfillment no one needs each other.

OH ME OH MY THE WORLD MAKES ME CRY! (That is a funny thing to say though. . . yea, that part was funny.)

UM, DUMB! The world is full of idiots. But it is NOT full of isolated idiots on a solitary path towards an individual attainment of enlightenment or some other bullshit. It is full of inter-connected idiots. Idiots who depend on each other, love each other, hate each other, WHATEVER each other. . . but the point is they do something to each other. . . . and each of them contains some truth. (Cause they contain some of God, or because God desires to contain them, or because they desire to contain God, or because of something. . . but in my opinion because of God.) But whatever the reason, YOU are not the truth. That is just stupid.

¡The End!

Love, Calla and her kitties because Jesus made all three of us!!