Feeling kinda monday

Most of my favorite songs seem to be in C major, one of the simplest keys to play in. No sharps or flats to throw you off the boardwalk. I also noticed myself skipping past songs written in minor keys. Something sounded so negative and almost like a sad wail I wanted to go back into my simple world of C major butterflies. And I like waltz's but I have such bad balance I feel like I am going to stumble and fall in the middle of the dance floor when I hear the tricky three note in one beat quick flickering of notes through the waltz. Like a sentence you need to finish before breathing as the thump thump thump of the bass clef chords let you catch your breath at the end of a long complaint of notes. Yes, I think I like the simplicity and majestic tones of a song in C major. My majorette likes to march along in my head against a cool breeze or relax out in the sun with a lie-back-and-drink-lemonade kind of daze as the sounds of the piano lure away any stormy thoughts. Maybe I just miss playing the piano but I am also very biased towards songs with just the piano. I love the sound of a full orchestra like a gust of wind strong enough to knock over your garbage-can but sometimes I just want that simple song delightfully pieced together with just the white teeth of a grand baby. My C major so deliciously scooped together from the vanilla buttons I crave at the end of the day. But this Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major by Mozart makes a compelling argument like making it to the top of a grass hill barefoot and finally getting to run back down it faster and faster up and down with only 3 black bumblebees to watch out for. Bragging with clarinets the sophistication of playing with 3 black candles letting the wax run down the side so smoothly. But the violins blow in a sort of wind that reminds me of my C major cool breeze.

Today I made a few breezes of my own as I reached for tissue after tissue turning my nose the same pink my cheeks turned when I had to speak in front of a class of at least 70. I don't know if my cold resulted from this ad-libbing massacre or if skipping my allergy medicine for one day can result in a sinus infection. Either way I definitely do not like being the center of attention these days. There was once a time back in the day that I did like to have all eyes on me, I think. In high school I played volleyball and thought I was really good at it, and I still am, I think, since I've been playing all my life. I was outside hitter and I owned my position, or so I thought. After I spiked the ball and got a kill I would give a stare at the other team and put my hands out to my sides as if I were saying what couldn't you pass that? I remember a girl in my stats class bringing this up during the "weekly review" we had with the class. Just like I am now, I didn't like to say much in front of my class but to me this girl said the most meaningful and loaded words that stand out in my memory. She said something like I never realized this but Liz Miller is freakin hilarious on the volleyball court and said something regarding my flaunting ritual after I got a really good hit. More fans began showing up. We always had a fairly packed gym of fans but still, nothing can compare to a gym full chanting your last name.

Piano Concerto No. 18 in B flat major by Mozart... I forgot about the false likelihood that lures you in and then just as you are relaxing into your seat the song reminds you why it is dangerous to ride with flats. Running back and forth between two notes going back and forth in a indecision unable to decide. Sounds too similar to me for me to like. An indecisive song is not going to encourage me to make my mind up faster, even though the concluding notes find a good decision to end on, it still takes a long time to get there. But there is something satisfying about listening to a song start out with a question and then contemplate it with an array of jumbled notes but end with a straight forward answer, like the dong of a bell, a complicated song ending with a simple chord. I think I'd still rather my happy C major song full of different questions with immediate answers with a bow at the end as if showing off your math skills. Maybe I just need to start practicing the piano again and contemplate my own questions and answer them with my fingers.

I held my breath as I passed through a puff of rude smoke. I had to re calculate my route when some creeper guy stood smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk and looked me up and down and followed me with his eyes as I passed making a big curve away from the creep right through someone's cigarette smoke as they blissfully and ignorantly puffed away while waiting at a bus stop. Did you have to take a breath at the end of that sentence? Because that's how I felt after I got across the street and evaluated what I had just walked past. Some men these days have no decency; whistling out their window at girls maybe a third their age. Maybe as I get further into my psychology studies I will find out that there is some major epidemic of creeperness in the male population ages 35 to 60. Or maybe the radioactive waste at Hanford finally reached the Columbia river and we're all slowly being poisoned as we hydrate ourselves, some of it going straight to the brains of middle aged men. Either way, my life is filled with instances of uncomfortable situations because of some disturbing fascination middle aged men have with making young girls feel repulsed. I dress conservatively and feel that same amount of unwanted attention from nasty obnoxious men as do girls who try to flaunt what they got to get that extra attention. Until today I don't think I have ever reflected on how uncomfortable I can be by just one unwanted stair by a creepy stranger.

As if the world needed something else to worry about, the United States government used human testing to see what would happen if, I don't know, radiation was injected into the blood stream, or how about feeding children radiation injected oatmeal. When an explosion occurs at a nuclear power plant and radiation is falling from the sky into your city, would you want to know about it? The Soviet Union tried to play this off in Chernobyl until they were caught when SWEDEN's nuclear power plant alarms went off for heightened levels of radioactivity and they began to investigate where the hell this was coming from. It took 6 DAYS for the nearby city to be evacuated. A large fraction of the rescue squad from the explosion died within 3 months from all the exposure to radioactivity without protective gear. The Soviet Union wasn't going to say anything about this and let people continue living their lives in cancerous radioactivity causing things like thyroid cancer and those exposed long term affects in their kids like down syndrome, chromosomal aberrations, and neural tube defects. Those who were working at the time of the accident were told to continue working at their stations. Radioactive rain was experienced in the UNITED STATES. But, the United States buried radioactive waste some odd miles away from Point Hope, Alaska without using any of the usual precautions such as encasing the material in some sort of container or how about informing the residents of such a dump. It wasn't until an anthropologist went to this unique community to study them that alarms went off with all the cases of cancer deaths. The U.S. government said oh must be your lifestyle choices smoking with your religious ceremonies. Not. Or how about when the U.S. drew blood, filled it with radioactivity, then injected it back into the Marshallese test subjects. Who would consent to that? They didn't. They were forced to. How about going outside to see it raining a strange gray material into your water supply? How many Americans would like that? Oh wait but you haven't heard the best part, that gray material is radioactive and you just drank it because you were told it was safe to drink anyway. All but a handful of the Marshallese have survived this radioactive testing performed by the U.S. government. Now they are facing famine because their food sources are still contaminated from the atomic bombs dropped. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8fRvH1nPGo is a 6th grade choir singing in Marshallese. Notice how a lot of the words they sing are in English because their language has never needed the words like bombs or leukemia. It scares me what the government is capable of getting away with. You hear about the genocide happening in Africa or child labor in China but you never hear about how the U.S. poisoned its people and poisoned communities to study its affects. Well duh radiation is deadly. How much more do you need to know? What is the purpose of these "studies"?

That was a long boring rant. Reading optional I suppose. I always critique people I hear talking who sound uninformed or naive. But really I think the whole world is a little bit naive. There are some things that have happened that some people are better off not knowing, I guess. Live happier lives that way I suppose.

I can hear the pouring rain

I reminisced playing the "Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nut Cracker piano accompaniment with my middle school orchestra. It had a long piano solo in the middle of the song where it was just me without any other instrument. This was the most difficult piece I have ever mastered. Every time I was called up to the front of the class to practice on the piano with the orchestra, my face turned the color of a juicy ripe tomato. Normally I played the ginormous string bass with the orchestra but not for this song. My fellow bass players always made fun of me for my face turning red but it was worth it in the end when we performed this piece as one of our "finale" pieces. Even as I grew as a piano player in high school I have never been able to play that piece as well, if at all.

Meth doesn't exist in nature. It was man made originally by the government to keep the military and pilots awake for long periods. It is still administered in small doses to pilots and possibly the military as well. It is also in common ADD medications given to children in smaller doses than the recreational use. Meth-amphetamine works on the Norepinephrine and Dopamine systems in the brain keeping neurotransmitters in the synapse longer. What does this do? In addition to making you feel really good, it makes you hypervigilant in recreational doses. This is why this drug is highly addictive. Some common side affects include Meth mouth, malnutrition, and bad hygiene. Chronic users of meth begin to lack circulation of the blood to the teeth so oxygen cannot reach them thus upping the likelihood of cavities. The part of the brain that makes people want to have good hygiene is tampered with in chronic meth users so on top of lack of circulation to their teeth, they'll stop brushing their teeth. On top of that, the nutrition part of the brain is also affected so instead of eating healthy, a chronic meth user would eat candy all day for example. This is just a glazed over description of all the great things about Meth. My cousin fell into its seductive trap. It got him kicked out of his high school and arrested. Getting his life back on "track" he graduated job corp and got a job at a grocery store. In the process he fell off a roof because his landlord asked him to do some job up there and he chose to do it high. He was lucky to survive with a broken back. His excuse then to get high some more was the back pain. Now he faces rape charges for something he did that he doesn't even remember because he was drunk and high on Meth. Lucky for him he may be able to take a plea bargain for assault which looks better on your record than rape and has less of a penalty. He has not been to a family dinner in a year or so because the timing "hasn't agreed with his work schedule". Is he guilty? I don't think he even knows.

Cocaine works on the Dopamine system in your brain. It makes the dopamine neurotransmitters stay in the synapse longer by blocking reuptake and stimulating the release of dopamine. This makes you feel really good, aroused, high energy, and you lose your appetite. I moved to a new school in the second grade. This put my older brother in a new school in the fourth grade. This is where he met his best buddy in the whole world. My brother's best buddy grew to become a family best buddy along with his family. When they graduated high school, my brother's best buddy moved away to an out of state college, and the separation of best buddies was the saddest thing in the world. This didn't last long as his adventures at an out of state college lead him to cocaine use which brought him back home since he flunked out. Cocaine works on the Dopamine system of the brain, the same system that when not working healthily, can cause symptoms of psychosis. Therefore, chronic cocaine users eventually become schizophrenic and we begin to see positive symptoms of schizophrenia like hallucinations because of the damage caused by cocaine use. My brother's best buddy was already suffering from bipolar disorder. He has been in and out of rehab and has been back and forth through relapses. He is now back with his crazy ex girlfriend from high school and even though he is still in the state, it has been another tragic separation of best buddies, separated by a disastrous case of cocaine addiction. I pray for peace.

My left arm throbs as I type this, as does my heart for two potentially young gentlemen caught in a windstorm of poor decisions. "One. Two. Three. Poke," said the nurse as she stabbed me with the HPV vaccination. She definitely didn't need to say poke when she poked because I felt the poke part, no words necessary. That was it and I was on my way out to the waiting room where my boyfriend sat reading a magazine article. I was done so quick he made me wait on him as he finished his one page article. I felt so much more comfortable having him with me at the doctors office. It's such an amazing feeling to look over and see him driving next to me, side by side. But our relationship was tested when we couldn't put together a simple bed frame without arguing. Obviously I was wrong because he's supposed to be the one good with tools so I made a delicious soup and made myself useful that way.

I think I really like Preludes for the piano. I used to love playing them. Even the most simple ones to play sound so complex. I'm listening to Preludes (10) For Piano, Op. 23 by Rachmaninov and I can hear the simplicity in it yet the complexity. I can hear how the left and right hand take turns with the hard parts while the other balances it out with some sort of chord until the grand finale where they both run around together in synchrony. This is how I choose to end my night, in perfect synchrony with nature and the man so natural for me to be with.

A nerdy Saturday

I'm listening to Nocturnes (2) for piano by Chopin. I just spent the last five hours listening to my biopsychology professor lecture on pharmacology. This is the study of how exogenous drugs (something made outside the body) affect endogenous neurotransmitter systems (something inside the body) to produce changes in behavior. I missed 5 days of class which is why I had so much to do to prepare for the test we are having on Monday. So what is one interesting thing I learned today from these lectures, well, there was so much that caught my attention and sparked an interest. My professor talked a lot about addiction and withdrawal symptoms that can affect one physically and/or psychologically. I never knew that physical withdrawals from alcohol can kill someone. This worries me. I pray for fellow college students who begin to develop drinking habits here thinking everyone drinks a lot in college until the popular partier at some frat finds himself guzzling down beer like a "college student" at age 40.

I am grateful for many things in my life and right now the best thing in my life is my gorgeous blue eyed boyfriend. When I first met him I knew there was something different about this boy. I truly and unconditionally care about him like no other previous boyfriend. When he told me that he was going out with his buddies to have a single beer, I did not mind. But when that single beer turned to drunkenness on several occasions, I feared for our relationship and his health. After a few rocks and bumps, we both promised each other (as I will be turning 21 soon) that we didn't need alcohol and we both gave it up for good. This is sort of a big deal for a guy in a fraternity but his brothers respected his decision and respected him for the promise he made me, not to mention his also worrisome mother liked this and me for promoting this. I have seen friends and family members fall down wrong paths from drugs and alcohol too many times so it holds a sore spot in my heart. I know I worry way too much but with this promise I can live much more comfortably with myself and those I love.

Another interesting fact I learned today, weed is the biggest money making industry in our country. There was a slide in the lecture filled with the positive affects and one tiny bullet point on the negative affects of THC (the main ingredient in cannabis, the pot plant). The briefness of negativity could be due to the lack of research done on this plant and drug, however. The part of the brain that THC affects was recently discovered in the 90s which in science world is like a baby learning to crawl. Since the government has classified marijuana as a deadly drug, the same classification a narcotic is given, not much research has been able to be done. I am not for legalizing marijuana but I am almost positive that the reasons for its illegalization do not lie in the government's concerns for public health and there are lurking variables hiding in the bushes as my high school stats teacher would say.

I watched my best friend from middle school start drinking alcohol, discover weed and it's "lack of a hangover", then slowly dissolve into the world of drugs. She left me and the rest of the high school behind, or rather fell below our island into a world I don't know to this day if she ever got out of. Last I heard she had a cocaine addiction. Without the help of green eyed Mary Jane, my best friend from middle school would have had a chance at graduating high school with the rest of us plain Jane's living in a different kind of green world. This is just one sad story in which I have read a library's worth throughout the two decades of my life. I pray for strength.

I love piano concerto No. 1 in C major by Beethoven. I am listening to it played by someone magnificently. Times like this I wish I kept up with my piano playing. One day I will reacquaint myself with the love that kept me out of trouble the first half of my life.