I Work In A F*cking Box

Hope this post finds my very tiny readership well. Today's rant is about my work. Don't get me wrong - I like the job, I like what I actually do (I test wheat), I like my coworkers, and I like my boss (very nice and very scattered - his brain has far too many tabs open, poor guy; he makes me look organized). No, my exasperation is solely with my actual workspace. I work in a fucking box.

Okay, so it's actually a very tiny trailer that's about the size of a small shipping container. And I'm lucky enough to have four small windows, AC/heating, electricity, and WiFi. But that does not negate the fact that a) I work in a box, b) everything keeps breaking, c) I spend my days surrounded by boxes full of plastic baggies of wheat samples, d) I work pretty much by myself, or e) everything keeps breaking. The grinder (which I have to use to grind the wheat up into flour to run tests on it) has broken at least 2-3 times already. The damn falling number machine (tests flour quality) was plugged into an outlet that didn't provide enough voltage for about a week and a half before my boss figured out what was wrong with it. The hoses for the falling number machine that pump water in and out to cool off the machine? You guessed it - they break on the regular! They're dry-rotted, so they've broken around 4 times so far. The falling number machine itself demanded the sacrifice of two glass test tubes (large ones) and the blood of a virgin before it began to work properly. This earned it the name of Audrey II, after the plant in Little Shop Of Horrors. I won't even go into the filter on the AC. One word: nasty. And not in the Janet Jackson sort of way. Everything is dusty and coated in flour all the time, which makes work interesting for me as an asthmatic. I tried to clean the floor once. It took two buckets of hot soapy water, a sponge, a scrub brush, and two hours, and I still only got 3/4 of the floor done. No vacuum, so any cleaning has to be done by hand. And what most people don't take into account is how weird fresh wheat flour smells. It smells really freakin' weird. Just for the record. Really weird.

Well, I should probably get back to said work. I used to have help in here - there were three or four other people my age who worked with me here - but sadly they all have lives and upcoming school years they need to prepare for. So Ms. Gap Year over here got left alone. Anyway, lots of samples to agonize over and procrastinate on test.

My Life Is A Cosmic Joke

Dear Readers:

Sadly, this is not the follow-up to the Things That Should Not Be Joked About List. This is just a regular post. I know I've been posting a lot more lately, but I find it kind of... cathartic. It's a way to express myself to an audience (however small) who appreciates my writing style. Today's post is a list of some of the truly ridiculous things I have done over the years. This includes:

• sort-of skinny-dipping in a mountain lake in Colorado
• hiding my dad's work ID badge because I was mad at him (they didn't find it until like 6 years after the fact)
• putting a snowball in my mother's underwear drawer because I was mad at her (then she had no dry underwear to wear for work the next day)
• putting cheese in my dad's pillow because I was really mad at him (sadly, he didn't notice)
• stealing my mother's Splenda when I'm mad at her and hoarding it in my room
• stealing my mom's insulating grippy thing for her to-go mug and hiding it in my sock drawer because I was mad at her
• streaking in the flower bed in the front yard (I was about 2 years old, okay?)
• eating a blue paper napkin for a bet (I won)
• eating a paper towel for a bet (I won that one, too)
• eating food that I dropped on the hallway floor at school
• accidentally hitting my friend in the eye with a Wii remote
• falling down an escalator (fortunately, it was the down escalator)
• convincing everyone I had an older sister who was a model (I saw a picture in a magazine of a teenaged girl who looked kinda like me and decided to tell people she was my older sister; people actually believed it)

Hope this brightens your day a little bit; goodness knows mine is going to hell in a handbasket.

Things That I Hear Jokes About On A Daily Basis (But Should NEVER Be Joked About)

Okay, people. Basic human decency. Is it really that hard? Apparently, the answer is yes, at least for some of the people I go to school with (and especially those I ride the bus with). So I present to you, readers, to print and distribute for the greater good of society (if you want to; it's not a requirement): a list of things that should NEVER be joked about, but unfortunately are.

• 9/11. Just because you're too young to remember how awful it was does not give you the right to crack jokes about it. It was a terrible event in American history, and it should get the respect it deserves.
• The Holocaust. Seriously, if you can joke about the Holocaust without feeling terrible immediately afterwards, I'm pretty sure either you're a psychopath, you're a sociopath, and/or you have no soul. I will admit to making one Holocaust joke thus far in my life, and that was because my parents and I were talking about tasteless jokes.
• Mental illness (up to and including: depression, anxiety, ADD/ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, OCD, eating disorders, and many, many others). I will admit to having told a few of these jokes, especially about ADD or ADHD and OCD. Do I feel bad about it? The OCD jokes, yes; the ADD or ADHD jokes, no, because I have ADHD. These kinds of jokes must be taken in context - are people being self-deprecating and making a joke at their own expense, or are they making these jokes at the expense of an entire group of people that they don't belong to? Sometimes I joke about my anxiety or my ADHD, but I'm joking about my anxiety and my ADHD. I'm not making fun of ADHD or anxious people as a whole. Keep that in mind so you don't come across as overzealous and a righteous asshole, but you also can tell when someone who is "just kidding" is being "just plain offensive".
• Suicide, self-harm, and being "triggered". This didn't end up on my mental illness list because while these acts are often a result of mental illness, they are not a mental illness in and of itself. And unlike mental illness jokes, in which you must consider the context, joking about these three things is NEVER OKAY. Period, end of sentence. People who joke about these things have clearly never experienced the kind of despair and pain that drive people to kill or hurt themselves, or that cause them to flash back and break down. They are often the ones who cause/add to that despair and pain. And if you have been there, and you're still joking about it - there are no words to describe how much I hate you. I've been there, and I'm not okay with people joking about it. Ever.

I will update this list when I have more time. Lunch is calling my name.

A Side Note

Okay, I know. I technically already posted today, but my last post got me thinking about my newest project. I'm going to put together a presentation on mental health, round up some people with various mental health disorders, and have a school-wide assembly on mental health issues and how to deal with mental-health-related issues in an emergency (panic attack, thoughts of suicide, etc.). I know that this won't make me very popular, but I was never popular anyway. It's so, so, so important to me that people are aware of these conditions, because so many people have some form of mental illness and it's just wrong to neglect them and their issues and their needs when talking about health. We did touch on mental illness briefly in Health class, but that's just not enough. People need to know what they're dealing with, and to take it seriously. Period.

I Hope He Grows Out of It

Dear Readers,

I am about to share with you something that drives me absolutely up a wall. And that thing is actually a person. He is in some of my classes and he is an utter moron. A little harsh, you say? I have proof. These are some actual things he has done:

• lit a match between his teeth
• complained about the sulfur taste after doing so
• lit something on fire when we weren't using matches in a lab
• broke glassware when we weren't using that in the lab either
• argued that the wage gap between men and women does not exist
• ate peanuts out of a jar that were about ten years old and had countless students' hands and random chemicals in them (they were for a lab in Chemistry)
• argued that girls do not get dress-coded more than guys
• made fun of my friend within my earshot
• said that women just accept lower paying jobs than men do, and that it's entirely their decision with absolutely no pressure from society
• argued that the "glass ceiling" does not exist
• called his own friend a "waste of oxygen"
• defined "feminist" as a "stupid bitch who hates men"
• made jokes about terrorism and suicide
• I can't continue with this list, it makes me too angry

This kid. My god, this kid. The worst part is, he's too self-absorbed and ignorant (by choice!) that he doesn't even realize how bigoted and obnoxious he is. And he has the nerve to mock me for actually being aware of what is going on around me and in the world, for being informed and opinionated. Is it because I'm female? Is it because I'm a little (a lot) weird? Or is it just because he's a smug ass who prefers to be ignorant so people give up having discussions with him and he can feel like he won and feed his huge ego? I don't care. He stands for everything (well, almost) I hate about the young men of my generation. If this were the eighties or nineties... well, he's a beanpole with glasses, a loud mouth, and so many pimples he looks like the surface of the moon in reverse, so he probably would've been hung from a hook in the locker room by his underwear at least a hundred times by now. He is the reason why feminism and awareness of issues - and the ability to look at them objectively - are so important.

I would like to close this post on the note that I don't hate this kid, despite everything I've said about him. I can't hate him. I can be really frickin' pissed off at him, but I can't hate him, not really. More than anything else, I pity him. Like me, he lives in his own head, but unlike me, he seems to have no imagination to speak of, and he frequently confuses his fictional world with reality.

Another Thing That Really, REALLY Bothers Me

Today's rant (yeah, I know, it's been forever since I posted; life kinda got in the way) is about volunteering. Not the fact that people do it; volunteering in and of itself is a great thing. What bugs me about it is that SO MANY people do it for the wrong reasons. If I tried to count on my fingers and toes how many people I have heard say that they only donate to charity for tax returns or for appearance's sake, or how many students I've heard say they only do it because their family makes them or because National Honor Society requires it or because they need a certain number of volunteer hours to graduate - geez, I'd need like six extra hands AND six extra feet. Maybe more. As my (kind of) friend pointed out to me, yeah, it achieves the same purpose. People get helped. But it isn't even volunteering at that point. Too many people volunteer because they profit from it, and not in the "warm fuzzy feeling" kind of way. Volunteering and charity are about giving with the expectation of receiving nothing in return, about giving your time and energy and money simply because they want to help other people. People who are so selfish that they only volunteer or donate because they get something out of it - honestly, they disgust me. To make a reference to the show Firefly (great show, by the way, check it out), to me, they're right up there with child molesters and people who talk at the theater. If you're selfish, don't pretend not to be. It really burns me that this is the only reason so many people get helped - because other people are so selfish that they do it for a reward. I may be a selfish person at times, but I at least don't lie to myself and to other about it. I own it. I have enough respect for myself and for other people to acknowledge my own bad behavior and acknowledge that it's wrong, and to honestly try to change it - maybe not in that moment, but in the future. And I'll tell you something else: this is the second year I've run a clothing drive, and the third year that I've cooked at my grandparents' church's soup kitchen. I get nothing for it, except a sore back and knees, a stained apron, a lot of flak from the student population, and occasionally a minor thank-you from the heads of each organization. But that's not what I do it for. I do it because after I cook a meal, I can sit down with the people I cook it for and share it with them, and I can talk to them like they're my friends and relatives. I do it because my mom's contact at the Willow Domestic Violence Center (where the clothes go) calls or texts to say that teenage boys and young men and little kids have something to wear because I thought to include unisex or men's or boys' clothes in my clothing drive - something not a lot of people think of when they donate clothing to a center for victims of domestic violence that was formerly known as Alternatives For Battered Women. I do it for the woman that I ask about her grandkids whenever I see her. I don't do it for myself. I do it for them.

My Piehole is A Lie-Hole

So you know how I said I was going to do book reviews? Hehe. Nope. I'm still going to use this blog for what I started it as - an outlet for me to complain or share some interesting news I found. That probably no one else cares about, but whatever. My rant for today is going to be about... (drumroll, please) SOCIAL MEDIA AND TEENAGERS!

How stupid, you think. She's using social media to write this. You're only partially right. I'm complaining more about things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and all that crap. Sure, it has its moments, but for the most part, it leads to nothing but cruelty. For example, the other day, some asshole in Earth Science was taking pictures of me. Don't ask me why, he just doesn't like me - probably because I think he's a conceited dick. So sue me. Anyway, I did the logical thing: I flipped him off. Okay, not my brightest move. I'll admit it. But you know what happened next? He took a photo of it, doctored it so it looked like I was wearing sunglasses and smoking, and sent it all over the school. I wasn't that nice to him, but in my defense, all the guys I've ever met who act like him have picked on me. Oh, look. The pattern repeats itself. Great! I might as well have a freaking neon sign over my head saying "YEA VERILY, I AM A TARGET!" I know I probably wasn't fair to the guy, at least at first, but for me, with boys, it's guilty until proven innocent. I've had bad experiences. Like I said, I've been bullied badly. Since kindergarten. It's more than ten years. And he proved me right, too. Another one! I just don't understand why people do this sort of thing. I can understand revenge. I can understand accidentally hurting someone. I can understand just losing it. But I can't understand this kind of senseless cruelty. Would I ever do something like that? Geez, I hope not. Am I better than him? Probably not. Have I done shitty things? Absolutely. But I'm sad that people can intentionally do something like that without remorse.