“A New Birth of Freedom”

A New Dawn: President Obama

This morning I woke up with a new hope for the future that there truly will be “a new birth of freedom” as President Lincoln declared in the Gettysberg Address more than a century ago. On that day the man who became known as the Great Emancipator said:

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Over the century since the Civil War this country has had its share of problems. It has seen depression and prosperity. It has seen World War and it has seen a tenuous peace. It has seen sham elections and democracy. It has persevered, and it will continue to do so. As another president said on his Inauguration day:

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

As apt today as it was on January 20, 1961, this “new generation of Americans” can rejoice for freedom has come once more to our corner of the world. Today, there is a feeling of pride “from sea to shining sea” that President Obama will bring the change that he has promised, and that he will bring honor back to the White House and back to the United States of America.

It is impossible, whether Democrat or Republican, not to feel moved today for we are all a part of history. On that day in November, when I stepped into my polling site, Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising began to play on my Ipod, and I took it as an omen that Senator Obama would become President Obama. The excitement that I felt on that day is nothing compared to what I feel today. The last eight years has brought a bitterness to this country and to the world, but today there is only hope. A hope that will not die.

During the March on Washington on August 28, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the crowd of people, black and white, of a dream that he had. He said:

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

That dream, while it has not completely been fulfilled, is on its way into existence. Dr. King went onto to say:

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Have A Wonderful Inauguration Day and a Wonderful Four Years!
L

Snow Day

It snowed here last night. J– of course didn’t feel like getting up to help shovel, but that is no big surprise. Little N– wanted him to go out to play with him, but he wouldn’t get up. Poor kid had to wait a few more hours until his father could go out with him. He did have fun though.

Little N-- waited hours to play in the snow.

Another Family Drama

If I hadn’t had enough problems in my family in the last forever, last night after downloading Itunes onto my new computer and spending a good hour trying to get into my account, I discovered that Aunt J– is back to her old tricks again. When I finally got onto my account, it promptly let me know that my billing information had recently changed. Since I hadn’t been on in a while I knew that I hadn’t changed anything. As I scrolled down, I noticed that my credit card info had not changed, but my name and phone number were replaced by my aunt’s information. Now she has always had a problem with understanding the difference between something that is hers and something that is anyone else’s, but this has crossed a line. HOW DARE SHE TRY TO CHARGE ANYTHING TO MY CREDIT CARD???!!! She has her own, which she could have easily used, but she decided not to bother with that or even to tell me that she was going to do it. So, now its war. I haven’t seen her for more than two minutes today, so I will confront her after dinner tonight.
As I said this is not the first time that she has had trouble distinguishing mine from hers. Back during my senior year of high school, there was something wrong with her computer, so she came to use our computer, which we had told her she could use. However, she decided that she needed to use my stereo (all the way on the other side of the apartment when there was one that was just ass good in the next room). When I came home from school, I found that she had left in on all day AND had the sound up to level 25…I had had it on level 8 that morning. Upon confronting her, she found it necessary to lie to me, even though she had previously told me that she was the only on that had been down here that day. Does she think that I am that much of an idiot?

Saturday

Okay, I’m supposed to be flying to California on Saturday morning, but I have been panicking all afternoon since that plane crashed today. I know that it is not rational, but i keep thinking that it might happen again only worse. I don’t know what is wrong with me. I have been looking forward to this trip since the moment I found out that I got the interview in November. It isn’t that I want to go to Alliant–it is my back-up school, the one that i would go to if I didn’t get in anywhere else. I have no doubt that I would get in there. They pretty much told me that I was in back in October before I ever submitted my application. The only thing left is to go on the interview. I already sent an e-mail requesting it to be rescheduled.

I want to go to California, but I just can’t imagine getting on a plane after today. My dad said that it probably wouldn’t happen again so soon. I remember one year R–, my dad’s stepfather, was supposed to go away for a reunion, but within a span of 3 weeks there were 3 plane crashes. He had decided not to go on his trip. No, his plane did not crash, but I can’t help wondering what if. What if it happens again? What if it turns out worse? What if? What if? What if?

I know that this isn’t healthy, and that I’ve probably got some plane/death phobia, but what am I supposed to do about it? It doesn’t really impact my life, but I do have some form of subjective distress, which is one of the definitions of abnormality. Normally, I can manage this fear of getting on planes. I read. I even had a book set aside for this trip. Zodiac Unmasked by Robert Greysmith. Ironic, I’m supposed to be going to the Bay Area, so I choose to read a book about a killer from San Francisco.

The problem isn’t just that I don’t want to get on a plane. I have been having doubts about going for the last week. I haven’t been excited as usual about going on this trip. I love being with my Dad, but I hate it when he leaves after a week. It will be worse when I am the one doing the leaving. I had no choice; school starts on the 26th, and I need to be here for that. There are things that I want to be in NYC for. There’s an inauguration party at school on Tuesday, and I could be working on the research for psychology. Or I could be looking for a place to have my party, and working on my application essays.

I want to go to California. But, I don’t. I am so fucked.

L

Panicking

Okay starting to freak out now. A plane just crashed into the Hudson River, and I’ve got to fly on Saturday. Planes don’t crash twice in the same week, right? At least I’m taking American and this was United Airways. They are saying that the fuselage is intact, and that there are people standing on the wings waiting to be saved. There’s saying that ferries are being sent to the sight. I hope everyone will be okay.

Notes on a Scandal

As many out there may know about a year ago, smartbitchestrashybooks.com outed Cassie Edwards, writer of mediocre historical romances, as a plagiarizer, well, there has been new developments in the case. According to SBTB, Ms. Edwards has had a massive stroke…i don’t know when exactly this happened…and that her fans are blaming the bitches for her health problems, which is utterly ridiculous. The fans claim that the stress that the scandal caused her to have a stroke. Not true. Stroke are cause by blood clots that travel to the brain, NOT stress. Plus, she was indeed in her 70’s so she probably would have had this stroke anyway. While it is true that stress does cause problems with the immune system, it does not cause strokes.

It is ridiculous that this is still an issue. Her books are still in stores, and she even has some new ones coming out this year. Hopefully, these books will be checked thoroughly for plagiarism since she is known for stealing phrases from Pulitzer Prize winning novels and from renowned poems, such a Haiwatha, nobody should be surprised if she is still at it (or was still at it pre-stroke). Yes. people can change, but why should she when nothing has actually happened to stop her from doing anything. No charges have brought against her nor have their been any civil cases filed against her. How is it that if I were to plagiarize a paper for class that I could possibly be thrown out of college, but a publish author gets away scot-free? It doesn’t make any sense. Should we, as a society, be up in arms against this type of behavior. If nothing is ever done about it, then how will anyone know that it is wrong. If nothing is ever done about it how can it be wrong. Its like that line that they keep repeating from Frost/Nixon “If the president does it it isn’t illegal,” except in this case it is if a popular author does it it isn’t wrong. Give me a break! It is time for a change. We need to stop sitting idly by while someone steals someone else’s words and ideas just because they are only words and ideas. What happened to “The mind is a terrible thing to waste.” How can it be terrible to waste a mind if the product of that mind does not matter?

Well, off of my high horse for now.
L

Idol and What Would You Do?

I just finished watching the premiere of American Idol 2009, and honestly there were less deluded morons that usual. Sure there were some like the guy who butchered the Tears for Fears song, but the emphasis was definitely on the better performers. There was this one girl who showed up in a bikini. Her singing wasn’t bad, but the only reason that she got through to Hollywood was that bikini. She did not exactly have the body for it…as my mom said a band-aid would have covered her chest. I’m not being catty. I just think that if she had been confident that her voice would get her in on its own then she wouldn’t have put on that bikini when she left her house in the morning.

I liked the new judge, Kara DioGuardi (which in Italian would mean God watches). She seemed like she was very straightforward. There was none of the couching things in compliments…”You look beautiful.” “I like your smile.” I hate it when Paula says thing like that. When a contestant hears these things they should automatically know that their performance was bad. She was the one who really didn’t want to let Ms. Bikini-band-aid onto the show.

I think that the show was pretty good.

What Would You Do:

This is one of my absolute favorite shows. As a psychology major I can appreciate the types of social psych situations that they depict. Last week they tested the way that people view Mexican immigrants and then the way that the French treat the “Ugly American”. Tonight they were testing to see what people would do if they saw a man drug a woman’s drink.

I think that it is interesting to see what people would actually do in this type of situation. The one thing that I could not believe is that when these 2 older men (although they don’t actually deserve that moniker) decided that they liked the actor that was drugging the girl’s drink. One even said that they needed to hang out with him. The other WTF moment was when this one man confronted the actor, his wife told him to shut up.

I would like to think that I would say something to both actors if I had been the one to see them, but as we saw in the Milgram experiment, in which a “teacher” is told to shock the “learner” for each incorrect answer. In this experiment from 1962, many people did not stop shocking people because they did not think that they were responsible for their actions. This is called diffusion of responsibility, a theory developed after the Kitty Genevese killing in 1964, when 38 people overheard their neighbor being stabbed to death. The theory supposes that when there are more people witnesses to an emergency the less likely anybody will stop to help.

Next they showed a rather stupid thing about people cutting the line with 2 things while a family member comes along with a wagon full of groceries. This only became interesting when the cutter was given a $500 prize for being the 5 millionth customer. Most people seemed to be really upset about it, although one woman was really good about it. There was also a man who believed that there is sometimes a price for kindness.

I do know what I would do in this type of situation because I have been in one similar to it, although there was no cash prize involved. Most people know that I have to take the bus home from school, well what they don’t know is that the bus that I take only comes once a half hour. One day a couple of years ago I let this pregnant woman get in front of me on the line because it would have been hard to get a seat with all the Catholic School brats on the bus. As I went to get on the bus, the driver, who saw what I did, closed the door on me and drove off. Never again will I give up my spot in line. No matter who you are, you have to wait your turn, and God forbid you try to cut the entire line. I have gotten into arguments with many people, especially the Catholic School brats, who should know better, and the elderly women, who think that they should get whatever they want when they want it. I have actually had one woman tell me that she was old so she had the right to cut the line. I do not care who you are, nobody has the right to jump the line.

Their last experiment was about stealing gas from someone’s tank. People at a gas station would take the gas thing out of one car and put it in another. Most people did speak up, but there were some that didn’t. I think that I would have said something to the person stealing the gas, and if that didn’t work then I would call the police.

At the end of each episode they have a question for the viewers. This week’s question is what would you do if a friend asked you to submit his/her resume to your boss, but you realized that they lied about work experience.

I don’t think that I would submit it to anyone. First, I would talk to my friend. If he/she tries to lie to me, then I will have to rethink the friendship. I don’t approve of lying unless it is absolutely necessary.

Well, that’s all for tonight.

L

Dr. Horrible on HULU

So, last night I was a little bored before going to bed, and I decided to check out hulu.com. I had been there once before, but i had never watched anything on it. I had thought about watching an episode of Psych or Family Guy, both of which I had seen on there the last time i looked. However, on the the start screen they had Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-long Blog. I had heard such good things about it in tvguide and in entertainment weekly that I thought I would check it out. It was absolutely amazing. I knew that Neil Patrick Harris was Dr. Horrible, but somehow I hadn’t heard that Nathan Fillion (Johnny from Two Guys and A Girl & Joey from OLTL) was Captain Hammer, Dr. Horrible’s nemesis. I’m glad that they didn’t get someone with a better voice to play Captain Hammer; his voice was perfect for the corny shallowness of the character. BTW I loved the singing cowboys. I was also suprised to see Walowitz from Big Bang Theory on there as Dr. Horrible’s best friend.

Anyway, I did love it, and if you haven’t checked it out, you should.
L
Neil Patrick Harris was amazing. I love him on HIMYM (btw did anyone else feel really bad for Barney last night?), and it just goes to show that he can do anything. That last scene where he sings “A thing” was brilliant. You can see all of his sadness and vulnerability despite getting what he claims to have wanted his entire life.

My one problem with it was that most of the songs sounded the same to me. I love Joss Whedon, and anyone who could come up with Dr. Horrible (as well as BTVS) is a genius, but couldn’t they have put some more effort into making the songs not sound so similar (to each other and the ones from OMWF)? The lyrics were great, but the rhythm and the beat were the same on most of the songs.

New Laptop Redux

When I woke up this morning (a little over an hour ago), my new HP laptop was here. I haven’t used it very much just yet, but from what I have already seen I really like it. It has everything that I need, although I would have liked to have the memory card reader. The other good thing is that the old computer is safely back at Target and I will have my refund within a few days. I’m going to go check out this new computer.

More Later.
L

4 Months Until Graduation

As those who have been reading this blog for awhile may know, I am graduating from QC this May, and it is all finally hitting me. I’ve been so consumed with applications to grad school since pretty much September, but it never really hit me that I would no longer be at QC. Yes, I have pictured myself living in Boston or California for grad school, but I don’t think that I ever really realized that it wouldn’t be the same. I know that I’ll do fine in my classes, and I am no longer worried about living away from home. However, I am used to the rhythm of QC. I know that I am prepared for anything that grad school will throw at me; I work really well under pressure. For instance, I took on more work this semester (plus my mom was in the hospital for the first 2 months), and I still managed to get my highest GPA yet (3.83/4.0). I got 3 A’s, and A+, and a B+. Honestly, I want to live away. My family is great most of the time, but I need to go away for awhile…even if it is only 2 years. Whatever, I’ll figure it out.

I wrote my application essay for Northeastern the other day. I really like their Criminal Justice program, and it would complement my BA in psychology really well when it comes time to apply for my doctorate in Forensic psychology. I’m also applying to St. John’s University’s Masters in criminal Justice and California State Long Beach. I have applied to a few doctoral programs as well, and I have my interview at Alliant International University on the 23rd. However, I’m not holding my breathe, since my research skills are nill. I want John Jay, but they only accept about 15 people per year, so unless everyone else applying this year is an idiot, then I’m not getting in there. Any of these schools would be great if i got into them, but for the Masters I really want Northeastern or St. John’s, which isn’t too far from home, but I could still live on campus if I wanted.

Party planning is really getting underway. Uncle and Aunt M– are taking me to see a couple of places in the neighborhood tomorrow. Before I make any decisions, I have to take pictures of these places for dad, who is more invested in my party then I am and I have been talking about this party for 2 years! After I get the place, then I have to get the DJ– I recently found out that one of the guys I went to elementary school with–we’ll call him T–, has a place on the BLVD that specializes in tuxes, limos, and DJ’s, so I guess we’ll go to see him. (He always liked my mom, although none of them ever liked me…lol). I was also talking to my friend M– about having the party on Saturday May 30th. I wanted to make sure that she, and my other Jewish friends would be able to come. She’s going to get back to me about that. I also tapped her for kosher caterers…cause lasagna definitely isn’t kosher.

I’m also looking for the perfect dress in my spare time. I saw a couple of really pretty ones on jcp.com, and they’re even in my size. I do hope to lose some weight before buying that dress, though. I took a walk on Monday, despite the January cold, and even though it wasn’t intended to help me lose weight, it was something. I’m going to go for another one today. The only reason I didn’t go yesterday was because we were having a storm here. I also hope to go tomorrow after going to see these places. Saturday and Sunday are probably out of the question because we’re supposed to get some snow. When my new computer comes, I’m going to create a playlist of the perfect walking songs to motivate me. I’m also going to cut down on the junk food, which I had started to do back in October, but lapsed during finals. I had some whole wheat spaghetti the other day. When I go shopping tomorrow with Aunt M–, lord help me, I’m going to pick up some juices instead of the iced tea mix, which is loaded with phosphorous, which blocks something vital…i forget what right now, but it does block something. I’m going to go back to the Lean pockets, and I’m only going to eat one at a time instead of both of them. I managed to lose weight for the prom that i didn’t go to in high school, so I can do it now, and this time I will keep it off. Maybe I’ll even eat some greens.