I totally finally decided to quit torturing myself last night, and it worked pretty well. Congrats self! Way to put away the iron maiden!

Best moment of the night: VAN FULL OF CATS. ROAD TRIP WITH CATS. CATS AT THE BEACH WITH PERSONALIZED SAILOR HATS. CATS ON LEASHES AT A REST STOP. Oh man. And a me sandwich in exchange for my tunes. YES.

THIS IS THAT NEW SHIT.
Well, it's coming in the mailll...

I'm sad everyone's leaving. But also I like summer. It is a time of reflexion, solitude, silence, and intensity. It is a lost disconnected time. It's a time to reglue the roots in, you know? It has always been that way for me, everyone leaves and I am left to myself and my stunted weakened faltering connections with others, so I have no choice but to become stronger.
And of course self reinvention, but this time it's building on what it was before, and me and Rox are going to FREAK AMES THE FUCK OUT. According to plan :|

I've really been looking forward to it. Also I want to fuck Feadz's voice.

Grades so far:
Jl MC 201: A
Jl MC 341: B

///FAIS RENTRER LES EUROS PARCE QU'ILS SONT PAS SI CHOUETTES COMME NOUS///

i forgot about hormones. THATS IT.
whew.

this is just me, but i would suck at being president.

i feel like shit.
weekends are supposed to be fun. i am going to stop being in places where i'm uncomfortable on the weekends.
i am going to spend more time alone. a lot more. and i am going to like it

god i hate myself. thats the only conclusion i can come up with for why i do this to myself.


i tried to go on a walk but after an hour magnets brought me back home sat me in this chair and pulled more tears from my eyes and i havent really left since

We are strangers to each other
Full of sliding panels
An illusion show
Acting well rehearsed routines
Or playing from the heart?
It's hard for one to know

We are islands to each other
Building hopeful bridges
On a troubled sea
Some are burned or swept away
Some we would not choose
But we're not always free

Just between us
I think it's time for us to realize
The spaces in between
Leave room for you and I to grow


-entre nous

Blhahahahaaaaaaa Thom Yorke is a genius gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh the eraser.

I still have to finish my article for 201, but tonight I concluded that the ideal personality for a man OR a woman involves the encapsulation of the positive traits associated with both the feminine and masculine, and does not include any of the negative traits stereotypically associated with either gender. Conclusion: Society can suck it.

Such positive traits include:
(Typically masculine) independent, active, logical, ambitious, self-confident, adventurous, leadership, making decisions easily, being direct, enjoying math and science
(Typically feminine) emotional, tactful, talkative, gentle, aware of others' feelings, neat, nurturing, enjoying art and literature, expressive


I'm not going to go into the negative traits because there are about three negative feminine traits for every negative masculine one, which kind of made me mad (and more of a man) haha.
But as one of my interviewees said, this stuff has nothing to do with sex appeal. If you're hot, you're hot, and both people having masculine and feminine personality traits would just make the sex better (more confident and expressive, for example) for both of them.

I've got a fever something awful! Hope I'm better before I go out for dollar pints tomorrow :)
Also, I just finished the last of my statistics assignments. All that's left = the final. YES!

I somehow managed to ace my last statistics test, the one I barely studied for and thought I'd failed. Perhaps there is a chance of passing that class?

Also, some fuck backed into my car yesterday while I was parked in a space for ten minutes. The other car hit my back windshield's frame, smashing the entire back windshield. I walked outside while the shards were still dripping from the rims. So even though I took home 130 bucks in tips this weekend, I have nothing to show for it. Kind of like earlier this month when I got towed, again, and worked all weekend to pay for that. Fuck cars.

Just watched Heima. Sigur Rós consists of eight highly levelheaded, talented musicians who truly value music as an art form and not as a moneymaking mechanism. The members of the band are all humble and very modest. It was really good to see that people like that still exist, people who just want to bring all sorts of people together to appreciate each other and what we have (the earth). I recommend the DVD to anyone.

I haven't quite slept since Thursday night, nor have I eaten much. Can't seem to. Troubled? Maybe it was the dancing until 5am Friday and Saturday nights that inhibited any good rest.

My creative spirit has been going haywire lately, in a good way. I have so many ideas I can't even keep track of them all.

i need to give up my sexuality and regress (or progress) into the creative state i lived in when i was little. before puberty.
working on it but i don't own any t-shirts. and it's so fun to dress up? and i like sex. god damn conflicts.

Electricity fills the air in Ames... a sort of buzzing tension gives breath to the cement beneath the feet of dazed giants wandering up Welch Avenue... the normal traffic retreats to make way for a fleet of polished insects driven by wild-eyed parasites with aging crew cuts. Manic energy simultaneously stifles and propels the breeze, and lightning and acid raindrops slide off the gusts into the stagnant air, onto the asphalt, between the stones and grit down into the still-damp soil, setting the earthworms' nerves alight (they become suddenly restless). The trees' neon buds threaten to overwhelm time with their speed, flash open then snap closed like mouths in a stunted old horror film. Anxious fleeting grins, scattered thoughts kept at the surface by the magnetized air and sickly red atmosphere wet with condensation. There are no chemicals, but the people cannot breathe. Shrill guitar notes fade as one progresses through the rolling mounds of a drowning city.

We live underground, on the Other Side, and we see the peaks and lulls and waves and love them. We anticipate them and covet them and eat them with our wooden shovels. We use our pink bandanas as napkins and smile when it's over, our throats clogged with bile and tobacco smoke.






That's what Ames feels like tonight. I don't want to write my paper. I want to watch.

There is an AMAZING article in the newest issue of Ms. Magazine that I found heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. It's about how up to 70% of college girls view their bodies as sex objects to be consumed by the male gaze. They live in a state of "double consciousness... a sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others."

"Women who self-objectify are desperate for outside validation of their appearance and present their bodies in ways that draw attention." Studies show that girls who "chronically monitor their physical appearance" are more prone to depression and low self-esteem and have less faith in their own capabilities, and general feelings of disgust and shame about their bodies. In the long-term, self-objectifiers have lower gpa's than non-objectifiers.

"Girls are taught to view their bodies as 'projects' that need work before they can attract others, whereas boys are likely to learn to view their bodies as tools to use to master the environment."

Then it moves on to talk about sex, and much of what it said curiously echoes a previous journal entry of mine.
"Nudity can cause great anxiety among self-objectifiers, who then become preoccupied with how their bodies look in sexual positions. As constant critics of their bodies, they can't focus on their own sexual pleasure."

"Many young women now engage in sex acts with men that priotitize the man's pleasure, with little or no expectation of reciprocity," says anti-sexist male activist and author Jackson Katz.

Then, about the fact that many women seem proud to wear t-shirts that say things like "Fuck Foreplay" (implying.. what? that men don't enjoy foreplay? let's get down to penetration?):
"The notion of objectification as empowering is illogical, since objects are acted upon, rather than taking action themselves. The real power in such arrangements lies with boys and men, who come to feel entitled to consume women as objects-- first in media, then in real life."

"Perhaps the most striking outcome of self-objectification is the difficulty women have in imagining identities and sexualities truly our own."


______________________________________
I love this magazine. Its staff is not afraid to say the truth. I put these quotes here because this article is largely about me, and actually illustrates much of my own struggle against myself. I have objectified myself since I was fourteen and have often spoke of feeling like I have a block between my true self and the way I act, my fear of being original, and my fear of being viewed as unattractive and therefore worthless. It's a handicap and it is an uphill struggle. That's why lately I have been making an effort to just have fun and focus on that instead of how I look to others, which so far has been slow progress but progress nonetheless. At least I'm over the sex part of it, thank goodness.
It's funny though how I have to make a conscious effort to just treat myself as someone who has internal value around other people. I am NOT my appearance.

Hear, hear.

So. Beautiful.
I can't relate to the lyrics at the moment, but it's such a gorgeous song.

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day

And a song that I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone, without beliefs
The only truth I know is you

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I

Simon & Garfunkel
Kathy's Song

I like the fact that the automated ads on the lyrics websites I visit say things like, "Find Great Deals on Simon and Garfunkel Stuff!"
I don't really think I would...


I feel like an open wound scraped raw and scraped again, a dozen times, and just now it's dawning on me not to put on a bandage but to retreat from the friction and let it heal naturally. Give it some air. I'll have a lovely raised shining scar, but I'll have the knowledge of the experience as well.
I can stop letting the fear cloud my vision and just wander free like I did last night, alone, in the still air lighthearted from wine with the Raconteurs in my ears. I realized again that I am content alone. I am strong. I know myself, and I know I don't need to settle for a jagged cycle of pain and satisfaction and fear and half-moon emotions just to feel a connection to something or someone; I can enjoy life without it. I can be real.
I will not transfer the need to another like some sort of parasite. That has only ever led to more pain. On the contrary, I will overcome it.

OH! Oh! Oh! I'm so good!

I KNEW getting some good sleep would solve all my problems.

From now on, objective 1 is always Sleep Tight, Wake Up In Good Mood. Have Awesome Day.
And objective 2 is Repeat.

I just found mine + Jeskuh's fanfiction account from eighth grade into like... tenth.

It's all still there! We were so amazing! I missed that goddamn Harry Potter spoof.

You know, I was reading Desmond Morris' 1967 book The Naked Ape, but I think I'll stop after reading this article about his newest thesis.

Morris reminds us that much of what we consider the modern world could have come about only thanks to the talents of the male mind...For every great woman there have been 100 - even 1,000 - great men in the same field.

Right, Mr. Morris. Because men and women certainly have had all of the same opportunities, encouragements, and upbringings during the last millennium. It's the women that are just dumb, we're just not trying hard enough. Idiot.

I kind of want to put some stuff I wrote for Jl MC 201 in here. So here's one. The assignment was just to describe someone close to us, giving the reader the most vivid description possible. I LOVE these assignments. We had a half hour to complete it.
Guess who?
After reading this my professor told me he wants to have a glass of wine with her... hahaha.

----------------------------------------

She arrives looking painfully refined, a modest look in her elegantly lined eye and in the air about her—a walking paradox, a classic Italian woman. She asks for nothing until I offer her a glass of red wine, which she sips slowly.
It hasn’t been too long. We speak of recent days, of new love interests and mutual friends until the topics warp and become abstract. She sits on my sofa, one leg crossed over the other, and I see her blue eyes light up as we dream aloud together of traveling the world with only the clothes on our backs. We ponder the narrowly defined subculture in Ames and envision an anonymous life in the city. We mourn the devaluation of classic literature since the invention of the Internet and blame technology for the rampant ignorance among youth in the modern United States. We wish we could have been hippies.
She speaks passionately; she nods often. Her sorrel hair brushes her elbows, and her Chicago upbringing reveals itself through a distinct, almost harsh verbal rhythm. I share a few tracks from the Thin Lizzy album I recently rediscovered with her.
A few more friends arrive and she becomes less animate. They sit on the floor and the futon, while she remains alone on the sofa, now the observer, sipping the same glass of red wine, thoughts swirling in her head. I entertain my other friends and the conversation with her falters; I think she feels inadequate.
For an unknown reason her inhibitions seem to melt away when we two speak alone. She voices the words as they come to mind. Among others, we both feel the inhibitions start to come back, and we both realize that she came half an hour early for a reason—hope of a meaningful conversation that can only be held between the best of friends.

Little baby doll, she doesn't know what to say to y'all
the patience is short and of course the pride is way too tall
break it all smash the past like it was made of glass
ain't no other way to make it last

Atmosphere

There is going to be an article on impatience in this space, as soon as I write it.

While doing leg presses at the rec last night I was eyeing the magazines in the rack facing the machine, which I do from time to time to remind myself of why I need to go into journalism. I didn't actually pick any of them up but I couldn't help noticing a particularly enticing cover line on US Weekly: "Hillary Clinton: My Worst Outfits Ever!"

The headline stuck in my mind until I got home, when I decided to actually look up the article on the magazine's website. It includes a slideshow of pictures of Mrs. Clinton ranging from the late '60s to just recently wearing things like a long, frilly high-collared wedding dress; a thick, brightly colored coat; striped pants; and a plaid business suit.
Did I mention the subhead? "The Democratic presidential hopeful critiques her past style faux pas in Us Weekly's Fashion Police." Somehow the magazine's staff has duped the Democratic presidential candidate into insulting her own fashion choices, of all things. Hillary, don't you have something better to do, like... I dunno, campaign?


Okay. Let's back up.
According to US Weekly's website, this is a magazine which "delivers to a mass audience of young, affluent and educated adults compelled by breaking celebrity news, Hollywood style and the best in entertainment. This is a connection driven by an unmatched sense of anticipation, priority, engagement and loyalty."

Demographic statistics on the website show that 73% of its readers are women, 60% of whom are between the ages of 18 and 34 (median age: 31). Also according to the website, 1.9 million people read this magazine every week.

On the homepage of the media kit, a quote from Advertising Age gushes, "US has become a cultural reference point, if not an entire world view."

Magazines set agendas. This means that they tell people not necessarily what to think, but what to think about. This magazine is setting an agenda for young women that distracts them from the real matter at hand, whether it intends to or not. The sole reason Clinton is even mentioned in the magazine is that so people can gawk at the way she's dressed herself over the years.
I can't believe that the staff of this magazine has actually got the audacity to focus on something as trivial and purposeless as outfits when talking about a PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. This is politics; it is not a fashion contest. I can't believe Hillary insulted herself by actually agreeing to participate. She makes herself sound weak and sheepish by offering excuses for her outfits. For example, the caption following a charming photo of Clinton in a striped t-shirt dress:

"1992. While teeing off for mini-golf during husband Bill's presidential campaign, the former first lady shudders to think of her athletic attire: 'Now you know why I stick with pantsuits.'"

The young people reading this article (well, viewing it, as there is quite fittingly no actual text) are being told to focus on superficial things like appearance even when dealing with presidential candidates. That might fly with people like Paris Hilton, to whom there is nothing more, but when talking about a prominent presidential hopeful it goes too far. Way to hit the mark, US Weekly. Top notch. Real respectable.

I'm kind of curious as to who the male readers of US Weekly are, because men are usually discouraged from paying attention to such inconsequential banter. Gay? Thirteen? Midlife crisis? Pete Wentz?

I'll just stick to Bitch for now...

I've been on a Salt-n-Pepa kick for the last couple of days.

These ladies must have an incredible amount of charisma for the following reason:

They were able to be on the mainstream billboard charts for most of the 90s. They are an ALL GIRL GROUP, and they stand for feminism, diversity, tolerance, female sexuality, and partying in general, but not the competetive kind, just the fun kind. Their videos feature a variety of races and shapes and faces that fall way way outside of the standards of beauty in our society. They embrace the minority in a proud, nonviolent, positive way.

Such blatant feminism has never had a place on the mainstream charts, not since then.
I can't think of any other girl group that didn't rely solely on their sex appeal to stay famous, or that had such positive messages. Pussycat Dolls, eat your heart out.


The only question that I have is WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED, GIRLS? They must have gotten tired of being rebellious or something because they now have their own reality TV show on MTV or VH1 or wherever. I watched five minutes of it a couple of weeks ago and was a little grossed out by the cattiness and immaturity of it. I'm choosing to forget about it so I can continue to think of them as absolutely amazing.

Now I can bring home the bacon, fry it in the pan
Never let you forget that you're a man
'cause I'm a W-O-M-A-N
That's what I am, doin' all I can
The thing that makes me mad and crazy, upset
Got to break my neck just to get my respect
Go to work and get paid less than a man
When I'm doin' the same damn thing that he can
When I'm aggressive then I'm a bitch
When I got attitude you call me a witch
Treat me like a sex-object (That ain't smooth)
Underestimate the mind, oh yeah, you're a fool
Weaker sex, yeah right, that's the joke (ha!)
Have you ever been in labor? I don't think so, nope
I'm a genuine feminine female thang
Can you hang? Ain't nothin' but a she thang

In other news, VIOLENT FEMMES. THE JAM. THE CLASH.

Oh dear... I have been in an absolutely horrendous state of mind for the last month or so. This has got to stop.

What happened to carefree positive confident Jenna?
I always seem to lose myself if I don't step back and look at life just for what it is often enough.

I'm so glad I have friends to talk to. I'm SO glad I have people who care about me and know me, and know this hasn't been me lately, and want to help. I can't imagine what I would do without them.

Also I've had these guys to comfort me:


FLEET FOXES<3<3

(so fucking amazing...)

I am an optimistic, happy, inspiring person most of the time.
It is HIGH TIME to welcome that person back into my psyche. Hello.


Guess after two straight days of crying I can finally see through the curtain ?

I suppose if enough bad things happen, eventually a person is forced to see things the right way. Let's not dwell on it, self.

This is ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING.
These are not "marriage tours." This is not romance. This is sexual exploitation of young women at best and sex slavery at worst. This is men paying money for a company to indtroduce them to third-world women who are willing to do anything to get out. This is disgusting. These men are not looking for romance. Unbelievable.

Yallz gotta hear this song.

Cake icing and decorating set
Special offer
Only 3 pound 30
Save 1 pound 52 on recommended retail price
Give your cakes and pies a professional look
With this superb
Decorating set

I'm not meant to be here
But so what?
And nobody's
Nobody's taken your place
Nobody's taken your place

Each set includes
A turntable
A nine inch icing bag
With six high definition nozzles and adaptor
With a fifteen inch food decorating bag
With three piping nozzles
Please send off this leaflet
Post it today

And if you knew
Nothing could replace you
If you were sane
Your heart wouldn't ache
But so what?
So what?
So what?

Order now
Allow twenty one days
For deliver
This offer closes
31st December 1979

British sugar bureau
When I told you what I
And I

And I wouldn't ask you to pretend
That we were one
And still another time
Forget all the lies forgive me the wounds
And all the world was used to love
And yes we'd still be happy in another time
But so what?
So what?

So please send me icing and decorating sets
I enclose a cheque and postal order number

So what?
So what?

Y estoy harta de sufrir dos clases por semana de español. Son las clases... creo... las más aburridas que tuve en mi vida. No es que la profesora no sepa. Es que la lectura es demasiado fácil y siempre llego tarde, todos me miran como si fuera un criminal, me siento y me duermo, pero despierta. Con los ojos abiertos. Y la profesora me pregunta algo y me animo a contestarle correctamente y vuelvo a mirar para adelante sin ver nada, y luego recibo A's en todos los exámenes para que no me pueda retar la profesora.
Igual es probable que reciba una nota un poco peor que quizá me merezca, por la mala asistencia.
No me importa. Lo que todo esto me dice es que estoy más que lista para salir al "mundo real" y utilizar mis destrezas que aparentemente están suficientemente útiles para hacer que una empresa me pague por traducir.
Che YA ME VOY A EMPEZAR MI PUTO ENSAYO. Me sigue repeliendo.

Ugh...

Good friends, good times, good booze,
happy hangovers and unfinished term papers greeting me in the morning, which came too soon.