some stuff I had lying around (ramble town)

29 years old now.


I didn't have as much to catch up on as I thought. I've started volunteering at the local zoo.  I love being around all the animals. I've been pretty depressed lately and they uplift me. I'm hoping to get stationed in this self-sufficient building that collects all its own water and shit.  There is also an insect observatory and a bee/hummingbird open garden. I just like being involved in something that matters. Getting kids excited about nature is the best part. I don't love kids. I don't want any of my own. But I love nature and knowing that I am instilling in some small way a wonder and fascination and respect and love of nature is supremely rewarding. It was upsetting to find out that Care.org had sponsored an event to protest our zoo, even though it's one of the best AZA accredited zoos in the nation. They use propaganda to get people to donate more. Using people's love of animals against them. I blocked their ads on Instagram now because I can't really trust the information. How many petitions did I sign that weren't truthful and did naively more harm than good?


Mommy's maybe got
a bit of blessing in her bottle
her teeth are fake
her clothes are worn
she lives in a hovel


I'm sad. My heart mourns.


I don't care for all this man hate recently. I had a friend ask me when I was over at her apartment, "Guys suck right?!" in a way that made it seem like the most acceptable answer was, "Yea!"
I was uncomfortable and I think I awkwardly eeked out a, "yeaaaa" and then felt slimy as she went back to her conversation.
I don't think men suck. I don't think men are trash.  I think saying those kinds of things is exactly why some men end up sucking. We expect it of them.  Many guys that society deems as 'good' get bullied and called, "Pussy!" or "Faggot!" which not only degrades the boy but also degrades women and homosexuals by saying that because of their sexual identity and/or orientation that they are somehow less than a man (which is presumably what the boy is supposed to be). When we say words we write a connectivity pattern in our brain. Every time we repeat words or sets of words we more strongly establish them in our minds. If we constantly tell little boys to, "Toughen up, don't cry. Act like a man, walk it off," when they are legitimately hurt or confused or upset, then we are telling them that we don't care about their emotions and just want to them to be stoic. We are rewriting that pattern over and over and over. The other thing that happens in your brain is that connections you don't use fall into disrepair and aren't strong and are less likely to fire. So when you say, "Guys suck," instead of, "Guys need to change," you are choosing to view the situation negatively and those positive outlooks will start to breakdown, and when something bad happens you may say, "Guys suck," instead of recognizing the individual for his faults but keeping a fair outlook on an entire gender.
Children can only hear this kind of talk from adults. Many of these insults are delivered before or during sexual maturity when nobody has any real clue what's going on. Adults tend to project their experience onto children. [[It could be as offhanded as when you drop your kids friend off at his house and after the door closes you say, "Who was that Mexican kid?" (when that kid was actually Filipino, but your child had never even noticed he was different at all) Or it could be more direct by attaching your own opinions about them based off your experience. Like say you think Christianity is absurd, and there is a cross in the yard and you say, "Religious nut-jobs." As a parent, you are setting a standard to how to view these types of people.]] This type of talk and teaching internalizes a fear of being emotional and a desire to be tough and aggressive to fit into society.  It internalizes an understanding that to be a man, one is better than other kinds of people. It propagates the falsehood that men inherently believe that they are better than others, when really we are the ones who teach each other how to label and view the world. We are living in the era, right now, where we begin to eradicate this type of thinking.
We need to be conscious. Progress does not come lightly. We have an abusive relationship with our own species and our planet. Leaving an abusive relationship is hard; that's why so many people stay in them.  Changing your life and taking responsibility is scary, but most people would agree that you should still leave. We need to end this relationship of hate and abuse and build a new one based on love and support and understanding. Men aren't garbage that needs to be tossed, they need to be allowed to take on a new role within our society.
It's unfair to punish all men with these kinds of blanket statements because hindsight is 20/20. We are lucky to be able to say we live in a time where we can tell a man, "No, let's figure it out together." And we should take advantage of this new found enlightenment to teach new people of the world. Men don't suck, men need to grow and that's okay. We need to let them, instead of making them feel guilty for the last thousand years. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. It does absolutely no good to make negative blanket statements about men. It chooses a side when we should all be on the same side.  We need to believe in each other, not write each other off.


Mav

The First Thing I Remember

Eyes open. Fuzzy.
Feel. Sheets.
Touch body. Naked.
Flashback:  Shoulder kiss. Can't speak. Head heavy. Cant move. Body limp. Need rest. Bacon sizzling."I'm going to go shower." Muffled echoes.

Reality. Running water. Time.
Clothes. Shoes. Purse. Run.
Pounding chest. Street. Stairs.

Home. Vomit in the hallway and toilet.
Change. Clean. Lock the door. Hide.
Tell everyone I have food poisoning.

Premature (stream of consciousness) Destiny 2 Review (oh and like spoilers and shit)

Destiny is so much better sometimes when you can game together because you can help each other do stupid things in the game and comiserate. Im trying to reserve my judgement until at least the first DLC has released but its so cheesy and the story is honestly kind of weak to me. The best parts were when Ikora was being like super real. Everything else just felt forced. I dont know i think it could easily be more rpg but they are so hard fps that there is no room for your character. I dont even feel like my characters are as real in this game. I feel like you get your subclasses fully leveled so quickly thats its all just available to you and there isnt as much development. It really is all about just loot. And i know they talk like youre one of the only guardians left but i also feel like the level of cheese makes that like not even important. Its so cheesy in the parts where its cheesy that when it tries to be serious it feels disingenuous. Im still waiting for the punch line. And we still know barely anything of Zavala. And your ghost talks for you the whole time. Maybe its because youre supposed to be this guardian who already has this working relationship with these people but they dont do enough to really portray that. The cabal struck entirely too quickly in my mind. Like they just all the sudden are able to take the speaker? And who is this speaker? Tell me more about him. Show me his face. Let me immerse myself in the world. Leave tomes in game with lore in them. Make it a map location. In each lost sector with the boss' loot chest also have a book or data byte left behind with info about the cabal and how they were able to overtake what would seemingly be a very powerful machine? surrounded by hundreds of guards for it. They arent running daily ship patrols? You rely solely on these scanning beacons? You deserved to lose the light. Got fucking complacent. Good thing the traveler was able to save itself in a much slower process. There is a rich world here but you arent very good at showing it. Oh and having hawthorne and whats her face say shit like "good vs evil, black hats and white hats, dark and light, it really makes you think" just shut the fuck up. I didnt need you to so blatantly just state that. Duh fucking duh. I think most wars are fought on such beliefs. That they are fighting what they perceive as unworthy or evil. Your story might be better with almost no dialogue at all. Also there are times where banter just seems to go on forever. No wonder these guardians get themselves killed so much with all these voices in their heads making really bad jokes. Im ready for DLC and hope its really good. I really liked the iron lords dlc in the first game and hope there is more of that and i look forward to finding out more about rasputin. I cant say its all awful. The shooting is still pretty smooth and some of the new exotic emotes and shaders are very cool. I hope they do more sparrow races and the holidays are coming and Bungie always does a really good job of being festive which i really enjoy. So play on because youve been warned and sometimes that makes all the difference.


Mav

PS Death to jump puzzles!

The Bunny Story

     As a seven year old girl, I was playing outside with my dog; and while crawling around I saw a little bunny poke its nose out of the base of a tree. I reached in and pulled out five velvet soft bunnies. Their eyes had barely opened. I cooed internally and had the strange urge to feed them. I ordered my dog to watch them and ran inside, but they wouldn't take any of the milk from our fridge. The bunnies hopped nervously around me as I corralled them towards the tree. Finally, I put them back in their hole and went inside for dinner.

     The next morning, I rushed through breakfast and quickly went outside to check under the tree for the bunnies. I pulled them out one by one, and realized there were only four bunnies in my lap. Horror struck, I began searching all over the immediate area. When I couldn't find a trace of a fifth bunny, I began to question myself and if there ever was another missing bunny. I went inside for part of the day and decided to check on the bunnies one more time before bed.

     As I approached my dog's house in the dimming light I heard a gentle rustle in the fallen, brown leaves. I glanced over and saw the tiniest movement and slowly walked closer. I brushed the leaves aside and saw, shivering in the shade, a tiny bunny. I returned it to the den, making sure to feel all five bunnies before I went inside. Laying in bed that night, I had a feeling it was my fault the bunny was outside the den.  I was sure it had bounced away from the group when I went inside and I had just failed to notice. Knowing the bunny was back home though, made me proud of myself for fixing the problem and I fell asleep excited to see the bunnies again.

     At daybreak I was already making my way to the tree. I reached in to pull out each little bunny, more energetic and stronger now. When the last bunny came out it was flat and limp in my hand, obviously dead. I panicked with a squeal and tossed the bunny away in front of me. Once I regained my composure, the morbid inner human needed to examine the body. I determined it was probably the one I missed and didn't put back in the den and I was sad. The other bunnies looked healthy, however, and that made me happy.

     A couple days passed and I thought I had better not meddle with the bunnies anymore, but my curiosity over their well-being won. As I approached the tree, one of the bunnies came out and began to hop away. I grabbed it and put it back under the tree to keep the same mistake from happening, but then another tried, and soon all four bunnies were hopping in four different directions away from me and I realized they were leaving and they wouldn't be back. I just stood there and watched as they hopped between the trees and out of sight.  All was quiet.  Lingering there a moment before I went back to the house; the morning sun streamed through the leaves. 

Doc Com

I didn't start writing this until after I had already watched the first documentary. It was great.

Catch the trailer here: Freakonomics

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Now I am starting the documentary Cowspiracy (comments to follow). Following the environmental catastrophe that is our modern food system.

There is a part of me that wants to be vegetarian. I should just do it. At least because of the state of the planet, and because I call myself an animal lover and advocate yet I still eat meat. Jesus 2,500 lbs of water are used to produce 1 lb of beef. Even cutting your meat intake in half would be a huge impact on the global environment.

Honestly, I have less to say than I thought. The documentary was great and brought up some really interesting points. I'm going to try and eat far less meat and dairy. Looking to cut my boyfriend to half his consumption and I think I can pretty much just give up milk and lets be honest, that would be better for me anyway. I don't need milk. I can get better calcium from spinach or kale. The hardest part will be not giving into temptation and still doing what I want to do for me regardless of if my boyfriend is personally resistant to giving up meat and especially dairy (he loves milk).

It just comes down to numbers for me. I care a lot for animals and the environment and I want children of the future to have a world to enjoy like I have had so far in my life, but if it's all destroyed by the time I'm 60, then what have I left the future? If I became vegan right now then I have the ability to decrease my carbon footprint by:

1100 gallons of water
45 pounds of grain
30 square feet of forest
10 pounds of CO2
1 animals life

EVERY SINGLE DAY. that's 365 animals a year and probably more in reality because we waste so much, especially here in America. How can I ignore that? It wont be a cold turkey process but starting this moment, I am going to try and consume less meat and dairy as a whole. Definitely at work this is doable because I eat a lot of cheese and eggs, but we have lots of veggies on hand, even avocado so I don't have to go far for options. If most people kept an open eye and mind they might find they don't have to make too big of changes to eat less meat either.


Things to think about.

Mav

Free Form

So when i say birthdays are made up and you scoff and roll your eyes, think about this: we as a species, a humanity, choose to view our years cyclically with numbers and dates, calculated. We repeat the same months and days and hours. What if we just counted up? What if we didn't keep track at all? Then there would be no "birthdays" and there would be no celebration of that birth accept when you were actually born. All the world is a perception. We get confused with history and technology. We forget that history is written by the victorious, so large swaths of information go undocumented. We feel like what is has always been. Things like electricity and the telephone. We cant see the forest for the trees and forget how much these things and things like it have dramatically shaped our mindset. The call this the "Information Age" and we thrive off these statistics. We use them to compare ourselves most of all in attempts to push "ahead" but to what I'm not sure. We just race like we know the goal. Why not take it slow? There is nothing technically saying that we can't but most people would not believe we could and that is exactly what keeps us from it. There are no rules that say it must be survival of the fittest where if suddenly all became benevolent that another authority would swoop down and punish us. This is just what the vast majority of the populatiom believes. We create our reality though, and i dont mean in the "positivity brings happiness" type of bullshit but literally if no one went to work tomorrow and just for no reason decided, "Nah, ill just stay home..." The buildings arent going to come looking for us to keep running them. The toys and cars wont come begging to be produced. We create all that need for those things by believing them to be important.  So just keep your mind open. Look for new points of view. Because they are usually pretty interesting.

Mav

Untitled

Things all come and go
Friends say goodbye and hello
Moments bond
Memories create
My cup spills over into my plate
All these lessons slowly sink in
Hardly a chance to say thanks again
Or sorry for how I treated you then
Oh how it haunts the halls of my head
Quietly whispering while in bed
A million revisions on what was said
Forgotten in dreams until morning