Monday, March 26, 2007

Politics and me



I don't figure that I'm going to go into a listing of all my political beliefs and theories here, but I just took a long Political survey (Political Survey) and wanted to share the results on my blog.

This is my sort of Political Compass type thing...on the actual Political Compass website, my left-right position is similar but the Y-axis is Authoritarian-Libertarian instead of Pragmatism-Idealism. So there's a bit of a difference there.

I'm in the Libertarian Left quadrant. Good ol' lefty liberal, that's me! I'm just too attached to all those bothersome notions of, y'know, peace and freedom and brotherhood and equality and so on....

Peace out!

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Lovely last weekend!


Here I am hanging out at the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Savannah, GA. I was there with my boyfriend and his family, and we got to walk in the parade because his dad is somehow related to someone on the Parade Committee....yeah that's how it works.

You know how people like to say all these nice romantic things about taking long walks on the beach with the person they love, or staying out late to lie on their backs and gaze at the stars? But then they never actually DO those things?

Well, I've done them. I'd love to say that I wish I could make it a habit, but there's no way it could be a habit because we live six hours from the nearest beach and near a major metropolitan area, so the stars are kinda...eh. Not to mention the man I love and I live about 45 minutes away from each other.

But I have to say, it really is something to lie out on the beach and gaze at the stars, lying next to your beloved. You should really try it sometime. PLEASE. Make some room in your busy schedule, grab your spouse/loved one, and haul ass over to a beach (don't forget the towels/blanket!). Try to go for one that's not quite so commercial, maybe more residential...that way there's fewer people and lights. It's breathtakingly gorgeous, and amazingly surreal.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Concerning...Myself?

I know I only post every once in a while, and probably don't have any regular readers (yet...), but I figured that it's probably time to give a little preview/profile of myself...for those of you who are simply DYING to know. I think I'm going to adopt Tink's style for this post (Tink from the Pickled Beef blog)

...I'm still having a little trouble with the hyperlink thing. It wouldn't turn off when I wanted it to, so I had to make a new paragraph. Geez, blogs are hard! ;) But I meant that I would adopt the "numbered list" style just to give some extra information about myself to those wonderful people sitting stunned at their computers, overcome with curiosity. (You exist, right?)

Anyway...here goes....

1. My name is....wouldn't you like to know? ^_^ For the purposes of blogging, I might go by Faran or some other made-up name. It'll be clear that it's me, though. My real name is extremely common, and EVERYONE knows at least 3 people with the name (though they're mostly young...it only got really popular right in the year that I was born).
2. Right now, I live in GA, U.S.A. I might end up attending college out of that state, and believe me, when I make my choice (still have yet to receive acceptances from my major schools!! ARRGH! IT'S MARCH!!), I will let everyone know. Loudly.
3. Georgia has amazing weather at the moment. It's right at that time of year where the weather outside is just perfect. Unfortunately, it's not even spring yet, and spring lasts about two weeks. So the climate will become the usual Unbearable Summer That Lasts Until The End of September in about the second week of April. Which sucks.
4. I'm a senior in high school, in 3 difficult AP courses, an advanced acting class, and two pretty worthless classes. I'm a drama nerd, and a science nerd (nice combination, no?), and fairly proud to proclaim my status as a nerd.
5. I have different music tastes from most of my classmates--where they like indie, punk, pop, or rock, I have a distinct taste for Broadway musicals and the soundtracks of movies. Sure, I like some alternative rock occasionally, but fully half of my CD collection is Broadway. I'm also a fan of certain comedians (Eddie Izzard WINS), and have some musical comedy CDs in my collection as well.
6. I'm an absolutely WRETCHED procrastinator. Last night I was up until 3 am, having spent the whole day doing homework for my AP Environmental Science class, and two major projects for my AP European History class (which is the one I regret taking this year, because it's SO MUCH work!!). I could have gotten them done earlier...if I hadn't spent the first two days of the three-day weekend doing other stuff.
7. I have a wonderful circle of friends who are very supportive, and very strange. I don't really have a best friend, but if I did, it would be a guy I'll call MH. We practically have our own language and system of interactions, which most people regard very strangely when they witness it.
8. I have an absolutely wonderful boyfriend I'll refer to as JR. We have been dating for almost a year (our anniversary is April 6), and the story of how we met is like something from a movie. I won't get into it, but I'll just say that we met on a Caribbean cruise...and things have simply just worked out since then. We have a lot of differences (political, etc.), but we both have so much of a will to work things out between us that they have never caused much of a rift. We have similar senses of humor, and talk about a lot of nerdy stuff. It rocks ^_^
9. My family ancestry, although we've been American for generations and generations, is almost entirely of Scottish and English extraction. This might explain my peculiar affinity for bagpipe music and English literature. Or else I'm just weird.
10. I have a very strong personal connection to many works of fiction in specific genres, for a variety of reasons. A combination of personal experiences and study has led me to have a fierce loyalty to specific stories and understandings of the universe that are connected to particular writings of certain authors and my own developed theories of the universe. ....Not that that made much sense, but I guess it would suffice to include that I'm just a wee tad more special than most teens who seem like me, and that my fierce defense of certain books and ideas and experiences comes from deep personal connections.
11. Now I'm just fooling you. There are no more things for me to write, really.
12. Except this one.
13. And this one.
14. I'm just wasting your time now.

So...there you have it. Just a little bit about me, and not that much to go on, but it's more than you had before. And all credit goes to Tink of the Pickled Beef blog (found in my blogroll) for the numbered-list design. I did NOT come up with that myself!

Thanks for reading, if you did. Maybe I'll get back to actually thinking (*gasp* I do that?) in the next post I make.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Per aspera ad astra

I'm experimenting with a different font. For the sake of it. Better to change something small and be able to deal with it than lose control of a big change, right?

I've been ignoring my blog for a little too long, mostly thanks due to the swamp of schoolwork that has accompanied the...I believe it's 6? absences that I have accrued in going to different colleges in order to interview for large amounts of scholarship money. I enjoyed several of the trips (four different colleges extended invitations), but I wish there was less work to make up! *sigh* The curse of being a second semester senior...anything more than a minimal amount seems overwhelming. Can't wait to see how shocked I'll be once I get to college.

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Once in a while, we all come across something that really resounds with us, no matter how obscure or incomprehensible, simple or mundane. It might be a book, a work of art, a musical symphony, or a scholarly article. Maybe it's just the view from a mountainside or a glance passed in the street. Something calls to a higher consciousness and makes us want to expand past the walls of our minds (excuse me while I make the abstract a little oversimplified). I came across a reference in a scholarly article our AP Literature class had to read as part of our unit studying Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

The article is by Professer Severyn T. Bruyn, and is called "Art and Aesthetics in Action." I believe it can be found online at http://www2.bc.edu/~bruyn/Theoretical.html

I was particularly touched by a quote he uses from Gopi Krishna, founder of the Research Institute for Kundalini at Nishat in Kashmir. It reads:

"Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid gold entering my brain through the spinal cord. The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder...I [became] a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was but a point, bathed in light and in a state of exaltation and happiness impossible to describe."

I have felt this. This resounds with me. Anyone?

It makes me want to follow the title I used--Through adversity, to the stars.