Thursday, November 27, 2008

gold mine gutted

today i feel like shit. i don't know what the fuck my problem is. i think i've said the term, "i don't know what the fuck my problem is" about eight hundred times in the last six or seven years. some days i'll wake up on top of the world and others i'd rather feel sorry for myself all day in bed and watch the fucking gilmore girls or something. i'd say around 80% of the time i'm so optimistic and positive and then the rest of the time i'm a fucking drone who just wants to wallow in my self-induced, close to nonexistant misery and listen to american nightmare or bright eyes, depending on whether or not i'm raging or bumming. boofuckinghoo, you know?
earlier this year my family's old friend/neighbor passed away and his family from PA had thanksgiving at our house tonight. eventually the conversation turned to the role of women in households and someone said "look, i just wanted to teach my daughter how to do laundry, how to mop, and how to cook. the three most important things." and then before i had any time to process it, my mom goes, "yep, yep, there's nothing wrong with that!" i wanted to voice my disgust but before i got a chance something else on a different subject was said and i was forced to make a totally enraged (yet ignored) face at my mom for a couple minutes afterwards. it didn't really suffice for me but, what the fuck? mom, how could you disappoint me and agree with that statement? you, the woman who told me to call boys chauvinist pigs in fourth grade when they didn't let me play basketball with them? i just don't get it. i guess she didn't really think about it. i guess i do those things too.
i am definitely the black sheep in my immediate family. i think my mom just finally quit being ashamed of me as a vegan about a year ago. but now she brings it up a little too freely which always ends up in the awkward "oh... really? so... what do you eat? wait, what is that?" types of questions. this is accentuated on holidays. and i mean boy, is it ever. my family often makes me pass the turkey or ham dishes just to get a laugh and yeah, whatever, maybe it was funny the first time but after six years i just ask myself... really? another thing: older people will always always always think my brother is way more interesting because he's the president of the young democrats of arizona. they are intrigued by that shit. they love hearing him namedrop politicians he's friends with and talk about how he's hoping to get on the list for obama's inauguration. they don't love hearing me talk about working in a library, or the fact that i like the idea of socialism and wish we weren't forced to compromise our beliefs in this two party system, being vegan, whatever. they get weirded out when they ask a 20 year old college student if she wants a glass of wine and she refuses. they always go, "oh so is that a part of your vegan lifestyle?" they don't want to hear me go, "well actually it's part of a subculture in the hardcore/punk rock scene called straight edge. i choose not to partake in drinking, smoking, or promiscuous sex." i guess i'm just jealous of my brother. because when i meet my friends' parents they totally love me. i guess he just steals my glory. i just want to hang out with robert these days. i think he's the only person around who really gets me. that's a pretty intense feat to accomplish.

finally:
The defeat of England in the American Revolution paved the way for the colonists to move westward into Indian territory, because the British had proclaimed in 1763 that they could not settle land beyond a certain line at the Appalachian Mountains.
Thus, by 1840 out of a population in the United States of 13 million, 4,500,000 had crossed the mountains into the Mississippi Valley-that huge expanse of land crisscrossed by rivers flowing into the Mississippi from east and west. In 1820, 120,000 Indians lived east of the Mississippi. By 1844, fewer than 30,000 were left. Most of them had been killed or pushed westward by force. It was an early example of what in the late twentieth century, referring to other countries, would be called "ethnic cleansing."
The Indians of Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi resisted "Indian removal," but they were no match (except for the determined resistance of the Seminoles in Florida) for the armed forces of the United States. It was an ironic commentary that this brutal treatment of the Indians took place in the time often referred to in history books as the era of "Jacksonian democracy."
(Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States.)

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