Anyway, while watching I noticed something rather disturbing.

To give a little background about the show, this girl Carly (played by Miranda Cosgrove) lives with her brother (played by Jerry Trainor) in a rather nice apartment.  They have interesting things on the wall, a nice elevator, and Carly typically plays around with a video camera with her two friends and is “famous” on the internet.  Her brother, who should have a real job, is only an artist.

What’s the disturbing part?

The lack of parental guidance in the show.

No parents are mentioned or even thought of.  Carly’s best friends both have mothers, one of which is a freak of nature who loves to make everything sparkling clean.  All of the kids find her a pain in the butt.  Point is, there aren’t any parents really present in this Carly girl’s life.

Yet she lives in a nicely furnished apartment with wood floors and a doorman in the lobby.  She lives in Boston (from what I gather) and has a generally carefree lifestyle.  Without parents.

Nick… Nick… Nick… how could you do this to your viewers?  It’s almost as if the network (and this show) is stating that parental guidance is no longer required to live a ridiculously easy  lifestyle as Carly does in iCarly.  While I’ve never been bothered by the fact that Timmy in Fairly Oddparents has idiotic parents who sometimes make no sense or that Jimmy in Jimmy Neutron has a father who adores ducks, I’m bothered by the LACK of parents in iCarly.

Personally, I think this says a lot about the character of the network.

Should they promote less parental guidance towards such impressionable viewers?

I’m sitting upstairs, copying down vocabulary for  my psychology class; we have a test on Friday and I still haven’t read.  Behind me, on my pale green comforter, my cat is laying down, resting on a few papers my mom gave me to me.  The computer clock hits 11:00 AM and I’m rather hungry.  Turning down my music, I leave my room to go downstairs to make a sandwich and get some water.

Gobi, my cat, remains upstairs.  He’s fifteen and doesn’t like to move a lot.  In the past four or five months, he’s turned into a skeleton.  He has probably four teeth that he can chew with and the only reason he’s not dead now is the pain medicine we give him.  His tongue lolls out of the side of his mouth between a few brown teeth and black gums.  Pinkish drool escapes his lips to settle on his chin.  His mouth doesn’t close anymore.  He smells like he might be rotting.  His jaw looks deformed, a tumor bulging out.

So he sleeps a lot.  Asks for food.  Drinks water to replenish his source of drool.  In all sense, he’s disgusting.  He’s so bony that he doesn’t even like to cuddle much anymore.  But Gobi has always been a social cat.  He wants to be where people are.  So mostly he’s on the couch or in someone’s bed.

As he cat naps upstairs, I make a jalapeno pimiento sandwich and fill up my Nalgene bottle.  It’s a pretty simple snack and I quickly hop up the stairs back to my room to plop back into my computer chair.

Like magic, Gobi perks up from his position on my bed.  He’s always been a people-food lover and cheese is one of his favorites.  He gargles a distorted meow and jumps off my bed and quickly onto my desk.  Thick pink drool is already running into his fur.  He meows demandingly, his brown canine and black gums sending a vile stench towards my face and my food.  His dull eyes plead with me, he only wants a little.

I snatch him up and grab a tissue to wipe the drool off of his face.  He struggles to get away and as I place him back onto my bed, he perks up once more to ask for food.  I wriggle a little piece of cheese out of the sandwich and hold out my hand.

His slimy tongue felt around for the piece of cheese, covering my hand in the stench of his cancer.  Once or twice, he almost ate it, to only have it fall back out of his mouth onto my hand again.  Never a quitter, Gobi could not abandon his efforts, his swollen tongue delving down across my fingers, between them, and all over my hand until both cheese and sauce was imbibed.  He licked his chops satisfyingly, missing the path of drool that had began to travel down his chin.

To be honest, I no longer felt very hungry.  Gobi, eager to find a new spot to lay his stinking corpse, demanded to be let out of my room.  After washing my hand, I opened the door, and he trotted out, his bony hips waving me goodbye.

I finished eating my sandwich anyway.  I folded some towels and I looked at my bed where Gobi had previously been lying.  Stains of red were all over the papers my mom had brought upstairs.

I threw them away and sighed.

Yet… I constantly fear rejection.

I don’t yearn for acceptance by everyone, but I fear rejection from the people I do like.  Even people I just want as friends.  I’m not sure if I’m acting correctly or if I should give them a hug or whatever.  One of my friends I’ve known for a long time, and I didn’t hug him until a year and a half after I met him.  I don’t know… maybe that’s strange.  Maybe I don’t just fling out actions like people can be so comfortable doing.  I’m a little awkward.  If I say something bizarre, I think about it afterwards for a long while.  Pondering: what did HE think about that?!

I’ve gotten into this mode of turning in to what people think I am.  And it’s not the girl who adores everyone around her or the girl who goes with the flow or the girl who never has a nasty thing to say.  I’m the person who basically… intimidates a lot of people.  I’ve turned into the know-it-all in some of my classes.  I’m… shy and awkward around boys.  Ones I like.  Of course.

I’m elementary.

I know what affection is, I know how to kiss, I know how to hold hands… and unless I’m sure, I won’t do any of it.  I must be certain about a relationship before investing.  I don’t flirt without knowing if the person I’m flirting with is interested in me.  Likes me.

I suppose I thought it was so easy to take the dive before.  I suppose I did not examine myself under the microscope until now.  I think too much about what I say before I say it, so much to the point that I lose the opportunity to speak.  I lose the courage to speak.  To say something.  To ask how his weekend was or to ask a friend how their date went.  Whatever.

It’s my senior year.  Maybe I’m overthinking.

I attempted to qualify again today for Regionals in the 200 freestyle.

I dropped another 2 seconds for a final time of 2:23.5 (about).  Still not qualified.  I have to drop another 3.5 seconds.  Dangit.  I guess I’ll get over it.  I’m still going on a relay.

I visited my art downtown this past Sunday.  They only had two of my photos up.  Sadface.  I’ll get over it.  I suppose.  :’(

This semester is going to suck.

Boo.

Tonight has been a glorious night.

Going into the MAC (Mountain Athletic Conferenece) Swim Meet was horrifying.  The captains (Sarah, Lisa, Candice, and I) gave the girls the best pep talk we could muster (remember, don’t cry, give it your all, and don’t look back; we are amazing no matter how we do tonight), since we thought Tuscola was gonna kick our asses.

And to respect those girls, they pretty much almost did.

Almost.

For the 7th consecutive year, the TC Roberson Girls and Boys Swim team has won MAC.

My voice is shot from shouting, my mind and body are exhausted, but when we were announced first place, it was worth it all.  We pushed the coaches in and then all of the seniors were also pushed in.  We danced, I wanted to almost cry, and we celebrated an awesome year.  Because while Tuscola may have some of the best swimmers in Western North Carolina, we have the most depth and determination.  We may not be the fastest, but we know how to kick it.

This is the happiest I’ve been in a long time.

A friend of mine posted this political cartoon on Facebook.

Personally, I find the notion ridiculous.  The title of the group she added the cartoon to is deemed “Obama and Biden are attacking our right to bear arms.”  Now, honestly, I do think this name says more than it proves.  Politically speaking, no President will take away rights.  While Bush Jr. disagreed with abortion and ran on a pro-life campaign, eight years later abortion is still legal.  Oh, maybe he lied about it… NO.  Bush Jr. probably is pro-life (when it comes to abortion), but politically, he cannot risk taking away a right.  Besides that, in his two terms, more abortions were performed than in Clinton’s.  Why?  Because the economy was BAD.  The economy is bad.

The same reason is prevalent in the use of guns.  If the economy is bad, more murders, robberies, and violent acts occur.  Why?  People are stressed about money, so they are more stressed out.  Stress can lead to depression or anger, and a person with these feelings bottled up tend to attempt/commit suicide or to kill those who set them off.  Same deal with robberies, if money is tight in a family, they will find a way to survive.  Above all, we are animals, we will do whatever it takes to survive.  So which is the greater crime: letting your family starve to death or robbing someone?  Clearly the robbery saves a family.  (Mind you, I am not saying robbery is good.)  These violent crimes typically involve guns.

I am taking no opinion on the banning of guns.  I think it would be futile for them to be banned.  Just as if abortions were banned, somehow they would still occur.  If guns were banned, people would get them somehow.  So, I see no reason to ban guns or abortions.

I just find the concept of this cartoon so fucking ridiculous.

Say that guns had been allowed on planes in September of 2001.  Obviously the terrorists would not be caught dead on a plane without packing heat as well.  Obviously they could just point the gun to a window and blow it out, thus bringing down the plane.  If this had happened on 10 planes within 20 minutes of each other it would have been a disaster as well (perhaps not as large as 9/11, but fairly close).  And what would occur after?

Airlines would be forced (by the media’s attacks) to ban firearms on planes, except in situations involving Air Marshalls.  Oh jeez… I guess that leaves us where we started.

So it’s clear that this cartoon is stupid.  Because how many crazy nuts exist out there?  Not just terrorists, but violent people who would love to bring down a plane?  Hm, I think plenty.  So while I understand what was trying to be put across in the cartoon, I do think the actual product fails.

Oh well, it certainly did cause an uproar on Facebook.

The stupidity of the masses astounds me.

I’m in love with this band Air Traffic.  They are so incredibly talented (the lead singer plays both piano and guitar) and their lyrics are amazing.  I found them completely by accident.  It’s what I’ve deemed as “Music Surfing.”  Basically, I just go to the myspace page of a band I already like and click on their top friends.  Typically bands have similar bands or bands they’re touring with as their top friends.  So if you like the sound of the band you began on, you’ll be bound to like some or all of the bands on their top friends.  It’s pretty nifty.

Since very few of my friends know about Air Traffic, it would have been difficult for me to discover them without Music Surfing.  It’s also a fun thing to do while bored.  Who knows.. you may discover a new favorite band.

 Music Surfing tends to work with any website which has music.  If you visit youtube a lot, just look at the “related videos” or “more videos: ____.”  They tend to be related to either the same band (where new songs can be discovered and enjoyed!) or to similar bands.  It’s simply a fun thing to do.

Try it out.

The bathroom stalls do not lock, the toilets only sometimes flush, there is only one lone shower, and the cracked floor is painted blue in the locker room.  One of the doors to the outside has been broken for the past two years and the ladders are difficult to remove.  The pool rarely is cleaned.  There are no gutters on the sides of the pool and the shallow end is filled with probably 2.5 feet of water.  Some days the water is cloudy from too much chlorine and other days it’s entirely way too clear.  The past week, the heater has been broken, making the water close to f-f-f-freezing.  But it’s home.  I swim in lane 4.  It’s my home.

And now, the Zuegner Center has been shut down for not installing a certain type of drain at the bottom of the pool.  Closed indefinitely.  With three weeks of swim season left.  Just three weeks.

Sadly, the school probably does not care.  The athletic director called our swim caps “hats” and when our meets are announced, somehow they are turned into “swim matches.”  We have one of the best records of any TC team, yet we are constantly forgotten behind basketball and even indoor track.

And now, we lost our place to practice.

Thankfully, the Asheville School (a private school about 25 minutes away) is allowing us to borrow their pool from 7:30 to 9:30pm.  Fairly late for swimming, don’t you agree?  But at least we will be having a place to swim.

But I cannot believe Zuegner lost their permit for a silly drain.  For all the other health concerns, like improperly stored chemicals or whatever… they lost it for a DRAIN that they could have replaced when they drained the pool two years ago to find an invisible leak.

Ridiculous.

I WON TWO GOLD KEYS!!!!!!!!

No, they do not open golden doors (though that would be pretty sweet).

If you know anything about the Scholastic Art Awards, this means I pretty much fucking rule the world with my awesomeness.  I won one (reading that out loud would confuse someone) for my photography portfolio and another for one of my individuals (which came from my photography portfolio).  Both entries will be shipped off to jolly ole New York for judging there in which I have the chance to win a full-ride to several different colleges in the United States of BAMF.

Yes, you might say I’m pretty pleased with my wicked art skillz.

Ahem… here is said awesomeness:

oh god

livejournal is run by the russians

OH GOOOODDDDDD, THEY’LL KILL US ALL.

Catherine says:

LOL rly?

Morgan says:

no lie

wikipedia said it

it must be true