/wrists /logRL

SO, I don't think anything is more annoying than signing onto Facebook at the end of the day and seeing a dozen new statuses from people who think their life is so horrible. Stop being such negative Nancies. I swear to God, nothing on the internet pisses me off more than people who just feel sorry for themselves so much that they have the need to express it to everyone else to comfort their asses. Clearly, moping does not fit into the two rigidly defined categories that the internet was designed for:
1: Looking up pointless misinformation on Wikipedia/ Submitting pointless misinformation on Wikipedia
2. Watching porn
Please. Tell me where bitching slides into that

I dunno, it just seems like people are real downers sometimes. Is it because they're all secretly craving attention and spotlight (dammit, blogging about this seems so hippocratic)? Possibly. Maybe they just had a bad day. Sure. Maybe you're just a pessimistic pussy. Likely.

Next time you're sitting at your computer, bitching to your friend on AIM, or writing an e-mail about how shitty your life is and how much you hate it... just look around you. Look at the computer you're using, the room you're in and its furnishings. Do you know how many millions of people in America envy you just for being where you are? Have you ever thought about how lucky you are for being brought up in a two parent household (no offense if you weren't)? Did you ever stop to appreciate how good you had it because you're in/went to college? (again no offense) No. No...don't even say of course, cause you haven't actually given a good couple of hours of your time wondering how horrible lives of other people are. 12% of people in America live in poverty every day. Do the math of 12% on 300 million right now. Okay, I realize that's a little hard for most of you with the horrible U.S. educational system but that's 36 million people. Those people don't even have the ability to tell people how bad their lives suck.

I really don't want to go into numbers and all that jazz, I'm just saying, realize how good you've got it. Realize that you've got expendable cash in your pockets at all times. Realize that you're probably being just a little bit selfish when you walk past a charity collection booth and don't donate because you want to spend an extra dollar on Taco Bell tonight. Realize that you're a lucky one. And realize that I'm going to flame you on Facebook for being an emo faggot.

Engrish essays

SO, I'm taking English 101 this semester. Going into it I knew it was going to be the easiest class in my schedule and I planned on blowing through it with an easy A. Yeah, well that's still all going as planned. I just wanted to rant about our piss poor public education system and stupid people for a bit.

Today we had to do peer editing for our autoethnographies essays which basically an excuse to write about any group of people you've ever belonged to and what specific factors made that group different from others; subcultures. Anyhow, I put a good three hours into four double spaced pages about running culture. I had a fun time writing it, putting quips and anecdotes in it that made it seem humorous and casual. I wasn't really too thrilled with the result cause it seemed like I wrote an article for Reader's Digest or something rather than a more personal explanation of my involvement with running. Anyway, my professor loved it, and the people in my group thought it was pretty good too. That was last week. This week was the second peer editing session. Instead of critiquing on ideas and topic in your paper like last week, this was more grammar and sentence structure critiquing. It's like someone wanted to make me laugh or something. I love tearing that shit apart.

Out of all the rejects in my class I probably got one of the better picks. That's not saying much of course. The first sentence instantly turned me off from the essay when I learned it was about Catholicism cause anyone who's ever met me knows how devout I am to religion. By the time I got to the thesis I was already stifling my laughs from the girl right next to me who happened to write it. If a seventh grader was in my class he would have found this paper paper amusing. I've tried to push most of the gritty details of how bad this paper was out of my head forever, but some of them are just bound to stay for a while. I spent a full half hour simply correcting grammar and sentence structure before I got to the questions our professor wanted us to address about each others topics. Most people had already read and "critiqued" three papers by then. I felt bad for being so hard on her. I really don't know whether she didn't enjoy writing her paper and blew it off, or she never glanced at it after completion or what. Maybe she just went to a really shitty high school.

Sometimes I'm really glad I went to the school that I did. Sure it was boring at some times, yeah it was about 92% white, filled with hicks who dipped 24/7, punks who thought they were hot shit, and girls that got everything they wanted but a second car, but I'm glad I had the chance to take English classes that taught me to discern between talented and poor writing. I'll agree with the theory that you write better when you you're writing about something that interests you. That's probably the biggest reason why I nearly always got B's on most of my English essays in senior year. But that's the whole point I'm trying to make with this autoethnography situation. We're writing about things that we're a part of, we're obviously interested, try a little. Last week when we merely read our essays to each other I was having a hard time not shouting out every three sentences saying "Why would you ever say that there," or "That has to be fixed somehow". I don't know. Shit like that bothers me.

I think classes like English and writing need to be held on a tougher scale. I mean, it's your language for Christ's sake. You should learn to use it correctly. It's the basis that holds together societies. Its not like its just a thing that goes away once you're out of school. You'll be known as a shitty writer or a shitty speaker for your whole life, and its one of the easiest flaws to spot in a person. When people do poorly in an English class, or I read something with obvious mistakes I always think back to an episode of King of the Hill I once saw. Bobby had just gotten an F in English on his report card. Hank comes into the scene and examines it and says to his son, "Bobby, how did you get a F in English. You speak English." Seriously. We speak English, either learn it right or move to China cause they're about as good at it as most Americans now.