Blogging is so much fun! I forgot how much fun it was, haha.

As morbid as it seems... I think that real-life murder stories are fascinating. I've always been interested in the psyche of people - especially ones with deep-rooted problems. Besides, it's interesting to dig into their lives and find out their meaning behind their deeds. Alright, so it's kind of weird and disturbing, but I still think it's interesting to think about.

• Andrea Yates : a.k.a. the woman who killed her children in her bathtub

Seriously. What would drive a mother of five young children to drown them all in a bathtub? This is obviously a case of insanity or mental illness, which was used as her motive. This wasn't all her fault, however, because her husband, Russell, had been advised by Andrea's doctor not to leave her alone, because she was destructive. Over time, Russell left home for short periods of time, turning into longer periods of time that eventually lead up to the deaths of the children. So who should the blame go towards? The woman who has a legit illness, or the man who knew and ignored it?

• John Wayne Gacy Jr. : a.k.a. the American who raped and killed thirty-three boys and hid them in a crawlspace
  

This story, to me, is the saddest. This man would dress up as a clown and lure small boys into his home where he would rape and murder them. It's saddening to think that something born so pure can grow up to be so alienated and confused, so detached and unwell as to commit such terrible acts. The best description of this would actually be the song "John Wayne Gacy Jr." by Sufjan Stevens. I would strongly recommend listening to this - it is actually a very beautiful song.

www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858541937/ - for the lyrics.

what is wrong with me?

I don't feel like myself. Can anyone really feel like his or herself if they don't know themselves? You can't know yourself - it's futile to try, to be honest. Have you ever felt that you're nothing among billions of people? Maybe at night, you've looked up to the sky and you've seen all of the stars with Jupiter in the distance... it's a humbling feeling, isn't it? You just feel like a small speck that is completely alone. This seems emotional, I know, but it's just what I'm feeling at the moment.

I don't feel like I'm going to get anywhere in life. I'll end up being the lady on your street corner that has three kids named Laquita, Shalawna, and Earl that sells foodstamps and always has some kind of awful story to tell you about her life. I don't want this to happen, but at the same time, I feel that I somehow deserve it. I don't know why I feel this way, but maybe I committed some heinous crime before I was born. It would make sense, actually, if I didn't think about it too much.

I do feel like I expect too much out of people, however. A lot of things that I don't need or whatever are things that I guess I took for granted and then they never were given... no one likes that feeling, do they? (I love how my iPod just switched to the song from 'The Land Before Time'). Anyway, I'm selfish, or I feel that way. I want too much, I talk too much, I just do too much. Sometimes I think I should just get up and leave. I'd go west, and someday, maybe one day, I'd reach the Pacific Ocean.

What is wrong with me?

Why do I keep second-guessing myself?

Why do I work so hard to get what I want and then never actually get it?

Why are all these things happening to me? What did I do to deserve it?

Why can't I make one damn decision about my life or what I want?

Christmas, I thought, was a time when people were brought together... I'd rather be alone.

miscellaneous odds and ends.

+ I know that I'm a complete loser.
+ I am a survivor of the Twilight fanatics' boards.
+ I always wear a certain ring on my right thumb.
+ I like looking at the stars at night.
+ I chew on my knuckles when I'm upset or anxious.
+ I told kids in preschool that Santa didn't exist.
+ I don't have tons of friends, but I have close ones.
+ I wanted to be an archeologist when I was five.
+ Apparently I was a very serious child.
+ I don't get angry often, but when I do, it apparently is quite terrifying. But it hardly ever happens.
+ I make friends very easily. Almost too easily.
+ I always have some type of candy on me.
+ I think that if things don't work out the way I want them to then I'll end up living with 30 cats in an apartment.
+ I'm a musical/cinema/literary bourgeoisie.
+ Yes, I use words like "bourgeoisie".
+ I know I'm not consistent.
+ I realize more than people think that I do.
+ I know that I'm alive for a reason.
+ I'm a morning person, if I'm not woken up.
+ I'm a snob when it comes to grammar.
+ I know how to save a life.
+ However, I've never had to save one.
+ I laugh at my own jokes all the time.
+ I'm really bad at dancing, but I like it.
+ I've seen the northern lights.
+ I've won four talent shows.
+ I play the cello, violin, and piano.
+ I sing along to the radio in the car.
+ I love telling stories and presenting projects.
+ I work well in groups and by myself.
+ John Madden, Jeffree Star, Christopher Walken, and Alan Colmes scare me.
+ I collect pins and postcards from different states.
+ I've been sick for 7 months at a time.
+ I've stepped on a nail.
+ I love my sense of humor.
+ I can find my mum in the store by the sound of her keys.

+ I'm pretty normal.

pre-autobiography.

On November 19, 1991, I was born in a small hospital in an even smaller town in the middle of Wisconsin. My father, the doctor at that particular (and only) hospital, also worked at the Menominee reservation.

Now, you have to understand - Wisconsin, and especially where I was, had three groups of people. We had the Swedes, the Norwegians, and the Danes. Most of these people had immigrated here because the farming was good, and Wisconsin is known as the 'cheese state'. I could say that a good 90% of the people had never seen a black family in their lives... and that's when we came along.

My father worked for the military, and he was actually a lieutenant because he gave medical care to the Menominee people. I don't know why that made him a lieutenant, but it was kind of cool to see soldiers salute him whenever he pulled out his ID card.

I don't remember much about the town for the first three years of my life, but my parents saved newspaper articles and have told me why we left when I was five or six years old. This is my story, or at least some of the things that have made me who I am today.

My earliest memories appear when I was around three years old. Mum apparently got tired of reading to me for eighteen hours a day, so she tried to get me into a private preschool. Now, in order to get into the class, you had to be five years of age. I was three, but since I had some kind of hormonal imbalance, I looked like I was six and they let me into preschool.

I remember the feeling of loneliness. I was often lonely as a child, and only because I was different. I had short, black hair and didn't believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy (and made sure that everyone knew that there was no such thing). I made friends at the school, however. The teacher said that I was the social butterfly of the class and always wanted to tell stories and lead the line out to recess and everything.

However... the friendships didn't last outside the classroom. My Mum would ask parents if their child could come and spend some time with me at my house, where I had this play set with two swings, a slide, a canopy, and a sandbox. Somehow, for three years, the parents always found something else that they were doing instead. They had appointments, they had family over visiting, the child was sick, they couldn't make it, etc. So, I mostly was alone.

I don't remember all of the things that happened, but my parents told me details when I was older and could fully understand them. It wasn't that the people hated us - it was that they felt threatened by a new type of people. It wasn't that they were racist - they just didn't want to accept a new idea or type of people.

My father told me that sometimes when we were in the grocery stores, that people would actually follow us to make sure we weren't stealing things. Sometimes the bold ones would come up to me and put their fingers in my hair to feel its texture. They had never felt black hair in their lives, and they saw it as an opportunity of sorts. It sounds absurd, but it's perfectly true.

There were times that I remember that were good times, though. It wasn't all gloom and a four year old sitting in a cold house reading "Good Night, Moon" over and over again. That was hardly the case. I had my mother read the story to me while I played "Indian" in my authentic teepee that I got for a birthday gift from the chief of the Menominee people because apparently my father helped his daughter get well or something.

My favorite memory would have to be around Christmas. I've always loved snow, and there was plenty of it in Wisconsin. They said that they had nine months of winter, and one month of spring, fall, and summer. It was mostly true. Anyway, it was around Christmas and Dad took me up to the hospital to do rounds and hand out little Christmas trees. I got to give them to the residents, and we went to the cafeteria and he got me one of those big and warm M&M cookies that you always see in the Mrs. Fields Commercials.

My dad would take me outside where there was this hill that stretched out about half the size of a football field, and it was pretty steep. What everyone did in the winter was they sled down the hill and walked back up. Most of the time they didn't have the energy go again after the walk back up, so they only went once.

I don't remember going down the hill specifically, but I remember looking out onto the water (there was some body of water that was completely frozen over, and it was thick ice - the kind that grown men could jump up and down on) and seeing cars off in the distance. That memory always makes me smile, because they would have races with these big SUVs out on the ice.

The reason we left when I was around five or six was because one day I came home and blatantly told my mother that I couldn't have a princess themed party because I wasn't a princess. Of course, she asked me why, and I said it was because people that were black could not be princesses or beautiful. After that, we packed up and left.

Sometimes I miss it, but only because of the snow. Now that I'm over in Virginia, it doesn't snow as much, if it even snows at all. The people in Virginia don't understand snow... if there is even one flake in the air, people will run to Wal*Mart, buy out all the milk, bread, eggs, flashlights and batteries because they are afraid of it.

But I love the snow... I guess I'm just a Wisconsin-girl at heart. I've never lived in a big city with more than 5,000 people, so I don't know a lot of things that my peers do. I was also sheltered (and still am, slightly) from things that my parents decided that I didn't need to hear, see, or do.



That's all I can remember about my childhood that really sticks out in my memory.

and they lived happily ever after.

You know what's unrealistic? Fairy tales. I was coming back home from Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt's house, and I was thinking about how they're not realistic at all. Yeah, I know that there are the /real/ fairy tales, where the wicked stepmothers dance in burning shoes, the protagonist gets raped and has twins out of wedlock and then her husband eats them by mistake, and that sort of thing, but most people don't know those stories. They know the pretty-girl-meets-the-equally-or-more-pretty-guy-unless-he-is-the-Beast-so-he's-beautiful-on-the-inside-and-they-fall-in-love-and-live-happily-ever-after stories. Those stories drive me insane.

That must be why Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale as a child (and still is: I've seen it 35 times this year, 4 times on IMAX, and 8 times on HDTV). It was because it actually had some sort of a moral (beauty is in the eye of the beholder), unlike all the rest of the Disney things. Now, I'm not dissin' Disney. I know that others had morals somewhere in there, like... The Lion King's moral would be to... actually, I don't know, because I haven't seen it in about 5 years or so. Okay, another one - the moral of Sleeping Beauty is that patience is a virtue. And in Snow White, the moral is that if you eat a rotten apple and fall asleep, you'll fall in love with a random guy beside you.

I'd like to know why they never had a black princess, for starters. What was up with that? Was Walt Disney racist? Even if they did make a black princess, she would probably be from Africa and her husband would be some kind of lion-hunter or some nonsense like that. Even then, I bet she would have straight hair, which in itself is totally unrealistic, because black people do not have straight hair (generally speaking). Take it from me - I'd kill to have some of that white girl hair. Shoot, I'd go for some of that gorgeous Indian hair. Anyway, the point is, that even if there was a movie that featured a black princess of some sort, would it really be realistic? And even then! It's too late for me, and I was the one who truly believed from the bottom of my heart that I could not be a princess because I was not white, long brown or blond hair, thin, had blue eyes and perfect legs (yeah, they always show their legs in the movies - except for the Lion King, but there are no humans). Isn't that an awful thing for a five year old to say? It is awful, and it was because of society.

Back to my point. Fairy tales are completely unrealistic, and for what purpose? To get kids to forget that they live in a welfare home without a father and a Mom who thinks that dinner is a few McNuggets? If they want a real story that they can relate to, then maybe have the 'princess' have a weave and the 'prince' have a baby mama in another city or something. Maybe throw in a couple gangs and teenage angst. I think everyone can relate to that, and the kids would have early exposure to the fantastic world of 'young adulthood' and all that mess.

You know what? Life can be a fairytale, if you make it to be one. It really depends on your point of view, which is completely cliche, but still completely true. If you love yourself, then you'll be able to love others - no matter what they look like or if they smell bad or have rotten teeth because you can see past that. Isn't that hat love really is? Not seeing someone for the first time and suddenly falling in love with them. Yeah, so, it probably could happen, but not as dramatic as they make it in movies and books and all of that. My worry is that the younger the kids are that are watching these things, the deeper impression it will have on them, which will result in them looking for someone who looks like a complete god - i.e. (in my opinion) Hugh Laurie, Daniel Craig, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Lupe Fiasco, Viggo Mortensen, Denzel Washington, or Gaspard Ulliel. That's just teaching girls to be superficial and look for hot guys. Sure, there's nothing wrong with physical and sexual attraction, but when that's all you've got, you're not left with a lot, now, are you?

That's all that I've got to say, so, look sharp and stay classy.

my (un)irrational fear of owls.

There is a perfectly rational fear of owls. Not just in the physical sense, seeing that they're big and have huge, depth-less black eyes, and wings that span many feet. Yes, they are majestic, and I see them as such, but not as often as I see them as harbingers of death. When I lived in Wisconsin, right off of the Menominee Reservation, it was told to me by one of my father's friends (my father was a doctor for the tribe) that when an owl cried in such a certain way, that someone in the next tribe had died. My father heard it once, and in fact, someone in the neighboring tribe had died, which, in itself, is either coincidental or real.

When I was around seven years old, I had a dream that I was walking to down the street in the dark, in a blue and green plaid nightgown without any shoes - I stopped walking because I heard a noise, and I turned around, only to see a huge white owl staring at me. I still remember the feeling of being looked straight at, with those deep and black eyes, and feeling like I couldn't hide anything, even though I was only seven. I woke up in a cold sweat, and to this day, even seeing pictures or videos of them on television makes be break out in goosebumps.

When I was about twelve, I had a violin concert that I had been performing at with the orchestra I had attended. My father took me there, and the concert ended at around ten. So, driving about an hour and a half home, it was around eleven-thirty when we were driving down our road. It happened to be a foggy night, of course, and I was half asleep and kind of groggy, since it was way past my bedtime.

(A picture of the road that we were driving down in the less-scary daytime.)

Out of the fog and mist, right through the dark trees came this huge white bird. I mean, we're talking seven-foot wingspan, here. It was flying straight in front of us, and I suppose that it was backing up when it saw our headlights, because the wings expanded even more and it pushed the fog and mist from around it, keeping it hovered in mid-air. I swear, it was the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life. Being half asleep and already being scared of owls made me think it was the angel of death coming to take me or something. I know that I was awake and fully alert at that point, also, because my father said that I was screaming like I was being murdered. Eventually, it flew off, leaving the fog to settle and for me to stay unsettled for the next couple of weeks.

That is why I'm afraid of owls. However! I was researching about what it means when owls visit you on some site about mythology or something, and it said this:

"If an owl has visited you, an incredible gift has been bestowed. Also, keep in mind that animals are only called to those who share the same energy. In other words, you hold within you some of the very same symbolic attributes the owl represents...

- intelligence
- brilliance
- perspective
- intuition
- quick-wit
- independence
- wisdom
- protection
- mystery
- power

To illustrate, you may have abilities to know things that others do not know. It may be likely you have very strong intuitive abilities that can be fine-tuned. Further, you may be strong-willed person, and/or have a protective side to you. This shows that you are mentally sharp - so we know you have this in common with the owl already."

(http://symbolic-meanings.com/2007/08/14/owl-symbolism-deeper-meaning-of-owl/)

Still. Even if I have those characteristics, owls are still freaky.

Stay sharp and look classy.

- Alex