My Overly Thought Out Opinions on the Current News Affairs (Edition 2)

(Read this news story here before continuing on.)

This post is an extension of Tuesday's post which I felt would benefit better being broken up into two opinionated stories, although you don't necessarily have to read Tuesday's for today's to make sense if you're catching my drift here.

Anyways, this news story has been weighing a lot on my mind recently. In summary, Marlise Munoz was found unconscious over eight weeks ago (the article says seven, but it's been a week since then) in her kitchen floor. She was immediately rushed to the hospital and soon after was said to have lost "all activity in her brain stem," all the while, she was 14 weeks pregnant with her and her husband's second child.

It is unclear what happened to her, but it was her wishes to not have her life sustained by medical interventions, yet despite her husband's plea to allow her to "move on", the hospital refused with a peculiar piece of Texas legislation backing them up. Now as a recent graduate of my tenth grade civics and economics class, I know a thing or two about Texas and their standings on abortion (see Roe vs Wade), but this law was quite shocking to me. They abide by the law stating "you cannot withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment for a pregnant patient," which I believe the first part is somewhat reasonable as we don't want a pregnant woman being denied health care (although, let's be real, who would actually do that?), but the second part is outright unbelievable.

There are multiple points that should be looked at within this case, but let's start with Mrs. Munoz's wishes. Sadly, her wish to not have her life extended by life support was never written down (although even if she had, Texas law would override her wishes), but both her husband and parents were knowingly aware of what she wanted and they consistently relayed this to her medical team. According to her husband, the doctors refused to answer his questions as to whether she was "brain dead", even though they had told him when she was first admitted that she had lost all activity in her brain stem and he even looked through one of her charts which stated she was indeed brain dead, making everything look all the more sketchy. The true underlying problem of this point is the fact that a person's very FINAL wish of her entire life, can't be carried out simply because she's carrying another human being. The law claims to "protect the fetus", but whose protecting the female?

Now another prospective to be looked at is how the family felt through this situation. It's obvious through their pleas that they wanted nothing more than to have her wishes respected and allow them to bury her and be able to grieve properly. Need I even mention they had to suffer through the holidays seeing their dead loved one being kept alive against every one's wishes. Through the multiple news articles I've combed through regarding her case, her parents and husband seem to express consistently about the extra grief they've had to endure because of the fact that they have to continuously fight for their daughter's rights to her body and her mom even described the time as "a living hell". The husband describes how his wife no longer looks like his wife, that her eyes are soulless, her bones crack when you move them, even her usual scent has been replaced by the "smell of death". Can you imagine going in to see your significant other like this every day for over two months?

Through the whirl wind of trying to fight for Mrs. Munoz's rights, it would make sense to contemplate how the baby is doing during this time, as it is the fundamental reasoning for keeping her "alive". Mrs. Munoz was discovered at 2 am on November 26 and was unconscious for an indeterminable amount of time, resulting in the fetus being deprived of oxygen for who knows how long, and it's basic biology to know that babies cannot successfully thrive in oxygen depleted environments. While at first, because the fetus was so young, there wasn't much they could do to determine the status of the baby, but as her case progressed, they received some news, that I'm sure we all knew was coming. The child was (as one article claims) 'distinctly abnormal' and had many medical issues. Its lower extremities were completely malformed to such an extent that they couldn't determine the gender, and the child suffered from hydrocephalus, along with numerous other issues including a possible heart problem that can't be confirmed because of Mrs. Munoz's state of her body. (All of this information can be found here.)

One of the biggest reasons that got me extremely annoyed over this case, is the fact that this woman's body has been downgraded and seen only as an incubator to keep her child alive, throwing her life and final wishes to the way side. I think people who believe that Mrs. Munoz and her family should put their feelings and wants away until she can lay in a hospital on a ventilator for months upon months until her due date arrives, should realize that her child dying along with her is the natural order of things. To go along with many conservative, pro-lifer's train of thoughts, how do you not know that the child dying along with her is God's will? God didn't tell you via the Bible that in all cases similar to this, that the woman's body should be kept artificially functioning to save the babies life. Allowing her (and her fetus) to die, doesn't make you a murder. The woman's body (in terms of pregnancy), is intended to keep the baby alive, not machines, not ventilators, her. A woman's wishes shouldn't be disregarded because she's pregnant.

In a happy turn of events, with the help of lawyers and judges and courts, the hospital was ordered to take her off the ventilator, ending this horrendous strain of events.

This article doesn't necessarily relate to my feelings in terms of abortion (I've got one big complicated story in terms of that), but I think this is downright outrageous. I don't even think your opinion on abortion should influence your opinion on this case in a way. By taking her off life support, the doctors aren't committing an abortion, they're simply allowing "nature to take its course" if you will. Pregnant women die in car crashes every day, and with that their fetus dies too. It's how it works, it's how God intended this to work.

End rant. Have a fabulous day.

My Overly Thought Out Opinions on the Current News Affairs

I've been finding that reading the news every morning is the best thing I've ever done with my life because I feel super informed upon the world and what people are doing and what people aren't doing and whose mad at who and what scandal is resonating within our culture and tons of other things that make me feel fantastically lucky that I am to be living in such a time.

Anyways, to start us off I hope you will read these two articles here and here so you too can become culturalized.

First I'm going to tackle good ole Juan Pablo. To start off I guess it isn't good that I dislike the Bachelor as it'll make it super hard to be objective in this situation, but I'll try. For those who are unfamiliar with the reality TV phenomenon that is known as the Bachelor, let me help you out. It's essentially a feminist's worst nightmare: 27 or so girls vie for one man's hand in marriage as they duke it out on "group dates" and "one on one dates" and so on and so forth, while the Bachelor holds the ultimate decision of each woman's fate via the Rose Ceremony where he gives the women he likes a rose while the rest are left to weep and go home "rose-less" until he narrows it down to one special woman. There's also its counterpart, The Bachelorette, which is the exact same thing but with reversed roles; one women watches as 25ish men fight for her hand in marriage. Everything is so Hollywood and not my thing, and although I've enjoyed an episode or two in my time, it's just not my show.

This season's lucky man is a guy by the name of Juan Pablo who from what I can tell is an ex-soccer player who is from another country with English as his second language (yes, that is actually an integral part of this story). I'd rather not summarize the whole news article for you (as I'm assuming  finger crossing you read the article), but in short, Juan Pablo was asked for his thoughts on the idea of having a gay/bisexual bachelor on the show and his comments were quite candid and disappointing.

Although as I previously stated, I'm not emotionally invested into this series of roses and group dates and luckily I was able to look past the attractiveness of Mr. Juan Pablo that many of the bachelor watchers posses for this man, and see the comment(s) for what it was: outrageous disappointing. He claimed that gay parents/gay persons are too confusing for the kids (because numerous six year olds can't wait to watch a reality dating show every week) not to mention he has a very young daughter who might find it confusing to see that her daddy is making out with different women each week on reality TV. Need I even mention that he claims gay relationships are too "perverted" which would essentially be too much for the American person to watch on television. Bless.

picture compliments of his Twitter account

His comments spread quickly through the internet like any anti-gay words that slip from a star's mouth would, while the fire was unsuccessfully extinguished via Juan Pablo's public apology where he consistently brought up that he had numerous homosexual friends, therefore he couldn't possibly be homophobic, and his "English as a second language" status was also used to cover the blame for his words. "The word pervert was not what I meant to say and I am very sorry about it. Everyone knows English is my second language and my vocabulary is not as broad as it is in Spanish and, because of this, sometimes I use the wrong words to express myself," was his excuse, which to me seems just a tad far fetched. To an extent I can understand, but not long after this comment he explains that he meant to say that a gay relationship would be too "racy", and yet from the things I hear that take place upon the show, there's no way a show with "hot tub dates" and extensive making out could by any means be classified as racy. (Take the numerous italicized words as sarcasm in case any of you aren't catching my drift.)

What he freely said hurts my feelings in a way. I thought we could maybe get somewhere in this crazy ass world by achieving more rights for homosexuals, but comments like this that are so immensely ignorant and degrading make me a little less confident in the world we live in. I think it's time we get off our high horses and quit attacking the minority that loves people just a bit differently than we do. These are changing times.

Also, one more bone to pick, a lot of the people in my area who indulge themselves by watching this show, also love their republican and "preserve the sanctity of marriage" bumper stickers. They're very conservative to say the least. (Important note: I'm not speaking for every watcher of the show. I live in the south where a majority of people can be described as the above, so it doesn't come as a surprise that 90% of people I know who watch the Bachelor are also very conservative.) Therefore, I find it odd that they consider homosexuality to be destroying the biblical sense of marriage and yet, 25 or so women basically duking it out for one guy so she can lock him in with a wedding of their dreams is somehow NOT destroying the sanctity of marriage.

So after ranting typing for almost half an hour, I'm going to come back to the second news story in a separate blog post as I feel this one is already overflowing with words. I'm hoping to get it up Thursday, as I already have a different post in mind for tomorrow.

The most exciting part about these posts are that I like hearing from you. Do you watch the bachelor (I won't judge, promise)? Do you find this all completely weird and strange and disappointing or do you back up Juan Pablo and his good looks?

Have a fabulous day.

(Side note: I'm not feeling the whole re-reading/proof reading thing as I want to keep this all as real as possible. Just a helpful note for any mistakes that could have slipped in somewhere.)

Stuff

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and the first thing that came into my head was that I'd been out of school for a week yet hadn't written a single blog post and it all seems funny now, but at 4 in the morning I became totally worried and freaked out that I had done nothing in the essentially 8 school free days that I just experienced. Yeah sorry, whatever, I'll try to maybe work on it, but I'm finding that opening my blog posts with "sorry I haven't written anything in a while" paragraphs are kinda my thing.

Somehow Tuesday morning at one a.m. I found myself watching American Horror Story and I watched five straight episodes until going to bed at nearly five thirty in the morning, scared out of my mind at every flash of light. It was the best worst thing I've ever started and I finished season one in an entire day, which is an accomplishment I'm totally proud of. It's a fantastically rad show though if anyone is looking for something to waste their time on (but in an extremely good way).

Also, I started reading The Fault in Our Stars over the weekend which is quite possibly the best book I've ever devoted my time to. I was a little slow in actually getting around to reading it, but I'm kinda glad the flame of the book is slightly dying down so I don't seem like one of those band wagoners who reads a book just because everyone is talking about it. I'm only halfway through, but John Green is the raddest author ever.

At the moment I'm currently fuming over a couple of things in the news which has now spurred this idea of mine that I hope to make happen this week. I'm going to take a handful of news stories and rant about them for a blog post or two. I have a lot of rage over the world to say the least. You can read the two I plan to conquer here & here. Read up and do your homework and what not.

Try not to enjoy your Monday too much & I hope your day has been fabulous.

Not Really Sure What This Post is About, Therefore Any Title Would Be Misleading

I finally finished my first semester yesterday with my *insert snobby voice* North Carolina Final Exam in Civics and Economics. In all honesty, I spent half the time taking the exam and the other half trying to figure out the best way to construct my strongly worded letter towards the NC General Assembly, but that's a different story for a different blog post.

A huge heads up that this is most likely going to be a bunch random pieces of whatever comes to mind. The pictures are just things that have been sitting on my phone for a good seven months. Enjoy.

These kinds of posts are starting to get on my nerves as they have no real meaning whatsoever except boring you with the little tiny bit of my life that I'm desperately trying to cling onto. I can easily describe my week in the three words studying and pizza rolls. Not to mention some kid at my school convinced me to download Clash of Clans after one of my exams and dammit I'm addicted. It's some testosterone-y game that includes training an army and killing other clans and yeah, I'm ashamed to be admitting all of this. Although I'm guaranteed the company is making big bucks as you can buy "gems" which allow certain tasks to be completed faster and considering how impatient the male population is, I'm sure they're making bank.

On a slightly fascinating note I taught/googled myself how to hot wire a car and break into combination locks. I don't know if this indicates I'm a future felon or that I'm going to have some pretty good party tricks in the near future, but either way I'm sure it'll entitle me to some new friends with tattoos and criminal records.

I'm completely off of school next week thanks to a national holiday (holla to my man MLK), an exam I don't have to take, and some oddly placed teacher work days, so I'm trying to fill my time with learning useful skills. On Monday I'm hoping to teach myself how to play the Ukulele and on Tuesday I'm going to learn how to break into house locks (you know for when you forget your key and stuff). I haven't decided on what to do for the other three days, but it'll probably be somewhere along the lines of finding new music and writing chapters in the sort of book that I'm trying to write that's beginning to consume my life (but in a totally fantastic way).

This coming week should be completely fantastic nonetheless.

I know, how much more basic can I get. Ignore the shittiness and soak up that sun set.

So enjoy your weekend and maybe teach yourself the Ukulele too or how to make a bracelet out of a spoon or learn sign language or find a documentary about the origin of species or something.

Hope your day has been fabulous.

Admittance and Love

I'm about to start my I have three exams in two days mental breakdown, but I figured I'd write. It helps sometimes.

Today we watched the news in my civics class (because that's what you do when you have your final exam the next day) and I don't want to dig too much into cliches on you all, but my heart melted. Melted. We watched a story that was spurred by the video below. Watch it and let your heart melt too.

The young man was accepted into Clemson which is a college in South Carolina that is quite competitive and well known even where I live even though I'm from another state. He was joining their ClemsonLIFE Program which is specially formatted for kids with special needs. 

It's not even so much that he as a kid with Down Syndrome was being able to go to college or that I want to applaud Clemson for the way they're practicing inclusion (although both these things are outstanding), I just had to share the video as it's just so soul melting and heart warming and filled with joy and happiness that only comes from finding $10 in your pocket or realizing your birthday is tomorrow.

Down Syndrome is something that I often find myself deliberating upon when it's two in the morning and sleep is running in the complete opposite direction of my body. It's funny because I don't have an aunt with Down Syndrome or a brother or a best friend or any sort of relationship that would justify me laying awake with these thoughts. They just happen. I think about the lack/abundance of acceptance in some areas and the way people still use the word retard and how someday I might even take a step off the bridge of mainstream-ness and fear and just adopt a child with Down Syndrome.

There's a young man and a young lady at my school who both have three 21st chromosomes and they bring me joy just in the way they walk to lunch or interact with other students (special needs or not). I love seeing admittance and love between them and others. It's a special thing, admittance and love.

So go forth with admittance and love and kindness and have a fabulous day. (And if you're looking for more inspiration check out this post. Fair warning; your heart might just melt again.)

Life Update (Of What Little Life I Have)

I was excitedly knocking off days in my nonexistent calendar as this Friday rolled around. I have a lot planned for this weekend. Friends to catch up with, homework that needs some finishing up, and exams that need to be studied and prepared for and stressed about and cried over. I'm wrapping up the semester this Tuesday with my exams taking place the following Wednesday and Thursday, although I'm pretty positive none of y'all care about that.

Good news is that a new semester is within sprinting distance.

I got an ENO for Christmas and it's just as fantastic as I imagined it to be. This picture is rather old (I'm thinking I took it the weekend after Christmas) as the weather ever since the New Year has been either rainy, single digit temperature cold, or a combination of the two. It's a sad time as all I want is to lay in my hammock and be happy, but that day will come.

Also, now that I own an ENO I feel I'm one step closer to just being able to live in the wilderness for the rest of my life. I hope to start going camping with some of my friends especially once spring/summer/fall hit. But for now, I'm enjoying (occasionally if weather cooperates) laying out in the yard.

We got some fancy new fast food restaurant in my town/city/somewhere in between a town and city about a month ago called PDQ. I've been wanting to try it out and as of last Wednesday I am no longer a PDQ virgin. It was everything I hoped for in a chicken sandwhich, yet sadly paid almost $8 for everything you see here plus a drink. It's a bit pricey considering it's fast food, but it was EXTREMELY good.

I also made a bracelet out of a spoon the other day, which I can easily say is one of my best accomplishments in life. It took some figuring out and trial and error, but two spoons later I finally made a good one. I bought the spoons at Goodwill for only a quarter, yet the are 'you actually going to eat with those spoons?' look from the cashier's face was priceless. 

I'm hoping to make a little money off these things and went to Goodwill and picked up $3 worth of spoons and I've turned almost four of them into bracelets, yet I'm not positive how much to sell them for. They cost practically nothing to make, just 25 cents for the spoon, yet they take a reasonable amount of manpower to twist/hammer/bend.

Just out of curiosity, would anybody actually pay for one of these fantastic things/how much would you pay for one?

*insert picture that was supposed to be put up around Christmas time*

On a side note, I'm slightly in love with the song The Gambler by fun. It's just fantastic. That is all.

Blogger is being an ass and made it really complicated and irritating and hair pulling out maddening to put this post together, so please excuse anything that could possibly go wrong when I hit the publish button. And some time I hope to go back being my philosophical self, but until then enjoy these trivial posts.

Have a fabulous day.

Is It Cold in Here?

The term cold is currently the biggest understatement of my life right now. It is COLD where I live right now. COLD COLD COLD. Yesterday we were in the single digits, which to some is not too shabby, but considering we just came off a week of 40-50 degree weather, the five degree world I woke up to on Tuesday was not pleasant.

I have a two really not so fantastic tests that I need to devote myself to right now, so this will be short. I'm just here to say I'm alive and doing something with myself and occasionally eating and sleeping and trying to find time to shampoo AND condition my hair.

On the bright side I found this really fantastic film camera and if anyone knows of a user's manual floating along the depths of the Internet for this camera that would be great. I changed its batteries and such (which allowed me to turn it on), but I'm clueless on everything else. If anyone also knows of where I can find cheapish film, what film would be best for this camera (there was an already used roll inside, but I'm not positive if its the best film for the camera), and how to insert the film within in the camera, that too, would be fantastic.

As of right now, this delightful camera is making a fantastic decoration for my room, but I'd love to actually kinda, ya know, take pictures with it.

Because of our freakishly cold weather, we've been having two hour delays like nobody's business, therefore I had time to snap my "outfit of the day" (God bless, someone send me to an institution because I just used that uber overly used, mainstream word). It's just one, because I honestly have more important things to do in life, but it's better than nothing.

Have a freakin fantastic fabulous day. 

Christmas and Other Wonderful Stuff

I had a pretty unmemorable Christmas as I slept through most of it thanks to some alien sickness that never got a diagnosis. We had plans to visit family and such, but along with I, both my parents fell sick as well. It wasn't fun to say the least, but luckily that ship sailed away.

I went back to school last Thursday while many of my other peers who lived in different counties laid in bed as they don't go back till tomorrow. Sigh. The county that I live in is very undecisive when it comes to our school calendar (it's had three major changes in the past three years) and this January 2nd-two day school week-end of Christmas break fiasco came as no surprise. I'm also very irritated that first semester is still happening and we don't even have exams until another week and a half. Last year we had all of our exams the week before Christmas break (just like every college in America) and we got to spend our Christmas break carefree and came back to school to a new semester with new classes and it was a fantastic new start. I loved it to say the least. This year thanks to a new calendar which came as a result of a new piece of legislation passed by the NC General Assembly that said we couldn't start school before some date in late August (something tells me it was August 26th), there was no way we could start school early enough that our end of first semester could coincide right before Christmas break, therefore making our exams after Christmas break. Thanks to all this I spent my break studying for my exams that the state still hasn't given my teachers a clear outline as to what will be on it. Let's just say they're trying to cram everything I've learned in Civics and Economics into a 25 question test with roughly 20 being multiple choice and 5 short answer, give or take a few. Not to mention, I'm pretty sure our General Assembly has more important laws to be making instead of some idiotic law stating that school MUST start after their appointed date as I don't see why that even matters. Sigh.

Excuse that last paragraph honestly as I didn't really mean to even go on about that rant, but I am angry angry angry about all this. 

Back to Christmas.

It wasn't a fantastic Christmas to say the least, but my healths back and life is still going on and I'm thankful for getting to live through another holiday and all that jazz. 

Our Christmas tree is being packed away today and I'm mourning that piece of fake plastic branches (judge us and our fake tree as my parents have "allergies" that compelled them to purchase our current tree three years ago no matter how many times I say I wish we had a real one). Either way Christmas ended and I'm trying to come to terms with those two words. I wish I wasn't so attached to holidays.

(You all enjoy that picture of me. It's the closest you'll ever get.)

Over break when I wasn't coughing up my left lung, I went back to writing a story I started three months ago. It's coming along fantastically, but I'm also extremely picky. I got about four chapters in two months ago and as I was re-reading it I decided I totally hated my writing and I just needed to restart. And I did. I love the story idea I came up with, just not the words I was using to tell it. So another blank document later and I'm getting places. I keep wishing that I can quit school and just devote 100 percent of my time to this blog and my in-the-works book, but all I can do is keep wishing.

I'm always in this love-hate relationship with my book. I want more than anything to write, but there's never any time in the day which makes me hate everything writing. That sentence doesn't really make logical sense, but my feelings don't make sense 100% 75% of the time, so there you have it. You would think I could carve out time for something I love, but it's proving to be a hell of a challenge. I keep telling myself that if I ever get lucky, I could someday have all the time in the world to just write and write and write and maybe receive a pay check somewhere in between. But until then, I'll just struggle to get a paragraph written in a weeks time.

This blog post is proving to be uber long and full of ramblings and I'm not even sure I have all the pictures in here that were meant to be shared on this post. Oh well. Here goes nothing.

Have a fabulous day.

(New Years and Such)

In this new year, I hope you seek the things that make you happy in the deepest parts of your heart.

(I'm finally getting my shit together and quite possibly I'll start posting normally and such by the start of next week. Until then, keep things fabulous.)