Daily Musings

Forget Octomom, Michelle Duggar is having her 19th kid. Yes, that’s right, 19th kid. I remember a few years back I heard the Duggar family had 15 kids and I thought to myself insane thoughts I won’t repeat here. Now, Michelle Duggar is pregnant with her 19th child.

But unlike Octomom, Michelle Duggar is married, and the Duggar family is debt free and lives in a big, approx 7000 sq ft home. My first instinct was that it’s a big house, but for 20 people, I don’t know how they make the bedrooms work. Anyway, like Octomom probably will soon, the Duggar family has a TV show on TLC.

I’m all for having kids if you can afford it, but 19 kids? Damn. The only thing I do have a problem is with … their ways? Taken from my favorite source Wikipedia,

“In addition, the Duggar parents have ultra-conservative and very traditional parenting ideas. None of the family’s daughters are permitted to do typically ‘male’ activities, such having short hair, wearing pants or attending college. The Duggars follow the teachings of Bill Gothard, which include that children not go to college, children should not leave the home until they are married, families do not use birth control and refuse many forms of pre-natal care, stringent social conservatism (including ideas such as young-earth creationism) is strictly enforced and taught at a young age, and gender roles are adhered to.”

The whole birth control ideology, whatever, but females can’t have short hair or wear pants (hello, practicality?) and no one goes to college? Then again, sending that many kids to college probably would take them out of their envious debt-free-ness. Oh, and I read more, and everyone is homeschooled. But I guess it’s not in the traditional sense, because with that many kids it’s more or less a classroom with many ages of students.

I won’t lie, I’ve always found ultra traditional and conservative Christians very fascinating. Like Indendent Fundamental Baptists, who don’t allow modern music and dancing among other things. I’m not trashing on anyone else’s religion, because if someone believes something and it doesn’t hurt anyone, I don’t really care. If someone believes something only because it’s the only thing they’ve ever known, I feel sorry for them. If someone is forced by their family to follow something they don’t want to follow, I hope they either change their familiy’s minds or find a way to run away.

I realize I haven’t written anything for a while. I’ve been having a pretty good summer doing summer type things so I suppose that’s why.

Three days ago I went to my friend’s birthday party at her house, and around midnight I went upstairs to escape the music (which didn’t help much, it wasn’t a very soundproof house). I took a little nap, was awoken by music or screaming or something, and BAM I start noticing how itchy my eyes are.

I first think it’s the makeup, but then I remember, my friend has a cat and her cat hair is everywhere. Every time I go to my friend’s house, I come home to have eyes start itching like crazy, even if I’ve only just sat on her sofa. So this time, because I took a nap on her bed and sort of snuggled in her cat-hair infested blanket, oh god, my eyes were itching like hell.

And even worse, I planned on sort of just crashing on her couch over night, so it was bad. The reason I always forget about the cat is that I never see it. Apparently, she hides whenever guests come over. But her hair is everywhere. My other friend who crashed on the other couch awoke to have her black top… a fuzzy gray.

I’ve been suffering the past few days with itchy eyes and some cold symptoms. I spent most of Friday in bed sneezing with my eyes closed. My body really does not like cats. The interesting thing is that both my parents had cats when they were younger. So how come I end up with a severe cat allergy?

On this beautiful cloudy day I am sitting in my house, determined to learn how to play guitar.

I have an acoustic one from when I took lessons when I was younger. And then I quit, before making substantial progress. Earlier this summer I put “learning to play guitar” as #12 on my “Super Summer List of Things to Do” and I plan on living up to that, or at least trying.

For the past two hours I’ve been trying to figure out notes, chords, and strumming technique, with the help of the Internet and an old guitar book. I don’t know much, but I do know that  I wasn’t born with any natural talent.

Oh, and what’s more is that my fingers hurt! A lot. I don’t know how guitar players do it, maybe after a while you form calluses on your fingertips or something… But those steel strings hurt. It even hurts to type now. Thank god it’s only my left hand, because my right hand’s fingertips have suffered through some mild dermatillomania for almost a year (go search it up).

I’ll hopefully have some decent chord transitions figured out by the end of the day.

The Story of Prisoner F95488 - http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=4300383

” One’s a rising soccer star. The other’s a self-described jealous boyfriend. One had no physical evidence linking him to a rape. The other had matched DNA and teeth marks. One’s black. The other’s white. One was convicted. The other was never a suspect.” - Digg

A friend of mine posted this link on Facebook through Digg, and while I normally don’t read links that people send, I read it, and it makes me angry. The article is about Eric Frimpong, a black student/soccer player at UC Santa Barbara, who was convicted of rape of a white woman, with virtually no hard evidence, DNA that points to someone else, and the testimony of the accuser who had a .2% blood alcohol level at the time of sampling. And possibly an incompetent defense lawyer, who knows. He’s been given six years in jail.

Now, reading one article might not give the whole story, but I don’t think Eric Frimpong was given a fair trial.

People compare this trial to the Duke lacrosse players, except you switch the races of the accused/accuser, but in this case, the accused aren’t from rich families with powerful lawyers. For me, it reminds me a bit of the Scottsboro trial from the 1930s, with a possibly prejudiced all-white jury from a mostly all-white city.

Please read it.

Okay wow. I still can’t believe it.

I was on Facebook yesterday, and since I’m a fan of HuffPost, some of their news clips come into my Facebook feed. Yesterday they posted, “TMZ reports Michael Jackson has died,” or something like that.. I didn’t take it seriously, I actually chuckled. I never really trusted TMZ.

But then I saw that all the news sites were reporting that he had died, but it still didn’t kick in, because I don’t always trust the news. My best friend even called me up to tell me Michael Jackson died and I told her it was probably just rumors.

Evidently, they weren’t. Yesterday we lost the King of Pop.

Michael Jackson has had a tough past couple years, and the media didn’t help. But no one can argue how great he was, and how much of an influence he’s had, on music, and even just the lives of normal people. I remember the first time I learned the Thriller dance, during my dance class when I was really little. I remember trying to learn the moonwalk in sixth grade, failing miserably.

Billie Jean was my favorite song.

I still can’t believe it. I still don’t know what to say.