I can't think of a title.

I have been writing a lot of really serious stuff lately, and I wanted to just talk about fun stuff today. Yesterday I was contacted by Penn State again, and they told me the were adding 1,000 dollars to their offer to try and get me to sign their letter of agreement. It was a lot of fun to have someone so interested in me, and I am really starting to get excited to go there and help them with research. There isn't really much of a chance of going to Georgetown now, but if a miracle happens and they offer me a lot of money then we will see, but I am just happy that I don't feel any regret about how this all has worked out so far. Anyway, I didn't want to talk about this, what I actually wanted to mention today was my sister. I haven't gotten a chance to talk to her in a while, but I am super proud of her. Right now she is going through the same thing as I am but with about 13 Law schools. They don't tell their applicants anything until much later, so she hasn't heard from any of them yet. Right now she is going to Middle Tennessee State University. She is also the Head of their student run record label Scared Rabbit (I think that is the name. There are not a lot of things on the internet about it. What's up with that, Ryann?) I just think that is really cool. She makes me really proud.
I thought this was a fun link.

Click it!

Green isn't a color, it's half yellow and half blue. It's blueish-yellow, is...is what it is.

I guess I will write twice today, 'cause I am on a rant. I am now going to go off in a different tangent though: Gender Identity. I think it is odd that we think of the world as split up into male and female so rigidly that we are willing to base our laws on that belief. Here are some other categories that only have to do with gender identity, not sexual orientation.

"true hermaphrodite" - label used in medical literature for persons having a mixed gonadal structure, (ovo-testis, or sometimes one ovary and one testis).
"pseudo-hermaphrodite" - label used in medical literature for all other intersexuals.
"full-time transvestite" - a person who presents themselves as their non-birth gender in all aspects of their life
"part-time transvestite" - a person who presents themselves sometimes as their birth gender and sometimes as their non-birth gender
"male to female" (MTF, M2F) - describes sex to gender; an individual with a physically male body, who identifies mentally as female; it is considered rude to refer to a MTF as a man who wants to be a woman, because a MTF considers themselves a woman
"female to male" (FTM, F2M) - describes sex to gender; an individual with a physically female body, who identifies mentally as male; it is considered rude to refer to a FTM as a woman who wants to be a man, because a FTM considers themselves a man.
"post-operative" (post-op) - a transexual who has completed sex reassignment surgery (SRS)

If you toss in male and female that adds up to 9 legitimate and distinct gender categories (12 if you count part-time and full-time transvestites as well as post-operatives twice; once for each birth gender. 10 again if you decide not to separate part- and full-time, but at least 7). I know that it would be difficult for our culture to treat these categories as equal to the 'big two': male and female, but only because of tradition and relative numbers. It would be unjust to say that the fact that we can't cope easily with these people is their fault.

To say that only couples that include one man and one woman can get married, than you restrict 65 other two-person gender identity combinations from that same right. How can we tell a person that since they aren't a man OR a woman, they can't get married. We can force them into one of those catagories, but that has proven to be dangerous and painful for many. Forcing some children to choose genders has in some rare cases led to VERY surprise pregnancies. I guess what I am getting at is that we should be at a point in our societal growth where we can move on, and change how we view the world. Now if you toss in Sexual orientation, that just adds more ambiguity to our ideas of what gender means and how we fit into the scheme of things.

Preachin' to the choir

I know that pretty much everyone that would ever read this has an opinion of gay marriage that is very close to mine, so I don't have to really convince anyone of the needs for gays to be recognized as equal to straight people. I guess the only thing I think people need to know about my opinion is I believe that the push for civil unions was well intended, but not enough. Civil unions should be for all American citizens. We have done a commendable job at separating church and state in many parts of our government, but failed spectacularly in others. Marriage is one of the later. Why do we allow such an important facet of our relationships with each other and with our religious establishments be so inertwined with our government. The only real way to solve this problem is to kill two birds with one stone: have only civil unions recognized by our government, and allow every couple this right, meanwhile allowing people to find a church to marry them if they feel the need. A church marriage would mean nothing to the state and a civil union could mean nothing to the church. While I am on the topic of church and state I just want to mention one thing that always bothers me: as an atheist, I hate that 'In God we trust' is on our money, and I will never back down in this regard, but I am at a loss as to why the largely Judeochristian citizenry of our nation allows their God to be put on money in the first place. Neither Jews or Christians believe that God was in favor of honoring money, and some very orthodox sects are reticent to even write the word 'God' at all. Why aren't people mad that their god is being used as a tool to legitimize a secular financial system? Back to Gay Marriage. Many people believe that it would undermine the family values that have been a part of American culture for so long. They have two reasons this is bad: #1. American Children growing up in households without both genders represented will be unbalanced, and #2. Sanctioning homosexuality is going to lead to ever-increasing amounts of sexual deviance. I don't understand these arguments. When my father died my mother wasn't forced to remarry. My sister and I were not taken from our mother and placed with a family that could represent both genders as role-models for us. We were left where we were. I know many bad parents who are not interfered with in their parenting by the state and many inmates on death row, people who our country had deemed unfit to live in and interact with society as a whole, were allowed to both marry and procreate. Why are these killers, rapists, terrorists and torturers deemed fit parents, while people who engage in (sadly, in some states only recently) legal sexual activities are not. As for #2, growing acceptance of gay relationships in the past decade have also come hand in hand with a decrease in homosexual promiscuity. Giving these people a sense of legitimacy has lifted an oppressive mentality that kept them from healthy, open relationships. As seen in the example of the US military, where a don't ask don't tell policy forces homosexual relationships to remain secret, we can see an ever growing trend of sexual abuse caused by both gay and straight soldiers. Anyway, that was a big rant. I hope you had a good holiday weekend!

Brazilian politics

I watched a movie last night called Brazil, by Terry Gilliam. He also made 12 Monkeys and Time Bandits, and was one of the comedy troupe Monty Python. The movie is about government in the near future. It speaks of terrorism and bureaucracy, as well as government cover-ups and consumerism. It is a great movie and it makes me think. Bush is coming to Mainz tomorrow while touring Europe to reconnect with the EU, and I don't know exactly how I feel. I really hate his politics, and I hate his business practices and big business ties, but I recently heard a section of a taped conversation he had while fighting for the republican presidential nomination, and he says that he is afraid that the religious right won't back him because he won't bash gays. He says he would not "kick gays, because [he is] a sinner. How can [he] differentiate sin." Now don't get me wrong, I think that his policies have not been good for gays in America, but I am, more often than not, failed by politicians in my own party in that regard. I guess I was just struck by the fact that the mistakes he makes, and the people hurts might really have more to do with his religious beliefs and stupidity than actual malice or greed. On another note, I went to the movie with a friend of mine who is a professional anarchist. He is really different than me, and I like talking to him because it challenges me to look further to the left for inspiration and insight. I often did the opposite when I was at home in Minnesota: I would change my car radio from NPR to the Christian station for about a week at a time every two to three months. I encourage everyone to do stuff like this. It can give you a lot of good ideas.

cum laude/ warming up to Penn State

I just sent in my Application to graduate, and I realized that I will graduate cum laude. That made me happy. I then realized how hard it must be to get a magna or summa cum laude. There are people out there that work so hard and I wish I was one of them. I know people like my sister and some of my friends seem to get themselves so motivated and going. They blow me away. On another topic, I am getting used to the idea of going to Penn State and am ready to turn down Georgetown unless they offer me a whole lot in the way of aid. I like bigger schools, and Penn State is definitely that. They also have a student film group and a Sign Language organization so I will be able to do those things there too. I also know that it will be easier to stretch a dollar in State College (that is the name of the town where Penn State is) than in D.C. and they really seem to want me, which can't be bad. PSU also wants to help me if I decide to do a Fulbright and I would get to teach German in their Undergrad Department. It seems like the pluses are now on the side of PSU. I am glad that I started to keep this journaly/blog-thing, because it has really helped me while making this decision.

Penn State wants to give me money!

I was offered a position as fellow at Penn State today. I am still not sure if I am going to take it. First of all I still don't know if I will get into Georgetown (my only other choice left) or if they are going to give me any sort of financial aid. If they don't help me financially, it would be a lot of money to give away, but I still don't know what to do. Again, I guess I will have to wait to hear from Georgetown. I have until April 15th to get back to Penn State, so I at least know by what time this decision will be made.

Whittling down my choices!

I just got an e-mail from Berkeley, and they are not accepting me into their program. I guess I don't really care, as I stopped thinking about them as an option a while a go, but I hope it doesn't bode poorly for Georgetown. I am right now in a boarding school in Gmunden Austria with some friends of mine. I was supposed to be back in Berlin (Home Sweet Home) but my train was so late that I wouldn't have made a connection to get home, so I decided to hang out with than for a little while longer. I am still waiting to sign up for spring semester classes (I am hoping to get into Latin, German, Spanish and Linguistics as well as maybe one more language). It seems like everything is going to come to a head all at once. I guess I will have to wait until I know everything about school next year, and then just spend one long night deciding what to do. Along with all of this I have to try to figure out if and how I am going to work at Concordia Language Villages again. On a different tangent; I like a song that has just been redone, and I feel like it kind of describes how I feel lately:

Father: It's not time to make a change
Just relax, take it easy
You're still young, that's your fault
There's so much you have to know
Find a girl, settle down
If you want you can marry
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy
I was once like you are now
and I know that it's not easy
To be calm when you've found something going on
But take your time, think a lot
Why, think of everything you've got
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not

Son: How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again
It's always been the same, same old story
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go

Father: It's not time to make a change
Just sit down, take it slowly
You're still young, that's your fault
There's so much you have to go through
Find a girl, settle down
if you want you can marry
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy

Son: All the times that I cried
keeping all the things I knew inside
It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it
If they were right, I'd agree
but it's them you know not me
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go

Ishmael is not a book.

I just saw a thing on the internet where a person said there favorite book is Ishmael, and it reminded me of when my sister and I were reading passages out of it. It is awful, and not a book. If you want to read things that can help you live life in a different way, and to stray away from the pattern of those who came before, read an actual BOOK. Ishmael is not a book so it doesn't count. It is also written horribly: dialogue no one would ever exchange, characters that don't make sense and a plot that doesn't matter. Ishmael is not a book. It looks like a book, but when you open it up you will find that it is just a bunch of pieces of paper with words on them that are stuck together on one edge in numerical order. Ishmael is not a book. This is the first negative thing I have put on this blog, so I am hoping that no one is offended, but Ishmael is not a book.

Hey! Someone else reads this.

I didn't realize that other people read this. That is so cool. Maybe this will really work out as a way to keep in touch with the people who are important to me. Now I just need to get my family reading this along with a couple more of my friends. I really feel like I am starting to get a hang of keeping in touch with like my core 10 or so people in my life. I have been keeping better e-mail contact with Suzi, Matt, Pat, and Jake, and my family seems to be impressed with me keeping better touch with them. I wish that I could see all of you more often then I have in the last few years. It seems like the only constant person that I have around is... Well, me. But I think about you all the time. I am so happy that Matt is so successful, because I know he works hard for it like all the freaking time. He thinks he is being lazy, but his being lazy is what other people consider hard work. He is very much the renaissance man I wish I was, and reminds me so much of my father it freaks me out sometimes. Suzi seems to finally have all her ducks in a row, and even though everything isn't easy for her right now she is being her own source of happiness. She is so inspired to do good for all of us, and we are lucky to have her out there somewhere caring about how everyone is doing. Jake is getting married to a great girl and they are so much in love. I don't know anyone else as absolutely caring and uplifting as Jake. I have never heard him say a single word that was uncalled for or unkind. And pat is so absolutely funny, that I know that I can be satisfied that I am at least a little funny, because I can make him laugh. He inspires me constantly, and I wish I could have him around me all the time. The same goes for all of you, and many others. I am just really lucky to have had you all. Wow, this has turned really sentimental, but I guess I was just really happy to see that Matt was actually reading this stupid stuff I have been writing. Anyway, I am having a good day today after having done a phone interview with a woman at Penn State. I guess I am more sought after than I thought. They might be giving me a lot of money to go to school there. Keep your fingers crossed (I had to uncross mine to type this, so I need to make up some of the lost time).

I love Switzerland, Pennsylvania, Pat and Jake!

I have decided that I love Switzerland. I went there last weekend, and I fell in love with it. Oh! I also got in to Penn State. They might give me some money, so I might end up there because of finances, but I still have to hear from the other two schools, but I am now almost certainly not going to be in Minnesota next year. I know that There are at least right now, only about two people who even read this thing, but I want you two to know that I really miss you , and all the time I think about giving up school and just coming home this summer and hanging out with you guys. You have become my best friends and I know it took a lot of effort on your part to keep in contact with me, and I just wanted to say that I really appreciate it. I decided that I like having links in my stuff so, I guess I also Love links. And weird stuff.