What if and Why not?

dreamomine

2009-03-04T20:34:51Z

I have been having some seriously strange and maybe some symbolic dreams lately. I have always had very lucid dreams but sometimes certain ones will stick with me. The other night i had this dream where two of my childhood cats came to me. Rocky and Kali who have both passed away were hanging out with me in my dream. I got to pet them again and smell them again and they smelled and felt exactly the same. I miss them so much and i would have expected to be heart broken when i woke up but instead i actually felt happy. I was able to see them again and i usually don't believe in the superstitious but i'm going to take this like it is. They visited me in my dream and i felt better. I dont know if they did supernaturally or if it was my brain trying to make me feel better but i really don't care. They have made me happy either way. Also in the dream there were these giant spiders and really creepy looking ones. they were like daddy long legs but were as big as baseballs and they had tiny speck bodies and large furry legs. i looked around for something to kill them with (there was about two) and i picked up Ayn Rand's book (idk which one) and smashed both of them with one blow.

I always have really lucid dreams like this and it is most always first person. i can usually smell and touch and even taste whatever i want. Sometimes the tasteing part isnt so awesome. One day i had a dream that i had to eat dominos pizza for about three days and then someone made me something called a Pizza burger and when i woke up i couldn't eat for most of the day because that is just disgusting and in my dream i could taste not only the pizza burger but the explicit gag reflex that i had upon ingesting it. Of course since i told clif about the pizza burger he gets every chance he can to send me pictures of pizza burgers that he finds on the internet. I shit you not though that after that dream i was watching an info-mercial about this cooker and no doubt did they cook a pizza burger. whatever bad things i did i definately am paying them back via pizza burger.

Anyways i know people usually aren't interested in other people's dreams unless they are in them, so if you are still reading congrats, you are interested in something most people are not. please do not send me images of pizza burgers on your spare time.

serious opinons

2009-02-25T22:44:27Z

In the local Long Beach newspaper there is a section called the "Speakout" where people can call in anonymously and leave a little blurb about their opinion. This section never fails to amaze and upset me, however today this entry really takes the cake in absolute ludicrous statements:

Quality of Life issues (the i is not capitalized because the newspaper fails at editing)

the candidate who will get my vote in the 1st district election will be the one who addresses quality of life issue- leaf blowers, barking dogs, boom boxes that rattle the windows. These things need to be regulated, and the one who promises to get them done gets my vote.

what planet does this guy live on? HOW CAN YOU REGULATE THOSE THINGS?!?! i mean whats that shit we see every day in the news? what the ECONOMY?! this guy should be happy that he has a place to live! do these things even count as quality of life isses?! what about the dogs quality of life? what about people who need their grass cut? its too much for me to handle. i wanted to go off on this guy so bad. what a fucking pussy for not leaving his name. fuck that guy. i am beside myself.

a man

2009-02-23T20:51:48Z

" A man learns to define himself as a male by rejecting his femaleness, something that makes him desire the woman he will never be. She is his rejected identification." - Griet Vandermassen "Who's Afraid of Charles Darwin?: Debating Feminism and Evolutionary Theory".

AnthroApology

2009-02-23T20:32:05Z

This quarter makes me unmotivated. I figured if i took easy classes that i would be more productive in those classes and have more time to do well. Now i know that doesn't work out. I'm taking a class called "Uses and Abuses of Evolutionary Theory" and while it is an interesting class we don't meet that often and it is more of a survey of controversies rather than imparting any new knowledge or answering any real questions.
Next would be Native American Languages and Cultures. Of which i have a monotonous professor who teaches language and how people use it but can't seem to take the advice of the topic he studies. Plus, this course is not as exciting as i figured it would be. I thought it would be about how Native Americans use their language in order to identify themselves as uniquely Native American. And to some extent this class is about NA identity but in all other important ways it is simply a survey of Native American Culture. I know this teacher is very knowledgeable about his field but i don't think he necessarily wants to teach which is so depressing for students who are being taught by him.
Lastly i am taking a pretty fun class called "ancient Egyptian art and architecture". This is a great class, especially because you can pull so much shit out of your ass and still be right because people have no idea what the ancient Egyptians were trying to get at. And i was sitting in class thinking "hmm maybe I'll be an Egyptology minor" but that isn't rational. What is the point of being an Egyptologist if you aren't going to teach it. Then i started to think about Anthropology.
This major has very minimal answers. The type of Anthro I'm interested in is Biological Anthro. But you can't just take only bio anthro classes which is really lame. The four divisions of Anthro are so broad and multi dimensional it is counter-intuitive to make it an umbrella major. I sincerely do not care about cultural anthro. Especially since in the field you cannot make universalist assumptions about one culture anymore. You must gather many perspectives in order to make sure that one does not generalize a culture and so we can get the full picture. That begs the question of wether or not we can call one group a culture or if we can't even define what a culture is. So basically the cultural anthro game is "how can we study a culture or group without being considered stereotyping or completely racist.
Plus Cultural Anthro tries it's hardest to be objective and empirical when human nature could be anything but. It isn't human nature to be totally objective so there is a huge inherent flaw that cultural anthro will most likely never be able to transcend. However i do understand the need to know what other cultures are like. It is important to be understanding of a different culture because of the dangers of miscommunication and anger toward each other because we do not understand eachother. I think this is an incredibly important contribution of cultural anthropology but i also believe that cultural anthropologists must be more accepting of their judgemental human nature and try to work with it instead of working against it.
Anyway im too tired to critisize the other two and even my own major but we can get the basic idea. I'm incredibly tired of not feeling like my major is going to help anyone. I would much rather do something productive to the human race. Such as genetics however, i only study the theory and not the practice which is such a shame in our college journey. In my own opinion each major should have a field school and instead of learning the theory and not the practice, people can learn both and also be made into an expert of their field instead of being made into someone who graduated college and no one cares what their major was.
Instead of needing to do ten more years of school if i even wanted to consider being an active member of the Anthropology field there should be one school with the option to move on in the education or not. This might not make much sense but that's okay. Tis my own journal.

today i am

2008-12-02T19:11:16Z

Today. i am being. so productive.

i have done these things:

slept
woken up
drove to school
slept in my car
went to class
received test of my intelligence
went to the library
lying down on a couch
doing nothing.

this is something to be envied?

the way things are now

2008-12-02T00:53:16Z

Going to UCLA has been rewarding in some ways but mostly pretty discouraging. Not in the way that I hate being there or anything, but mostly in the global sense. I'm not making much sense now but you can never tell the way things are going to go just from the beginning. (This is a general theme of things).
I find that all people want to do is go to grad school. in the more formal context: this is the general plan of the ultimate college bound individual (taken in the words of the internet)

1) go to college (preferably a prestigious UC school that costs lots of money)
2) Schmooze with the teachers until your nose dies of being brown
3) Get into the most awesomest grad school and pay more money
4) ????????
5) retire and laugh at all your money.

Now, why does this sound like a good idea at all? Firstly we are all pre-conditioned to think that college is the gateway to all that is holy and you would never be able to succeed at life without college. This is a sad and ludicrous truth. Success can always be achieved but never in the way that we all seem to think its supposed to be achieved. People who do not fit in with the college way can always fit in another way in society. People lead perfectly happy lives as long as they do whatever they want to do. The persuit of happiness does not always include a prosperous road in college. College also does not account for those who college is not directed toward. This usually includes the more creatively inclined individual. I was recently chastised for writing a paper that was too flowery for science. I used poetry to explain the way i feel about unconvering secrets of the past via archaeology. This is why i dont get A's. College is not catered to the mind that asks why not. One must conform to the ultimate goal that is college or one does not succeed in college. Yes, it is that black and white.

I've been feeling disenfranchised lately because i have to mold myself to the collegiate expectations of my teachers. This is not the way i have intended to learn. I am a deviate procrastinator that makes my point through talking and doing, rather than test taking and bubble filling. I know there are certain limitations to how teachers can teach because of classroom size and all that. I dont blame them to taking the road that they do, its not their fault. Its the institutionalised ideals that come along with going to college that are to blame. The majority of people do well on multiple choice tests, and lecture atmouspheres. This is what the universities pump out. The majority of society is a product of the ford production line of the universtiy standard. I'm okay with this and i definately see where they are coming from. However, where do we cultivate the small percentage of minds that dont think this way? The minority of people who learn in a different way and think in a different way are not rewarded by the educational system. This is a huge contradiction to what its seems the higher learning institutions are trying to tell us. They tell us to think differently and venture outside the box, but where does this actually happen. I dont think a multiple choice gives any freedom to think differently or outside any box other than the box you are supposed to be filling in.

This is what college produces. Little box fillers that live their lives in this pre determined path they or their parents have set out for themselves so they can fullfill their lives in a meaningful and stable way. Why is this so? Whos life actually turns out this way? This is so delusional! people punch their time card all the way through school and then when the time actually comes to do something with their lives, SURPRISE college didnt fucking teach you that. or when they dont get the job they want or what if something catastrophic happnes in your life where shit didnt turn our the way you expected, well GOOD LUCK FUCKER is all your degree is going to tell you.

The ultimate goal of the graduate experience.

Okay, so you did your undergrads and got some stellar grades and just couldn't wait to go to grad school right? so you fill out your papers and get all your ducks in order and your teachers write such lovely recommendation letters and your grad people go OOOOHHHHH and everyone shits bricks right? okay, i get this, im not upset at people who get into grad school and do their thing. its okay, im proud of you even. But what is the value of your degree to you? People who really should go to grad school i understand but what about the other 85 percent who go because what else is there to do? or their parents want them to? or they want that awesome eliteist feel other their peers? This is my gripe:

The grand majority at UCLA wants to go to grad school because it will make their feel more elite amongst their peers. The instituion definately makes us feel like we're some special smart minority that should feel elite for going to their school. However it in no way makes us feel like we have to go above and beyond college for more college. The students themselves are the perpetuators of this notion. All students feel they must go on to grad school or they are just another stick in the mud. What people dont understand is that there are so many different ways to continue your education. People look down upon those that take time off from college to do real life shit and then choose to go to grad school. But why this stigma? people are smart any time they go to grad school, why does the difference between ages mean anything? In my opinion it is so much more respectful if you dont go to grad school right away, see what the world has to offer you, then decide if you want to continue school. That way you can know seriously if you really want to be there or not. Plus more dedication and more passion will be shown if you wait and decide that yes, this is really what you want to do. Rather than flownder through grad school only to find out that you wasted your time.

Dont waste your time. Do what you want, despite what the people around you think about you. Most will envy your renegade ways and wish they werent in their prison of their own expectations.

lucid_anne @ 2008-11-19T20:23:00

2008-11-20T04:23:58Z

you shouldn't let poets lie to you-bjork

do you dream tangerine?

2008-11-20T04:19:09Z

do you dream tangerine?
i dream of you
dreams as long as shores
a seasaw in your mind.

do you dream tangerine?
your eyes as big as dimes
shine in the surface of my mind
sleep in the umbrella i provide

do you dream tangerine?
what color are your thoughts?
i've loved you for a long time
you walk a child's walk

do you dream tangerine?
please dont run out of time
listen to what they tell you
take heed upon my sign.

coyote

2008-11-02T06:08:32Z

My mother has become the crone
i remain as a maiden.
In my dream my father lived in the desert
i visited his world
he wore an aztec head dress and was a god.

He didn't say anything
only laughing.
To his tune of a dead man calling.
He knows now the truth about gods and dying.

it was the night of the coyote.
we all howl tonight.

corn woman

2008-10-30T05:59:35Z

I am a husk
an old woman with corn in her teeth
sits in my bones.
She whispers and groans
scratches me with her burlap voice.

who will be there for you old woman?
who grinds your corn
and spits your kernels?

She knows who I am.
She pulls me through the hours
until she takes me away.

iron and wine

2006-11-25T22:02:29Z

PROMISING LIGHT

time & all you gave
i was the jerk who preferred the sea
to tussling in the waves
tugging your skirt, singing please, please, please

but now i see love
tracked on the floor where you walked outside
now i seek love
looking for you in this other girl's eyes

time & all you took
only my freedom to fuck the whole world
promising not to look
promising light on the sidewalk girls

but now i see love
there in your car where i said those things
now i see love
tugging your skirt, singing please, please, please

time & all you gave
there on your cross that i never saw
well beyond the waves
dunking my head when i heard you call

but now i see love
there in the scab where you pinched my leg
now i see love
there on your side of my empty bed

Grass

2006-11-08T11:23:48Z

These shoes look horrible

Lets make some new shoes
out of plastic bags and cardboard

that would make me a hobo

... or a cobbler?

See this is the difference
We're two different shades of green
You don't understand me
That's okay
I can't understand Us.

my paz

2006-11-08T11:22:07Z

He sets in motion the chess pieces
that we play
I am silent in my way
and he understands too much

He washes ashore on the beaches
in my mind
ebb and flow the tide speaks
slowly, take caution

I'll slide through the grains
the sand is my inhibitor
sandals were made for the beach
so why are they so wrong for the sand?

I dig a wet beach house
I have a sea shell heart
and a crestaceous husband
who has never known me

My bones ache with your misanthropy
It's an illness
The hardest part of my body
is the weakest part of his back

And there he is parading
his jellyfish smile
his provacateur stance
my undying admiration of it all.

the winos

2006-11-08T11:18:41Z

you sigh your huge vocabulary into my lungs
I breathe out your tome
then you shot me up

your nervous kiss
our wine stained
Apocalips

Dancing in the maelstroem of youth
our feet lose touch
with the
changing
meter
and our hearts cacn
hardly
feel each
other any
more

where is your hand?
where is my glass?
who is this cracked man
that touches my lips?

A silent hum drips from your mouth
you catch it
like you've had it all your life
and i just never cared to hear

Sitting
We laugh
A spark and fade of madness
as we try to suck out
eachother's eyes

Derrick C. Brown

2006-11-08T11:08:35Z

Hot for Sorrow

I don't want to be the best lover you've ever had
I just want to be your favorite-
file me under hot for sorrow

lose me in the place
where everyone becomes the things they have lost

when i couldn't find your picture
i ate everyone's unwanted video tape and then i dreamt
when you appeared in that dream
soft focused and outlined in lazers
we danced on the ceiling like lionel richie
til it was time to walk you home from naked class

this cross-eyed sniper misses you
so much

the heavy solo night music
tells us what is buried beneath this city

ambulances hooked on that hot ballad
the sky that turns red over it's opponents

night melodies of helicopter switchblades
slice through this city

the noise tells me that there is still crime down here

and that 5000 air machines can not stop crime
5000 searchlights can not stop crime
5000 police, fully mustached, with a john wayne box set
and our names on every baton can not stop crime

i now know that what i feel for you should be called crime

this is why i like the sound of police choppers at night
not because it makes me feel safe and watched over
but rather because it is the music of war
and tonight
they were playing our war.

-Derrik Brown

Derrick C. Brown

2006-11-08T11:06:27Z

ARMSTRONG

The night the moon cracked open
A voice came from within.

The moon turned to the astronaut
and said to him
'Please stay. Please stay'.

The astronaut looked
back at the moon

said "I'd love to stay
but I can't stay with you

I am sorry to report

that I must leave.

For when I'm here

with you

I cannot breathe."

~ Derrick C. Brown

Jorge Luis Borges

2006-09-25T22:08:46Z

ANTICIPATION OF LOVE- Jorge Luis Borges

Neither the intimacy of your look, your brow fair as a feast day,
nor the favor of your body, still mysterious, reserved, and childlike,
not what comes to me of your life, settling in words of silence,
will be so mysterious a gift
as the sight of your sleep, enfolded
in the vigil of my arms.
Virgin again, miraculously, by the absolving power of sleep,
quiet and luminous like some happy thing recovered by memory,
you will give me that shore of your life that you yourself do not own.
Cast up into silence
I shall discern that ultimate beach of your being
and see you for the first time, perhaps,
as God must see you -
the fiction of Time destroyed,
free from love, from me.

Anne Sexton

2006-09-25T22:04:12Z

The lore goes that Apollo was persuing a girl named Laurel and she did not want him to. So she asked Zeus to help her and he turned her into a Laurel tree.

WHERE I LIVE IN THIS HONORABLE HOUSE OF THE LAUREL TREE - Anne Sexton

I live in my wooden legs and O
my green green hands.
Too late
to wish I had no run from you, Apollo,
blood moves still in my bark bound veins.
I, who ran nymph foot ito root in flight,
have only this late desire to arm the trees
I lie within. The measure that I have lost
silks my pulse. Each century the trickeries
of need pain me everywhere.
Frost taps my skinn and I stay glossed
in honor for you are gone in time. The air
rings for you, for that astonishing rite
of my breathing tent undone within your light.
I only know how this untimely lust has tossed
flesh at the wind forever and moved my fears
toward the intimate Rome of the myth we crossed.
I am a fist of my unease
as i spill toward the stars in the empty years.
I build the air with the crown of honor; it keys
my out of time and luckless appetite.
You gave me honor too soon, Apollo.
There is no one left who understands
how I wait
here in my wooden legs and O
my green green hands.

Neutral Milk Hotel

2006-09-25T05:38:47Z

Two-Headed Boy part 2 - Neutral Milk Hotel

Daddy please hear this song that I sing
In your heart there's a spark that just screams
For a lover to bring a child to your chest that could lay as you sleep
And love all you have left like your boy used to be
Long ago wrapped in sheets warm and wet

Blister please with those wings in your spine
Love to be with a brother of mine
How he'd love to find your tongue in his teeth
In a struggle to find secret songs that you keep wrapped in boxes so tight
Sounding only at night as you sleep

Brother see we are one in the same
And you left with your head filled with flames
And you watched as your brains fell out through your teeth
Push the pieces in place
Make your smile sweet to see
Don't you take this away
I'm still wanting my face on your cheek

And when we break we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place where some holy spectacle lies
And when we break we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life

Two headed boy she is all you could need
She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires
And retire to sheets safe and clean
But don't hate her when she gets up to leave

Amazing Jim

2006-09-22T05:02:32Z

the only thing that has been running through my head all day is the phrase

" like five hundred thousand fillaments burning
i cannot cuddle with someone's history,
it takes the anonimity away."

"Amazing i can't feel a thing"

-Derrick C. Brown