Darfur.

I know that my posts keep getting darker and darker, but it is the way of being an International and Area Studies student. I went to a lecture today by Senator Tom Coburn and the head of the Religious Studies program at OU. I was stunned. Right now in Darfur, Sudan, genocide is happening. The UN is not acting quickly enough and the African Union is not strong enough to make anything happen. The U.S. on the other hand does have the power to assist this region and Sec. Rice has requested that the legislature give her the funding to do so. If this situation is severe enough that the fiscally conservative Tom Coburn says that we should help, then you know that this situation is something we need to help with. This is an issue that has bipartisan support, but citizens have not been vocal enough with their leaders to let make this issue a priority.

Right now the best thing you could do is call your Senator and/or representative and ask them right now to support acting to stop genocide in Darfur. If you are uncertain what to say, here's a script:

“Hi, this is ___ calling from ___. I’m calling to urge Representative/Senator ___ to do everything he/she can to make sure that the $123 million that the Administra-tion recently requested for African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur is appropriated as soon as possible. Funding the African Union is critical to stopping what both the President and Congress have called genocide. Please tell the Congress(man/woman) /Senator that his/her constituents care about Darfur and expect Congress to fund the AU peacekeepers. Thank you.”

Also, please google "Darfur" and find a website that will send a postcard for you to the President that asks him to act to stop the genocide. Then, let your friends know about this. Talk about it at church. Talk about it at work. Tell your relatives. This really is something that we can help with. People always say if they knew, they would have helped. Well, now you know.

Now I Lucked Out Hard Core.

I received a letter from the Honor's College yesterday saying, "We want to congratulate you on maintaining a 4.0 last semester." I did not make a 4.0 last semester. It was my first semester not to make a 4.0. I read it out loud to my friends while I laughed. They thought that perhaps it was a jab. "Yeah, Jessica, way to screw up."

One of the reasons I did not make a 4.0 was Honors Micro Economics. That class completely mystified me. I was one of the most vocal persons in class. I knew all the answers to the questions that were asked in class. I explained production and cost theory to my mother at Chili's. I studied a lot. I still made a B.

Grrr...

So, I showed up for my first Macro Economics exam today a little confident. I've made every class and have studied extensively. And this is not Honors. One of my friends who took honors with me last semester was there and we were recapping. Remember there are 500 students in my class. This kid walks right up to me and says, "Hey, do you know what the Parity Price Ratio is?" It sounded familiar, but I had no idea. Then another kid walks up and says, "Yeah, it's the ratio of non-farming products to farming products. They multiple by 100 to get a number. They use it to determine if the government needs to subsidize farmers and by how much."

::smirks::

I get the test. I would have known every question. Except one. Sure enough, there it was, "What is the Parity Price Ratio?"

Hehe.

We Lucked Out Hard Core.

So, when the conflict in Bosnian happened, I was, what, like 6? So, yeah, I don't remember it so much. Now, I am paying for my ignorance because I am being forced to study to situation in Yugoslavia since essentially pre-Ottoman rule. It's horrible, and I'm not even to the 1990s yet! I'm curious, though, to what degree the media revealed to the public the events in that region during the second world war. To simplify the story, let me give you the low down:

The Croats have always been tight with Italy and so they ended up working with the Axis. The Serbs ended up working with the Allies. That, however, is really inconsequential. Neither group really cared that much about the war outside of that region. They were hell bent on killing each other. The Axis set into power a group called the Ustasas in Croatia. The Ustasas are like, "Hey, let's kill a third of the Serbs, export another third, and force the final third to convert to Catholicism." So, they'd just march into Serbian villages and kill all of them. The Serbs had their own little ethnic cleansing group, the Cetniks. The number of people die are in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. But what's important is not the number of people who died, but the way in which they were killed. The concentration camps in the Balkans make the German's look civilized. The slavs did not have the money to waste bullets or build gas chambers, so they had to be more creative with their forms of genocide. Both of these groups were sadistic in their brutality, rape, murder, and torture of children, men, women, and the elderly. One historian describes the massacres as "pornographic" to describe "the pathological nature of the hatred" (Perica 2002 23).

Seriously.

Every time I read about the conditions of World Wars in every other region of the world except for the Americas, I cannot help thinking how blessed we were to be the winners of the situation. The losers lost more than economic power and international political clout. These poor people, from the Germans to the Serbs to the Turks to the Iraqis and so on, have seen violence that we, as Americans, can only imagine.

1 glass of wine in me, an hour to kill, and well, damnit, this sounds like fun.

1. What time did you get up this morning? 8 o'frickin' clock in the morning
2. Diamonds or pearls? Pearls. This is my birthstone.
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? At the cinema? Do people seriously use that phrase anymore? Munich.
4. What are your favorite TV shows? Lost and 24
5. What did you have for breakfast today? Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds.
6. What is your middle name? Lauren
7. Favorite food? Fajitas with chips and queso.
8. What foods do you dislike? Bell Peppers. They are horrible in every way.
9. Favorite drink? Hot Chocolate.
10. What is your favorite CD at the moment? The Tain by The Decemberists
11. What kind of car do you drive? I don't drive a car! Look at me! I'm contributing to reduction of demand for gas and helping the environment. Why don't I join the Democratic Party now?
12. Favorite sandwich? Club anything.
13. What characteristics do you despise? Passivity.
14. Favorite item of clothing? High heals. It's a power thing.
15. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation where would you go? The French Riveria.
16. What color is your bathroom? Gray and white.
17. Favorite brand of clothing? Express.
18. Where would you retire to? New York or Pennsylvania.
19. Favorite time of the day? 7:00 p.m. It's the time I think, "Hm, I don't have to go to bed until after midnight and, hey, I am not at class! Let's have fun!"
20. What was your most memorable birthday? Eighteenth. My mom took me to the Philbrook museum and I took pictures. This is the day I got into photography.
21. Where were you born? Do I have to answer this question?
22. What's your favorite cartoon? Actually, I really dislike cartoons. Animaniacs? It's been years since I've watched it, but that was classic. That and The Tick.
23. Who do you least expect to send this back to you? For e-mails only.
24. Person you expect to send it back first? For e-mails only... But I think Jordan might fill it out.
25. What fabric detergent do you use? Gain.
27. Are you a morning person or a night person? Times of the day greet me different each day that I live. Sometimes the morning is my friend and sometimes the evening greets me better.
28. What is your shoe size? 8
29. Do you have any pets? Kenobi and Shadow are my aussie shephard puppies. Ahhhhh, they're so cute.
30. Any new or exciting news you want to share with friends and Family? I'm going to Italy for the summer!
31. What did you want to be when you were little? A nurse, and then I discovered I freaked out around blood.

Additions:

32. What word do you regularly misspell? Separate.
33. What was the favorite year of your life? 13.
34. What do you do when you're nervous? Talk really fast.
35. How many different hair colors have you tried? 3.

For warmth and a little peanut butter.

For this little fellow, his last days promised warmth. The winter here on the Oklahoma fields were warmer than normal. The past few days, though, were cold. In one night, the world around him became covered in ice and snow. He ran from place to place searching for a place to escape the weather. His fate was bound in a tiny hole that no one knows of except for him.

He crawled and he crawled until at last he found himself standing on vinyl flooring. It was warm, he realized, but more than that. Scattered across the strange ground beneath him is enough food to survive the winter with joy. In fact, why leave? He moves around with caution, and at length his doom stepped into his view. Beasts that he had only seen from the distance lumbered across the vinyl flooring. He hid beneath that big machine that rumbled, and waited. Finally, the great beast settled in the distance. Time for this little guy to expand his horizons. He prides himself for remaining unseen for so long, and he confidently runs to the big black thing on the carpeted ground. He did not know it them, but that was the beginning of him doom.

The great beast grumbled and rose to its feet. After some time, it exited out of a bigger hole, back into the cold. Oh well, the little fellow thinks, their loss. Why go into the cold when their is warmth and food to be found here. But the beast returns. The little guy waits and hears a few clickings. He waits and bides his time. When the great beasts rests, then he will find tonight's feast.

When the quiet settles in his new domain, our little friend follows the smell of something that is fantastically unique. Here in a little contraption of plastic and metal was a meal that he could only imagine. It took some working, but he was able to get his mouth to the stuff that smelled so good. This, he did not know, was the stuff we call peanut butter. So rapt in this moment of ecstasy, he did not see it coming. The plastic was bound to a spring, and the spring to the peanut butter, and when he got his mouth around it, the plastic came down upon his neck. He struggled and fought, but this device is twice his size. It was designed so his tiny body could not escape.

I am sorry, my friend, that the world is so small that there cannot be warmth for both of us. The moment you braved the carpet, I saw your scramblings and I knew I would be your end. You see, with your species comes disease and a will to breed that is only encourage by the warmth of my apartment. You could have raised so many with the filth that is the kitchen cleaning battles between me and my roommate. She doesn't like to sweep after her own messes, and I don't like to sweep after messes I don't make. I could have caught and released you back into your natural home, but you would only have found an unbearable cold that would have killed you anyway. At least this death found you in a moment of happiness.

Too Many Frustrations.

I have been without my computer for essentially one month. I do not think I can communicate how frustrating this is. For French, there are online activities you have to download. For my Religious Studies class, I have to post comments three times a week online. And for my International and Area Studies class, most of the information we need is available online. I can get on a computer on campus, but I either have to already be on campus, or I have to take the bus to campus. In most of the labs they charge me for making prints. I called Comp USA to see if my computer is back in. They said it had just been shipped. I was dumbfounded.
"You mean," I said, "that my computer sat at Comp USA for a week before you shipped it to Apple?"
"Well," replied the manager, "yeah, we had some troubles."
"Well," I began cooly, "did you consider when you had 'troubles' that you should give me a call to let me know?"
"Oh, yeah," he responded quickly, "we should have called you."
"Uh huh," I ask, "so, why didn't you call me?"
"Oh." Long pause. "I don't know. I look into that for you."

Rage.

Some of you know that I have been attempting to study in Turkey over the summer. I received an e-mail from the professor heading the program saying we were short students and if we didn't recruit, the trip might not happen. I e-mailed the professor asking if I should be concerned about this enough to consider another program. He never e-mailed me back. I took that as a "Yes." Fortunatey, I still had time to look at other summer programs. Looks like I'm going to Italy instead. I'll just have to grin and bear it.

Good ending.

My friend has attempted to set me up three times and failed each time. It's really a pity, because I liked all three of the guys he's suggested. However, nothing is more disappointing then hearing, "I met your future husband" and then nothing happens. Remind me to not listen to his suggestions in the future unless the guy is holding an engagement ring.

Too bad, too, because I'm sure that there will be no moderately attractive men in Italy for me to hook up with. ::raises eyebrow::

Hope in future.

My French history class is one night a week. I went the first week and discovered that the bookstore messed up; apparently there were many books I needed to buy for the class. Considering the bookstore error, I assumed he'd push the reading back a week. Then, we had no class the next week, so I assumed we only needed to do the reading for that first week. I get to class, and not only did he expect us to reading from the first two weeks, but the next two weeks as well. When no one in class had done this he said, "Well, you better hurry up because we have our first test next week." So, I dropped the class. However, I may have to pay for it.

Despite this, it means that this will be my first semester only taking 12 hours. I do not think I can express how much better I feel as a result. I'm working again as a waitress on campus corner, I have developed a very large group of friends, and this is my last semester before I'll be abroad. I could use the break.

A little peace.

When I get my computer back, I'll do some more postings.