SLC to Kalispell

Wednesday, June 3

I am so sick of vacationing. No, actually, I’m sick of my parents.

Today I found out my oldest brother is joining the Army as an explosive ordinance specialist. And the first thing my dad says after hanging up is, “Your brother joined the army as an explosives expert. Why do I deserve to have two idiot sons? Now we have to prepare the bury him because he won’t survive four years of service.” I mean…I get the frustration but really? Are you serious? Thanks, dad.

But anyway…we stopped for the night in some rest area with a hole in the ground for a bathroom and grass that the dogs aren’t supposed to walk on. Oh, well. I only noticed the sign after they’d done their business on the lawn. Some trucker asked if my dog is part wolf. Sometimes I wish she were so she wouldn’t be so scared of everything.

Zion to SLC

Monday, June 1

Today we traveled a couple hundred miles across Arizona, from southern Tucson to the border of Utah. Literally. The RV park where we’re parked overnight is about 100 feet from the road that separates the two states. It’s called “Stateline Rd” and I wondered why until I saw the “Now Entering Arizona” sign right outside our campground.

Funny. This side of Lake Powell looks just like the other side. I noticed that too, a couple months ago when I crossed the California-Arizona border. And again at the Mexico-United States border.

Well duh, you might say. Just because the land has a different name doesn’t mean it’s a different land. Calling a skunk a squirrel isn’t going to make it stink less. My only conclusion: people like to slap names on stuff because it makes them feel less like they’re insignificant against the enormity of the world. Or just because they like a bit of law and order and if we didn’t have boundaries, we’d need a new government and a new name and a new system. Yeah, that’s right: a new system. It’s called anarchy.

A few notable things on the trip thus far. First is that my dog is frustrating me to no end. She completely refuses to pee when we take rest stops. Tonight I spent an hour walking her around to all the likely places and you’d think I’d get something in return for the effort. Unfortunately I haven’t taught her the phrase “Pee or I’ll Give You Away” yet. She only understands “come”, “stay”, and “bath.” Whether she listens to them is another matter. Oh, and she can hear the sound of a can opening from a hundred yards. Is that impressive or what?

Secondly, there’s the Indian Reservation. I know, I have all my priorities in order. But it was strange—I guess it always is—driving through Navajo land. Not just because I knew from the map that it was a reservation, but because of…well, everything. First of all there was the poverty in some places. As we were driving we saw little clusters of patchwork buildings, rusted cars sitting outside and skinny dark children playing tag behind shrubs. Other parts were nicer, where the pickings weren’t as thin, perhaps. And along all of the roads were empty stalls where “Handmade Jewelry” was once sold. Some of the stalls were still in business, but not many. On one of our breaks we stopped beside one that went on forever. It was this long line of desolate, mismatched stalls. Standing back in the street for a larger view, they looked eerily like the missing teeth of some giant, the face the canyon and the sky the hair. Like somebody had punched Mother Nature in the face and still she grinned and showed off those empty gaping holes.

Possibly not the best thought, but where would we be if we didn’t take the good with the bad?

Lastly there’s the whole picture-taking thing. I’m supposedly the official picture-taker and I really hate it but at the same time my passive OCD (as I like to call it) won’t let anyone else take the pictures. I just know if I let someone else do it, they’ll miss all the great things I see. This coming from the girl with the dusty messy desk and five feet of old schoolwork to go through, and a closet that looks like a dozen of those fur balls from Spirited Away imploded.

I don’t know. I just feel like I’m missing something when I’m busy taking pictures, but at the same time I can’t shake the feeling that someone else would miss it if I didn’t.

Anyway. I have to get up early tomorrow, though it’s only—yikes—ten thirty. Off to Salt Lake City.

Genetic Engineering

So we were watching a video in Biology about the pros and cons of genetic engineering. My friend who sits next to me was getting pretty pissed at Watson (who is somewhere on the wrong side of 80 and takes 5 minutes to say anything) because of some comment or another about how people with manic depression shouldn’t have children. I guess it pissed her off because he was basically saying she shouldn’t have kids–and she shouldn’t exist. Basically her whole family has it, and here’s some scientist saying they shouldn’t exist.

Who’s to say?

Okay, so, here’s what I think about genetic engineering, if anyone cares to know. I think genetic engineering is neat. I like the idea that we can make genes. I don’t like the idea that we can make monsters with those genes. I like the idea that we can help fetuses who would grow to have disabilities be able to walk and talk like a normal kid. I don’t like the idea of genetic enhancement. I like that we can help people live longer. I don’t like that we can mess with the human genome. I like genetically engineering food. I don’t like genetically engineering people.

It’s not as simple as all that. I’ve learned that a lot of things aren’t that simple. And people who look for simple answers for complex problems are the same ones arguing day and night, again and again, the same circular reasoning that never accomplishes anything but spawning another generation of angry self-righteous arguments.

I think the idea to genetically engineer food is fantastic. It’s one of the best things to ever come out of a lab. As far as anyone knows, no diseases or deaths have ever been linked to genetically engineered food. Why is that? Because when you genetically engineer a tomato to be perfect, you aren’t tossing in extra genes. You aren’t giving it whiskers or feet or the ability to leap tall buildings. You’re just giving it the correct genes, the genes which have previously made perfect tomatos. It’s not like the DNA is going to randomly mutate into a giant tomato monster. If you didn’t get sick from eating a normal perfect tomato then you’re not going to get sick eating a genetically engineered perfect tomato. The only difference is in the method of production, and that’s only at the seed stage.

So, food is alright. It’s cheaper to raise a crop of perfect plants than a natural crop where blight can eat up half the profits and a number of other things can happen to make farming costly for poorer countries. But what about…animals?

I understand the mice. Testing on mice is a way of determining the later effects on humans because we share 99.9% of our DNA with them. I would rather a mouse swallowed a pill before me. Why? Because mice aren’t sentient, because mice are animals, blah blah a hundred different excuses, but it all comes down to…I’m human. We’re human. And it’s human nature to extend the lives of…humans. We see more suffering in other people than we ever will in animals.

However, the excess is too much. We see testing on animals that has little use in the real world. So scientists know how to grow a mouse without its legs. And that makes it right to do that? Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Where’s the line? Who says what’s right and what’s not? I think it’d be nice to have a great big scale with numbers and an arrow with degrees of rightness. It’d have been nice to have that scale when Hitler marched on Europe and Paris Hilton bought the latest in skinned animal fashion. But again, a simple answer to a complex problem.

I watched Gattaca one day in school, and it struck me how possible it all was. Not the fact that one guy managed to fool all those tests–yeah right. If you’re advanced enough to use eye scans and automatic urine tests, you’re advanced enough that someone’s going to talk. No, what struck me was how scientists could manipulate the human genome. You want your child to have blonde hair? Athletic? Intelligent? Done.

Why don’t you just go buy one at a store and be done with it.

Because honestly, that’s what it’s going to come down to. I’d like to think that scientists would be content with making people semi-disease-proof. I’d like to think we’d know where to stop but the truth is, I don’t think we’d be able to help ourselves. That big beautiful world of genetic manipulation, just waiting for us to…manipulate…

If nothing else, I would support genetic engineering so that people don’t have to go through 5 years of chemotherapy and end up dead anyway. I’d support it so autistic kids won’t get laughed at in class and the blind people can see and the deaf, hear, and all that jazz but the truth is I don’t think people would stop there. If you could give anything to your child, if you knew they were going to turn out as dumb or ugly or challenged as you perceive yourself to be, why not fix it? Pretty soon the technology’s going to be $5 a gene, buy one get one free until supplies last.

Funny how those things work, huh. People, being people, can’t help but want immortality and perfection because what else is going to fill 40 pages on Glamour? We’ve got our celebrities and our controversies and our cutting-edge drugs. And what’s it all aimed at? The goals genetic engineering has the potential to reach with a leap and a bound without all the hard work and studying and makeup.

Sounds a lot like cheating. If it’s possible to cheat at life.

Well anyway school’s tomorrow and my friend’s convinced me to attempt to sum up my life in a note on Facebook. Soo no blogging. Probably.

Summer College

Ugh. I am so long overdue for a rant about school. It’s just that, today I got an email inviting me to a nearby university for a summer college program. It sounded really cool and challenging, like something I would want to do instead of honing my skills at flipping burgers for 7 weeks. And there I am, getting more and more excited–

Maybe I should start at the beginning.

My best friend went to Princeton last summer for their summer college program. Which is like, unheard of because Princeton is so far away from where we live, but she did it. And ever since then I’ve wanted to do something similar.

And then I got an email from Brown, inviting me to do their summer college classes, and a couple other invitations. But I never really considered any of them because they’re all so far away from me. And then I got one from the U of A, which is like, a reasonable distance away–I could drive there in an hour!

For a minute, one blessed minute, I actually thought, maybe I can do something like that!

Why does it always, always, always, no matter who you are (unless you’re rich, I suppose), come down to money? I mean, it’s like the whole freaking world revolves around who pays and who gets paid. Which is does. Every single thing, it’s, can you pay for it? No? Well how about a scholarship?

Except for the fact that no one gives scholarships to middle-class white girls who haven’t saved an entire species of dolphin or written a bestselling novel or something ridiculous like that.

It’s the truth. For these summer college programs, at least. No one wants to finance someone who can assumedly afford $2,000 for two classes. Key word: assumedly.

Yeah, because my parents are going to want to pay two grand so I can take five weeks of sociology and cultures. Yeah. Right. Well, excuse me, whoever thought up the brilliant idea of charging $275 per credit, $600 for rent, and dozens of additional fees to make up for the distance between the state’s budget and the cost of keeping fresh coffee in the faculty lounge.

So I either have to be government-cheese poor or rich enough that it wouldn’t take me 275.86 hours working minimum wage to take two classes.

The argument being, well it’s not required. No duh! If it was required to take summer college, the people who set the costs would’ve been disowned a long time ago. So I shouldn’t take the class? Yeah. That’s right. I shouldn’t try to challenge myself over the summer by taking college courses, because who cares about learning when you have 7 weeks of break to spend running potatoes through the grease vat and manning the drive-through?

I mean, anyone would choose McDonald’s over an education. Right?

It just frustrates me so much.

Journals Suck

I think I’ve finally figured out why I could never keep a diary. One, it’s because the only time I’d be willing to write about myself is when I’m frustrated, and all that does is make me more angry. Two, I’m always getting the urge to embellish. I’ve got it stuck in my head that my life isn’t that fascinating (it really isn’t), so whenever I try to write a serious entry I always end up with about a dozen different ways to make it exciting. I.e., I went to the mall and–oh my god some guy tried to kidnap me!

You know.

I think that’s also the reason I could never write drama. Those books where there are all these family problems and the girl falls in love with the forbidden boy but it all ends up happily–No. I’m reading those books and going, so when is she going to get mugged? When’s the comet going to fall from the sky and smite the stupid father? Where’s the action?

My dreams tend to agree with me. Whenever I start having a nice, normal dream about going to the grocery store or something, my subconscious throws in a bunch of ninja thugs from Saint’s Row and a huge man-eating octopus. That’s how it goes. Or at least, that’s how it went last night.

I dreamt I was playing a video game with my brothers and suddenly I was sucked into it. I was fighting off these vampire-looking things and suddenly my gun morphs into a button and the only way to fire it is to squeeze the button. Gosh, and if that wasn’t strange enough, I only had one clip so I decided to go save these children from a big bulbous octopus-looking thing with roots that was hanging from the tree. That was pretty intense.

Then my friend turned out to be Kelly Clarkson. I think that was the strangest part.

So, my point being, I find it impossible to keep myself bored. Or at least, I find everything normal to be boring. I swear, if someone was let into my head during school hours they’d label me certifiably insane and lock me in some padded room far, far away. Where I can’t do any damage with my twisted imagination.

Sometimes I think Salvador Dahli’s got nothing on me.

P.S. I think we should all watch Boondock Saints on St. Patricks Day.

TeenInk

This is pretty neat-o. I got me some publishing lovin’. Sort of. Not really. It’s in that TeenInk online site. Looking back on it, I find a million things wrong with my writing but I guess that’s just the way it goes sometimes, huh?

http://www.teenink.com/raw/Fiction/article/89398/Sparrow/

Salmonella party

I want to die. Well, maybe it’s not that extreme, but I feel like I’m going to die.

It’s salmonella, swear to god. Though if this is the typical case of salmonella I think the people who approve it in the food industry should be beaten with rusty metal pipes. No joke.

I’ve been puking my guts up for hours now and there’s no end in sight. Then there’s the problem with my…digestion, if you will. Right before I puke all the blood drains out of my face and my lips turn this scary white color and my vision goes dark and spotty. Also, I can’t hear out of my left ear. Is that normal? I wouldn’t think so, but with this bug, I really can’t be sure.

It was the Nutter Butters. The peanut butter, yet again. Someday I’m going to get so sick, pun intended, of peanut butter being infected that I’m going to swear it off. I’ll go to the store and buy the big tubs of it just so I can burn it in my fireplace.

So while it’s 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday, I’m still up waiting with bated breath (not really) for the next round of cleanse-myself-in-any-way-possible. I didn’t know there was that much waste, including stuff in my stomach from like 2 days ago, to lose, but I guess my body’s pulling out all the stops for this one.

I doubt anyone’s going to read this anyway, so I’ll probably just ramble on for a while until the next bout hits. But wait! I feel it comin’ on. Isn’t there a song like that? Iunno. Brb. I gotta hit the bathroom and cleanse.

I guess that wasn’t another round of sickness. My body’s teasing me, I think, and not in the way siblings tease. This nonsense is mean. I also can add some new symptoms. I don’t feel like doing anything. Like literally, even when I know I should get up and worship the porcelain god for a while, my limbs just won’t cooperate. Complete lack of motivation? I can barely find the energy to type.

3:13. I just realized the bowl I’m using for emergency throwing up is the same one we use to pass out Halloween candy. Does that make us bad people? Because it’s sort of gross.

I should shave my legs while I’m waiting. That, and finish this online jigsaw, and read my book, maybe start that necklace kit my mom got me, or even do that latch hook picture I started but never got around too finishing. My fingers don’t wanna move anymore.

DC Tomorrow!

Okay, so there are a few things I’ve still got to do before I go. I’m in Health watching Super Size Me teaching edition, which is doubtless the most exaggerated food movie I’ve ever seen. Not that the food most teenagers eat isn’t bad for them, but really. Not every high school has soda vending machines and coffee expresso and candy bars available 24-7. And since that ridiculous law that says kids aren’t allowed to be offered sugar-high nonsense during school hours, there’s water. Hallelujiah! We have water to keep us going when we want to slam our heads into the wall from stress. Take the SATS on water and tofu. Yeah, think again.

Well, that’s my brief rant about Health. It just irritates me so bad that, with all the other problems out there, we have to spend 90% of our time being told Carl’s Jr. is the devil and the Christian abstinence program is the only way to go. Schools who provide condoms and birth control have a lower teen pregnancy rate than the rest of the country. That’s a fact. I wonder why.

My bit of sarcasm has officially been served.

So tomorrow I leave for DC. I take a flight to Dallas then catch a connecting flight to DC. I have to go home and pack. It’s made me wonder a lot about what people are allowed to bring on planes.

I know there’s a good reason for the liquids thing. And a lot of manufacturing companies have catered to that. I got toothpaste, contact solution, and shampoo in those little TSA packages under 4 ounces. Yippee. Not only are people afraid of flying due to terrorists, they’re living in fear of them. Buying all those <4 ounce packages that make corporate wallets bulge and passengers watch their neighbors suspiciously. Thinking every cell phone is a bomb and every Middle Easterner is a terrorist. It’s ridiculous. Completely, inexcusably ridiculous. You have a greater chance of being STRUCK BY LIGHTNING than killed in a terrorist attack. You know how many people have been killed by terrorist attacks in the United States in the last ten years? 3,000. You know when those 3,000 died? Yeah, I thought so.

And then! There’s the electronics thing. I have music on my phone, but supposedly we’re not supposed to use our phones on the plane. So I figure I’ll turn it off during take off and landing. Imagine how embarrassing it would be if my phone went off during the flight. Of course, I’ll put it on silent, but I have a pair of those new Bluetooth headphones that are wireless. What if something messes up and when I try to turn on my music it pounds out the first stanza of Hollywood Undead’s “Dead in Ditches”? Not so great.

Why do they make people turn off cells anyway? I suppose it would have something to do with interference between communications. But truthfully, if I’m in the air and a single cell phone makes the plane crash, there’s something wrong with the plane to begin with.

Still Waiting

It’s so hard, doing the right thing. I’m not talking about picking up after yourself or opening doors for other people. I mean the stuff that matters most, when it’s the hardest.

People have a tendency to grow used to things. If everything is peaceful, they get used to peace. If everything is war, they get used to war. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. All the time. Especially things like thinking you can help someone. Thinking you’re smart, because you see things other people don’t, when really there’s always someone else around the corner, someone smarter, who not only sees things but makes connections to them.

Things change so fast it almost makes me want to believe in a God because then maybe it’ll make things easier on the conscience. You can say, it’s not my fault, and there’s some great imaginary being who wisks away all the guilt so you have the strength to get up and move on. Except sometimes, the best of intentions can’t make up for the worst of outcomes.

I got to thinking I was smarter than other people, sharper, because I have a high IQ and school is easy for me and people can talk to me if they need to. That’s what I did. And I got so used to it. I got so used to the idea that I was completely independent that I was shocked when alas! here comes the day when I can’t fix everything. But I try anyway, anything to preserve that long-lasting niche. Anything to stay on the same tracks. It’s incredible how, even knowing that people can be obstinate, you end up doing it yourself without thinking. I guess knowing and doing are more different than I ever thought.

And even though the blame is not solely on me, I can’t help but feel like a shit. Because maybe, if I’d told someone, they could have helped her.

My parents were right when they compared what I did (or didn’t do) to when a guy at my school showed off this gun in his backpack and no one told anyone…for whatever reasons. And then the guy went home and shot his stepsister to death.

Afterwards they were all broken up about, crying and asking, “Why didn’t I do anything? I wish I could’ve told someone.” And I was in the background mentally slapping them upside the head and saying, “Well why didn’t you?”

Here it is, irony, delivering an iron punch to the face that I never saw coming. Me and my stupid one-track mind.

No, I’m not depressed. I don’t hate my life. I love life and every chocolate bar, tree, cloud, friend, and enemy in it. I don’t understand people who want to commit suicide. It’s not an excuse, but it’s part of the reason I didn’t say anything. Maybe I couldn’t believe anyone would want it to end.

Yeah, right? Blah blah blah, I should’ve done this and I know now but that doesn’t change anything, ever. In the future, maybe. But not now. No excuse. None.

It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright because it has to, and sometimes you can’t acknowledge that there’s any other option. Even cynics know that. Even I know that.

I always hated stories about families left behind during wars. I would read about how hard it was for them, imagining their loved ones out there dying, and I thought, “Geez, why not just go out and do something about it?” But I guess someone has to stay home and take care of normal life so people in war don’t forget what it’s like to be human. I guess I was wrong, thinking the people in war have it worse because they’re out there dying, but waiting and waiting and agonizing, spending all your time worrying, it’s another kind of death.

For the first few days, no one called me. I didn’t text her phone because what if her parents had taken it away? They were the type to dole out the punishment, if only for the good of the kid, but still. So I lived on denial, ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, slept with it, woke up with it, looked through eyes clouded with it, and then reality caught up with me and smacked me in the face for all that pretending. De-nile is not just a river in Egypt. No, it’s a dam, build up and pushed against and finally, bursting free, flooding and drowning.

And maybe, eventually, dying down. Or just dying. I have to stop thinking like that.

Fabulous. Now I look like crap, I’m worried out of my mind, two more people hate me, I’m more self-absorbed than ever, I can’t shake the feeling it’s my fault, my parents think I’m depressed, my writing skills have gone down the crapper (or maybe there weren’t any to begin with), and worst of all is I have to live with myself because there really isn’t any other option. At least I learned my lesson. Right? Does that even count for anything? Don’t answer that. Of course it does. Perhaps.

Anyway, I just vent my feelings through words. This was a convenient source. More than likely, tomorrow I’ll wake up and check my account and guess how many people even care? Nada. But that doesn’t matter, I’ve decided. Before, I was so worried, like what if I post stuff on those writing sites and on here and no one even reads them? Does that mean I suck? Well maybe it does but I’ve decided it doesn’t matter either way. The general public can kiss my ass. I feel alright with everything that’s going on because even though it tears you up inside you just know it won’t be like that all the time. You won’t always use run-on sentences and have to vent to a website and care about visitors and comments and things that don’t matter. Imagine if you were dying, if you had five minutes to live. What would matter? Not this.

It’s like Buffy said. The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.

P.S. What am I supposed to do now?

What would you say?

Something that bothers me more than anything is when people become fanatics about things that shouldn’t matter as much as they do. For example, I was google-surfing and came across this forum devoted to Obama. And that was alright, I mean, despite the tension left over from the election, I’m not one of those people who gets angry about losing or hyper-excited about winning. I’m only sixteen.

So I was reading the threads and I came across this one from a girl in Tennessee, I think it was. It said in so many words that everyone who supported McCain is a killer because Republicans enjoy violence and everyone who supported Obama is compassionate. It also stated that everyone under the age of eighteen supports Obama because we’re a collective mind, we all want change, blah blah etcetera etcetera. I sort of just skimmed. The blatant propaganda was shredding my brain cells.

Anyway, as I said before, I have no problem with loving ideas and politics and getting worked up over them. I suppose that’s the way it should be. If no one cared, there’d be no progression. But really. There’s just something…completely wrong about overgeneralizing to such an extent. And it’s not even one site! It’s like, hundreds. For both sides. As if serial killers can’t support Obama and peace activists can’t be Republican. What the heck?

Anyway, I was thinking about the campaign, not for the first time. I hadn’t really considered it before because I’m not old enough to vote. And then I was watching South Park poke fun at the hardcore fans and I wondered about all those times people ask theoretical questions. Questions like, if you could say one thing to the new president, what would it be? And even though there’s no chance, right now at least, that I’d be able to say a word to the guy, it occurred to me that the next four years, when I finish high school and enter college, are going to be defined by a man I’ve never met, determined to induce changes I’m not sure I want, to outline my future, and the futures of the people I love. Strangers I’ll never meet, deciding my choices, and what if they mess up? Sure, politicians can get fired. Presidents can get impeached. But not always.

It’s somewhat scary. So when a friend of mine posed that theoretical question to me, I thought, well what else would I say? Good job? Don’t ruin my life?

More like, it’s a whole lot of responsibility, holding lives in your hand like playing cards or marbles to move aside or cherish or throw away. Let’s just hope that’s not my future in the discard pile.