For the past week, my step-brother and his wife and one year old have been visiting. As a result, I’ve had little time for blogging. I’ve been enjoying my time off, spending it with family and friends. Expect more regular updating after Sunday.
So I’m finally back home in Simi Valley, California. I got in on Sunday night, and immediately crashed. I’ve spent the past two days relaxing with friends and family, and of course, doing yard and house work. That’s just the way things work with my family.
“Oh Owen, you’re home! That’s great, we haven’t seen you in sooo long! Now, why don’t you go mow the lawn, help your mom move stuff around her classroom, and help rearrange the house and garage.
And you need to stop eating all that unhealthy food, like yogurt. Just look at how many carbs are in a thing of yogurt. You know you’re grandfather had diabetes, I can’t believe you’re eating Pop Tarts.
We’ve totally changed the house around, and anything important that you might need, well, we have absolutely no idea where it is. And neither do you, because we’ve thrown out/ packed in a box anything you left.”
Not that I’m unwilling to help. It makes things easier and usually doesn’t require too much of my time. And I understand that I don’t live at home, so if they want to change things, and what little stuff I have at home is in the way, it’ll get moved. But the phone numbers of all my friends back home are pretty important, and don’t take up a whole lot of room.
It’s funny how this situation repeats itself like clockwork whenever I come home for vacation.
I’ll be back in Russia (or maybe Moldova) in six weeks. Until then, I’ll be blogging on random stuff, probably politics.
Very bad news. A combination of a late start, horrible traffic, a derelict British Airways staff, and an incompetent Russian factored together to produce the result that I missed my flight.
Tomorrow I’ll probably buy a new ticket on Lufthansa for Sunday morning.
Figures. Start packing a week in advance, miss the plane. I liked my old system better.
So far, with hospital bills and missed plane tickets, Russia’s turned out to be a lot more expensive than I ever thought.
Today is Monday, and my plane leaves on Friday. I’ve already started packing. This is the earliest I have ever started. Normally, I wait until the night before, if it’s a morning flight, or the day of the flight if it’s afternoon and later.
This time, however, I have too much stuff to bring home, and I’m going to leave a lot of it behind at a friend’s place. Basically, I’m taking all my winter clothes and dropping them off over there.
I’ve heard about people having different “wardrobes,” like spring, winter, etc. Living in the places I did (Florida, Southern California), it was always an alien concept. I’ve never packed clothes away because they were no longer appropriate for the new season. Now, however, I understand. I have no need for my Goretex laced, arctic hunting coat, and hence it goes away for the next six months.
The major problem I’m facing is the one I always do, I can’t throw things away. Especially papers. I have all my past Russian exercises, and I’m debating bringing them back home for the summer. I tell myself that I’ll go over them, and learn vocab, but deep down, I know that’s an utter lie. However, I’ll probably end up packing them anyways.
I know it’s horrible, but I love Europop. My favorite new song is called “Dragostea Din Tei” by O-Zone. For those of you who haven’t heard of them (unimaginable), O-Zone is Romania’s biggest boy band. I really can’t explain why I like this song so much (although I’m sure some would suggest “closeted” theories).
In any case, I suggest you go down to the store immediately and pick up the single. Because we all know how easy it is to find Romanian boy band albums in our music stores, I do not recommend that you go, post-haste, to Kazaa or some other downloader to get the song. Now.
[Eric Cartman]Seriously you guys[/Eric Cartman]
On Saturday, I went over to my ex-roommates apartment for a psuedo-going away party. We had both brought over some Mexican food, and wanted to finish it off before returning home.
While approaching his door, one of the people I was with pointed to the ground. Lying there was a used needle. Considering that the apartment is rather far away from any hospital, I was utterly confused as to how and why a used needle was on the ground.
After much contemplation, I have come to the conclusion that it was simply a diabetic resident in the apartment who gives himself insulin injections. The needle must have fallen out of his trash can while he was carrying it to the dumpster.
There is no way that it could have been left there by a heroin user who does drugs in the alley and carelessly leaves his used needles lying in the path between the sidewalk and building entrance. Just a good-natured, law abiding diabetic.
I don’t know how it’s possible for a city this ridiculously far north, but St. Petersburg is one gigantic swamp. Along with the swamp, in this lovely piece of real estate, come hordes of mosquitos. These hearty little bastards survive the winter by hiding indoors. When my old roommate moved out, he told me that in his new apartment it was sometimes hard to sleep because of the buzzing. It’s always when you’re just about to fall asleep that you hear this buzzing and feel the wind right by your ears. You spazz out, smack your ear, and settle in, trying to sleep, but anticipating the next attack.
The problem gets exponentially worse in summer. Last night I had five people in my room watching a movie. Normally, my room is a nice temperature, but put five bodies in a space this small, and it starts to heat up. Not thinking anything of it, I opened the window. Then, as I was cleaning up after the movie and reconfiguring my computer, I turned the light on in my room. Big mistake. Before I knew it, four mosquitos were perched around my room, waiting for me to go to bed. I immediately shut the windows and found a newspaper.
Normally, I try not to kill anything. This includes little insects. Even spiders, which I’m deathly afraid of. I prefer to just let them alone, sometimes I’ll try to coax them out of my room. However, a couple of weeks ago I learned my lesson about leaving mosquitos to sit in my room. This one night I barely slept at all the little f**kers kept buzzing around.
Now, I make an exception for mosquitos. I kill them on sight. So last night I went to work with an old copy of the St. Petersburg Times (English language newspaper). The first one I got just fell off the wall onto the floor. The second one was sitting on the ceiling. I got him in one shot, but he must have just feed, because he exploded and left a huge bright red stain. Same story with the third. Some poor soul from last night is missing a bit of blood. The fourth mosquito managed to, in the preceeding carnage, scurry off to a safe place, and he remained undetected through the massacre. He surfaced when I was in bed, and twice kept me away from precious slumber.
I’m relatively queasy when it comes to blood, and a tiny lake of it, augmented with insect legs and wings is enough to minorly freak me out. After acting like an idiot for a second, one of the Russians in my room told me to get her a sponge and she set about cleaning up the mess. She even just grabbed the slightly flattened body of the mosquito with her fingers and threw it away. I was only prepared to do that with a napkin.
Kindly, she cleaned up both red splotches. Although several times I had to clean off the blood stained sponge … the horror. A hearty people these Russians. I’m thankful Anya was there to cover for my sissy boy inadequacies.
Some days I feel like I’m making progress. Others, not so much. Today was a good language day. I had several complete conversations in Russian. Mind, nothing too important, but it was done in Russian nonetheless. Awesome, just when my Russian’s getting to a (minimally) functional level, I take a month break.
Not that I don’t want to go home, I’m looking forward to it. I could use a few weeks off to relax. I’m just afraid that my Russian will backslide during that period.
When you apply for a student visa to Russia, they allow for a one way trip … into the country. You can’t get back out on that visa. Within three days of your arrival, you need to register your visa, this process, at my school takes a month. They take your passport, and give it back to you four weeks later with a stamp in it. If you want to leave the country, same story. They take your visa, and four weeks later give you an exit visa.
So, two months ago, when I last registered my visa, I also requested a multiple entry visa and an exit visa. A month later, when I received it, I noticed that the visa had a “leave by” date of June 1st. “Oh,” I thought to myself, “this can’t be right, I specifically asked for a leave by of June 14.” Indeed, my registration had been prolonged until the 14th. I immediately went into the office and told them of the problem. The woman responded “yeah, of course it’s like that. They’re always two weeks shorter than the registration.” Well, my other exit visa (to Germany in Christmas) wasn’t like that, but ok. I checked again, “I can leave the country to go home … right?” “Yes, now leave me alone.”
Well, flash forward to today. I’m having problems getting a plane ticket back to Russia in July, and I go in to the school’s office to talk about my time off. The look at my visa and passport, see that the visa is expired and say, “uh … you don’t have an exit visa?” I respond that the other woman already told me that everything was ok. It’s not. I now have to rush an exit visa, at a cost of $90. Great.
This is truly disturbing:
Abortion Soars in Quest for Perfect Babies
Those with conditions that can usually be corrected medically - such as deformed feet and cleft lips and palates - are instead being terminated.
And the number of abortions of Down’s syndrome babies now outstrips live births, despite the fact that those with the condition can live a long and fulfilling life.
‘These figures are symptomatic of a eugenic trend of the consumerist society hell-bent on obliterating deformity - and at what cost to its own humanity? ‘ said ethicist Jacqueline Laing, of London Metropolitan University. ‘We are obliterating the willingness of people to accept disability. Babies are required to fit a description of normality before they are allowed to be born.’
Doctors say improvements in technology, such as ultra-sound and blood tests, have helped increase the number of babies diagnosed with abnormality before birth. But a number are disturbed that abortions are being carried out on the grounds of the baby’s serious disability when in fact it has a correctable condition such as feet abnormality or cleft lip.
Campaigner Patrick Cusworth said: ‘Such statistics are an indictment of a society which places a conditional value upon its citizens, based upon how “useful” they may prove to be in later life.’
It’s not enough to kill a child because you don’t want the burden of raising it, now you can kill them if you don’t like the way they’ll look. I mean seriously, a cleft palate??
It should come as no big surprise that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a rabid eugenicist. In her “A Plan for Peace,” she writes:
c. to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924.
d. to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.
…
Having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense—defending the unborn against their own disabilities.
She wasn’t just talking about people with defects:
In November 1921 the review issued a clarion call: “Birth control, to create a race of thoroughbreds.” Sanger suggested that parents should “apply for babies as immigrants have to apply for visas.” By 1925, she was a true convert to eugenics, setting up birth control clinics in poor neighborhoods populated by “Latins” and “Slavs” (both groups heavily Catholic) and “Hebrews” - groups she had targeted as threats because of their increasing numbers. She spoke of those who were “irresponsible and reckless,” among them those “whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers.”
Eugenicists like Sanger concluded that the poor were both stupid and immoral, fueling campaigns for sterilization during the Depression. (By 1932, 27 states had compulsory sterilization laws.)
The philosophy that some people are better off dead or not being born - not only for their own sakes but for the sake of others - remains alive and well. Bigotry and racism still compete for followers and manifest themselves in programs from “racial cleansing” to eugenic abortion. As one example, Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, one of Sanger’s contemporary disciples, lauds abortion for lowering the numbers of children born with Down’s syndrome and insists on more funding for Planned Parenthood and its policies.
Sanger’s legacy, Planned Parenthood, continues to target minority and poor neighborhoods with its school-based and other programs. U.S. abortion kills proportionately more black babies than white. Planned Parenthood also exports its elitist population control programs to the Third World.
70 percent of the clinics operated by Planned Parenthood in the U.S. are in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. For every three black babies born, two are aborted. Forty-three percent of all abortions in the U.S. are performed on black women.
Some abort because the life of the mother in is danger, a legitimate decision, though I imagine heartbreaking nonetheless.
Others abort because the child gets in the way of their life, why be burdened with responsibility for your actions. Some because they want a better baby, they hope to have better luck next time. Some have an ideological devotion to “population control,” which means that non-whites should stop having so many damn kids. With all these justifications to pick from, no wonder it’s called pro-choice.
I have flat feet and asthma, I wonder if one day the societal consensus will be that I shouldn’t have been born, that my drugs to breathe are an undue burden.
Gee, who woudda thunk it? You mean, driving for long hours, in addition to just sitting at work, and not walking anywhere will make you gain weight???
The study of more than 10,500 Atlanta-area residents shows a strong link between time spent driving and obesity, said Lawrence Frank, the lead author and a professor at the University of British Columbia. People who can walk to stores and restaurants are less likely to be obese than their counterparts living in more sprawling areas.
I’m sure glad that government money is being spent on important questions like this. Well, at least it wasn’t my government’s money. Talk about navel contemplation.
