it's so funny when you see a boy walk by who is not altogether fat, just has a strange sense of..well he has breasts..and my first reaction is "damn, his boobs are bigger than mine.." but this is not really true..mine are quite large..does anyone want them? i'm looking to give them to a good home. this is a much more suburban version of what i'm really feeling all the time which is: JUST CHOP THEM OFF!! FUCKING..mammary..MONSTERS! ahhh alliteration.. my brother and i had sat and wondered once if all the breast tissue in all the world was divided equally among all the women in all the world, how big would everyone's titties be? i can't figure it out..i bet there are more small breasted women than large, though, i would think.. and then you make the same wealth comparison and that's i guess the principle reason so many people are capitalists, because if we really were to divide it up equally it would make everyone po'..because the ratio of poor to rich in the world has got to be about 1000:1..and probably much more severe than that. absurd really.

ok let me...let me ramble here a while..i have casual things to talk about and serious things to talk about and the order could very well determine the predominant mood here..what you think of me when you're done reading..and i don't know what i want that to be just yet..

you know this is strange having a stranger reading here regularly..i always wonder about people who insist on anonymity..i expect this "s" person is a male in his late 20s/early 30s..and if i'm wrong about that just don't tell me so i can assume i'm right.. or do tell me, whatever. i hope this does not affect how i would write (type) normally..probably not..but it adds a weird dimension. hey ok

let me go quickly into the casual i guess, this i'm inserting later after writing the first half of all the below and realizing i can't get into the casual after that, it's just not natural, so basically it's just that this weekend i've gone to see four movies.. i know, she's out of control, yes i know..and three in one day..i know, jesus..well i had gone for like two weeks before without seeing anything as a fasting-type thing for the ny trip..so..i binged a little. damn all the movies that come out just whenever they please that i really want to see and thus take over my life completely.. so let me talk about them, let me purge.. (i'm teetering on hystrionic here..a symptom of various mental illnesses my mother suffers from..they pop up every now and then in me, watch out) so first i saw the life of david gale..and it sucked. i need to maybe stop reading the reviews before i go because lately i'm agreeing completely with them and it may be because i've set myself up to do that.. but it really was preachy and i'm so tired of kevin spacey and his..as roger moore puts it, tendency towards these "gimmicky, edgy characters who make long speeches", which is such a perfect way to put it..and the twist is more annoying that mind-blowing ladies and gentlemen..no Se7en here.. so yeah, definitely 2 star movie..and then i saw old school..and what set me off to actually seeing it was jay boyar giving it fucking 4 stars (!!) which is unheard of..but it's so worthy of that.. i loved it..i thought it was hilarious. i need everyone to see it and see if they can tell the difference between it and like the american pies and..all of those other stupid comedies that look like the american pies..because it's a very different dimension of stupid comedy..and i think the thing is it has better comedic actors.. luke wilson, vince vaughn, and will ferrell (who should get an oscar, wow) are on a completely different level from all these dumbfuck kids in these other stupid comedies... let's call them shit monkies, my new collective slang for children..so anyway, great time.. and then i saw the quiet american, which is fucking fantastic, and exactly the mood i was expecting and looking for.. that very jeremy irons in Lolita feel..it's a desperate longing..it's love and war..it's such a beautiful film, and so moving, such beautiful music.. about vietnam in the 50s, before the americans came in a fucked things up even more for those people, when the french were battling the communists and trying to set up their puppet government (sound familiar?) and brendan fraser comes in, as the quiet american, and represents the US saying they "aren't colonialists", so casually, and there was a significant laugh in the theatre..you can't imagine, none of us can imagine what it would be like to live in a place like that, war-torn and fearing for your life at every side road and shop, for like 20 years..longer actually..like the people in israel today, we can't imagine..what do you say? unfortunately now i can see that daniel day-lewis has some heavy competition with michael caine..dammit..but still, i wouldn't scream and cry if caine won. he's wonderful. and then today i saw talk to her, finally, that spanish movie everyone's talking about..the director is nominated, which is very cool, and very deserving...i saw his All About My Mother two years ago, which was good, but strangely unsatisfying..i think this is his life's masterpiece..it's really impressive..and also strange, but no still good. it moves you in the weirdest way..it's all about women, the director's love of women, which is so obvious and beautiful..you know i was thinking the other day about how so many of the predominant poets and writers and musicians etc are straight men, for so many centuries, so mostly we all get to hear plenty about how glorious women are..and we can fall in love with these idealized women so easily..they're weather-beaten and flawed in so many ways, they feel the emotional pain of the world, and yet they hold themselves just so that we can see how incredibly beautiful they are and want to touch them and hold them and help them however we can..women are a universe.. and now i want women to come up and take these speaking positions and tell the world how incredible men are, because, at least a few of them really are..they have their own beauty. ok to the serious..

i came here in a fury, on a sunday afternoon when i really should've just stayed home and stopped acting on impulses and waited til tomorrow when i'd be at school anyway so as not to waste More Gas..this whole not having a computer thing i could do without.. if i'm not careful i get really hung up on these little things that i really need (want?)..and it's about 3 fairly major things that if i had One, life would be significantly easier the other two would not be quite so pertinent, but none seem to be at all reachable right now so i'm left to just, only every now and then, sit and think to myself..if i only had a cell phone..if i only had a computer..if we only had an extra car.. it's really suffocating to think how far away these things seem.. and really, most of the time you can just live your life in a minimalist sort of way and make do with what you have and everything feels perfectly doable, but it's just those few moments where it swarms around you and you feel like you're going to explode for want of these worldly possessions.. ahh

what i'm in my fury about it my brother..something has finally gone wrong, he's lost his edge of perfection..i fear it may be all downhill from here. this has been sneaking up kind of slowly, this religion thing, that is: my brother is being swallowed up by religion..christianity, of course, and he's going to church once or twice a week down the street and getting really involved with this youth group and it doesn't help that the assistant coach on his soccer team is the youth group head guy so he's always there reminding him, offering him a ride, offering him a prayer-over-the-phone time..at first it seemed like he was coercing jordan, but now i realize this has all been perfectly within jordan's personal decisions..and i hate it so much. right when religion seemed like this monkey slowly crawling off my back, it's lept onto my head.. my dad will always have it in him, my mom will always sort of have it in her, but we don't see her anymore so that's fine, but dad hasn't been going to church of late because the cab schedule (it was bad enough when his one day off would be monday, and of course he'd have to sleep in til 5 and then i'd so look forward to hanging out with him and jordan and having dinner or something and they would spring on me that they're going to church instead..godammit) and now dad just keeps to all of his books by christian authors..even economic books..there is nothing this religion doesn't touch..he can't even read a fucking book..and i've tried to get him into these other types of books and he just doesn't hold any interest. fine. he's my father, so he's always a certain arm's length away in that parent realm where i'm supposed to have some big disagreements so that's one of them and i can't do anything about it, so fine. but jordan has been, if there have to be sides, on my side for almost a year now, perfectly on my side, we were our own little unit when we needed to be. this was of course to offset his being not on my side for the other 15 years of his life..i felt like, you know, i'd paid my dues, we'd hated each other, or i at least i'd hated him, and i'd had my suicidal rebellious years and seperated from my parents and left him by the wayside and became this nice independent person and now i was coming back to the family unit, particularly to jordan, and this all felt very grownup and relaxed and perfect. i figured this dynamic would last at least another couple of years..then i'd be out of school and i'd move out and life would start over again as it should because let's face it you can't have this umbilical thing attached forever..you can't live down the street from you family forever. i don't think you can anyway. you know, i can't stick with all these people in my life forever or else eventually everyone will be married with kids and dad will want more grandchildren, hint hint, and i'll be like this purple elephant in their midsts and i can't have that, there has to be a time when i become this myth to everyone.. oh yes, remember her, well now she's this fancy (enter title here) traveling around the world..and oh yes i heard she was dating george clooney..no just kidding, but you know, similar to that. wow, talk about pour my soul out.. what i came here to complain about was religion, and all that above is just what i'm assuming will now happen to my life as a result..see religion is the thread that holds together my whole family dynamic..it's weaved its way through my entire life and screwed me up or set me free so many times it's become repetitive and i'm just fucking sick of it. i wish it never existed.

it would be one thing if we could all have our religious beliefs and leave it at that and live in harmony and not judge each other. but it's completely the opposite of that. i imagine there are religious people in the world who can follow this way of life and i think they're probably associated with some kind of eastern philosophy because they seem to be the only ones who come close to saying they are not the absolute truth and all other beliefs are bullshit..but christianity and all of these more western religions accept no other belief..they say love thy neighbor but abhor his sin, and his sin is often breaking that first commandment and not loving their god as much as they'd like you to..i don't know if i've said this before here, but i think religion may do more harm than good in that it does one major thing all the time, and that's to divide us..it brings people together when they agree with each other, which is something that happens anyway, but when they disagree on this seemingly small notion to some, but to most who adopt these views it's everything, it's their whole life, and when they find someone who does not adopt that same system of beliefs they can not fully be comfortable around them..you can not ever really love the sinner, like they say to do, that's against human instinct, i can't just sit in a room with a member of the kkk and be his friend all his life and be fine with our differing views, that's ridiculous..and i'm convinced the only reason my dad can stand this division between us is that he hasn't fully thought it thru or he's in denial, thinking i'll eventually come back to christianity since i'm such a fan of being good and kind and striving for right and christianity, in his eyes, is the embodiment of that and he can't see any other belief or lack thereof that can accomodate that personality adequately..or he thinks that once a christian, always a christian, because it's i guess unclear in the bible as to if anything can sever god's ties to a person once they've committed themselves to him, no matter what they choose later.. but dammit i want him to think this through, because if i die before him, he'll have to sit and wonder where "my soul" went, if i'm in heaven or if the bible is right and those who do not believe jesus is our lord and savior must suffer in hell..so he'll have to choose between believing i'm a good enough person where nothing bad could come to me after death, and thus his religious views have big gaping holes in them, or the bible is fact and his only daughter is in the pit of hell.. and this might be just the jolt he needs - but a very big part of me fears he would stay in denial and not question his beliefs, or choose his religion over me, as the bible teaches to do, fucking abraham attempting to murder his son to commit to his faith in god!! what a fucking insane story that is! if god asked me to kill my son to show my faith and commitment to him, i'd say fuck off..no god i want to believe in would do something like that..ugh it drains me. that goes back to the thing of i'd die for most causes but i wouldn't kill for any..

so jordan just got back from this weekend tampa trip to go to this enormous christian concert with his youth group and he comes back all slaphappy and he takes every bit of secular music that is mostly mine from his room, but also several of his, and sets them all on the table in the living room..and there it hits me.. shit it's taking him over. i go "please don't tell me you're giving up secular music". and he says "ok i won't" which i guess means he's going to but he won't tell me..fuck. see, i can't do anything about this. he goes and these people put this shit in his mind, they say he doesn't Have to do it, but if he wants to be all the christian he can be, he should do it..and there you go and he'll start listening to all christian music and stop watching certain movies and tv shows and stop cussing and start hanging out exclusively with this one group of people that give him this one limited view of influence..FUCK. i mean, if i went off and joined a cult, not a radical one where we all end up killing ourselves, but some cult, my family couldn't do anything about it, it's my decision, i'm an adult, but they'd still be fucking pissed off and uncomfortable with it.. because like i said, this isn't just another side of jordan, it's slowly becoming him, or he's slowly becoming it, whichever, and i can't do a fucking thing, and if i plead my case it will just alienate him and he'll not trust me anymore or come to me anymore for whatever..he'll see me as an outsider. does anyone understand the gravity of this situation? first this fucking religion causes me insurmountable pain when my parents use it as an excuse to throw out all of my cds and posters and not let me watch certain movies or go to certain concerts, all of which really only makes me hate them and keeps me severred from them forever...and of course there are bible verses spat at me from crying mother who uses them to blame me for her wasted life and show how i'm evil now..and then it leaves me outside my dad and brother's little unit, because they still want to go to church and i obviously don't..fine, but now after getting so fucking close to my brother it is tugging him away slowly. not to mention just the entire damn world who has some sort of strong religious belief and announces it everywhere, alienating me and the millions of others who just don't want a firm belief in this sketchy bullshit.. it's so amazing, let me tell you, to walk thru a religious world, with 90% pretty damn sure a god exists, and it's not that you absolutely don't believe, it's just that you're trying to be realistic so you're not sure..and they make you feel evil for questioning, or like a fucking purple elephant..it's a horrible feeling, you almost want to say everyone suffers from a form of mental illness, which religious beliefs certainly constitute if you think about it. delete God insert extraterrestrial life (which there is actually physical proof of!) and you've got a certified crazy... well there you go.

ok anyway, this is what's troubling me right now, and a little bit always, boy it's exhausting. and, you know, even if you suddenly find out there isn't a god, that doesn't mean you have to lose all hope in everything...you had hope before when you thought he existed, the only thing that changed was you.. can there be no hope in humanity? in just the goodness of human beings? can you not satisfy your need for grand scale organization by looking at nature and, however the hell it got here, it works amazingly together and it will always surprise you? alright i'm preaching to the converted and to the never-will-convert.. whatever. it's a losing battle, isn't it? i'd love to give up caring altogether, but these things keep happening where it stands right in front of my face, saying "not touching you! not touching you!" and i guess i don't have to get all huffy about it, but it's pretty damn hard not to.

finally there is time to come and tell you kids about new york. this is comprehensive, i warn you..i want to divulge the whole experience, it was quite an eventful weekend in my life, i was a part of this huge, good cause, i met these amazing people, i saw this incredible city. this was one of the big memories of my life.

this is what new york is like: (looks straight up for a long time) - in a very good way.

it's not very much like i'd expected it to be, it's somehow smaller, less severe than i was anticipating, but that's ok. time square is narrower than it looks on new years eve. your first impression of new york is that they really want you to buy something - it's one big advertisement, especially time square, ads as big as buildings, ads that move, that invade your personal space, like on minority report. new york is very capitalist. i guess that was to be expected. of course that's only one side..

we didn't see much, but what i did see i liked, it feels still like a kind of dream..like on the ride up there i was woken up suddenly at 3 am and told to look out the window at D.C..we saw the top of capitol hill amidst this early morning fog and i was drowsy but still immediately excited, that felt completely like it wasn't real. like, so this is what i've been seeing in pictures and on movies for years. this is our nation's capital. wow.

it was 22 hours up there, which was a while only because we were so wanting to BE THERE in this city of our dreams, the final hour from jersey was the longest, i just wanted to fucking see it out the window but it doesn't show up til the very last minute. i did manage to sleep, and we did play on the bus (some more than others, ie pot brownies and bottles of whiskey, wtf). i brought this bin of food so i wouldn't buy any on the trip and so did everyone else yet they still got burger king when we stopped there..i brought in my vienna sausage and mini baguette and felt very unsatisfied by not gulping down a burger - the whole trip did crazy things to my eating habits, i usually don't eat as much in public as i do at home, and this was that way to the extreme, i was never hungry, i snacked a little every now and then but didn't have any complete meals really..didn't even finish the gargantuan slice of famous ray's pizza we got for lunch in greenwich village (which is adorable by the way - we took pictures in christopher park where those gay and lesbian statues are to represent the gay liberation movement that started there with stonewall, it's where that new Truth commercial w/ the homeless guy is shot, right in front of it, you see the statues in the background, i love that)

so we drove hours and hours and didn't really hit actual cold weather until like virginia, which is so fucking far away, we were so wanting to wear our warm coats and have them be a relief to us..there was a bathroom on the bus which you were supposed to not go number 2 in because it wasn't going to be dumped til we got back and you'd have to ride with the smell the whole way, but of course some inevitably had to break the rule and the poor folks in the back with us were very unhappy with that..i fortunately and unfortunately had the unique experience of being terribly sick with a cold still and was stuffed up enough that i never smelled a thing, though illness eventually added to the general miserableness of later events, and of course my nose became raw and just blah blah, i hate being sick, bad place for it, still though, no poo smell.. also, i'm happy to say, because i'm not a person who has to pee every 3 minutes, i never once stepped foot in that bathroom, and though i'm still very curious about what it's like in there, i'm sure it's better this way. bodily functions are such a hindrance sometimes.

in D.C we stopped at a rest stop and had a snowball fight at like 3 am, very fun, fast forward 8 hours and we're finally through the jersey tunnel and onto the at first dirty ragged streets of new york..there is amazing poverty so close to amazing wealth there, it's unreal.. oh, fun aside, the heater on the bus went out in the night because we'd been so hot and so cold so often during the day so we were nice and freezing, ice covering the inside of our windows, to get out into the 10 degree morning at grand central station...that's some cold right there. in oklahoma i experienced some 30 degree cold, which was very cold at the time, but new york taught me a lesson. it's all about wind. and the very tall buildings surprisingly don't block much of it.. jordan thinks they tunnel it, which may be true.

so we followed each other awkwardly for a few blocks until finally groups were formed and most of us went to ground zero first thing, as i'd planned. it was nice how i became a sort of quasi leader and everyone went along with whatever i wanted to do, since they didn't have a handy dandy new york city for dummies book like me and researched what to do and where to go best and how..i'm such a dork but it pays off. so ground zero was strangely unaffecting, we were at ground level with it so we couldn't see how vast the hole really was, we were kept behind this fence that stretched all the way around it and it kept us kind of far back..we could just stand on our tip toes and peek in at the men still working with cranes and drills at whatever they're doing down there. you can't see how far it goes down. 8 stories, right? i don't know..it was kind of quiet there, there were a lot of tourists, something about it felt forced, so we left.

let me tell you about these wonderful kids that were in our back-of-the-bus group. there was Kio, short for Kiovanni, one of the coolest names ever, she's the one black person on the bus, who we later found out models part-time, and you can tell, she's so fucking gorgeous we were all disgusted with ourselves, she came with her white boy-rapper friend Mike, the three of us sat on the very back three person seat coming up so i got to know how she's in the NOW group on campus and she wants to be a lawyer and she writes and reads poetry by these awesome black women who talk about all the struggles women go through...it's hard not to be a feminist after you read her favorite poem. Richard, someone told me in orlando waiting to get onto the bus, is this "really awesome guy", but he ended up being the drag of the group, he was always complaining about something or hurrying us along to get to the protest when we wanted to enjoy new york a little more, making us feel guilty, "that IS the reason we all came here.." etc. he kept getting lost too, so he held us up a bit, though in the end i felt like a mother to him, assuring him everything was going to be fine and we weren't going to lose him. he felt like the runt of the litter. alexia is this bold red haired girl who at first seemed obnoxious and then was just really cool and straightforward..she was the one who made the pot brownies, along with other non-special goodies for everyone..she would prove to be the other quasi leader and we'd figure out the subway systems together..she gave this homeless guy on the subway some of her bread, he was huddled under a blanket and where the rest of us averted our eyes and tried to ignore him, she started up a conversation, very cool. she was also not too timid to ask strangers for directions, fortunately for us. lindsay is another red head, very smart, shares my lust for george clooney and that boy from y tu mama tambien, she is very much like me and we had a lovely time together. shannon is this tiny little munchkin of a lesbian..4"10 or so, bushy brown hair, rainbow ski vest, big toothy grin. she's hilarious and confident and so so much later i found out she's only a freshman and actually younger than me !! i always thought she was a senior. everyone on the bus kind of felt older than me. she's a film pending major and was making a movie about the trip, along with a few others on the bus. her and jessica really bonded and finally she came around to me and we talked enthusiastically over country time meals about nuclear winter..this sci fi writer she's obsessed with, man's colonizing space and dr. strangelove..what good times. her partner in crime is Joe, a 6'1 flaming homosexual who shares a rank in the glbsu (?correct order of letters??) on campus that they're always shouting about in incredibly fast run-together unison "senior vice president of the gay, lesbian, bisexual....organization of the university of central florida, orlando, florida, united states of america!!" it's hilarious. nothing joe says is serious, i love that. he and shannon sang show tunes the entire bus ride...there's apparently a tune to match every comment..lol. and of course barbra impressions. they're so theatrical, it was better than tv. joe's goal for the trip was to see time square where he could drool over broadway marquees and collect brochere's..he screamed "THIS IS MY MECCA!!!" when we go there, it was so great. but you know how flamers get really annoying in like 5 minutes? well he never did.. he was just the right amount of flame.. you would've loved him, axel. and of course there's me and jessica...we never even sat together on the bus, we had our own things going on, i was worried we'd be too dependent on each other, but it was really just a perfect balance. she gave me this enormous scare the morning we were supposed to leave..she was having car problems the night before and she started taking that as a sign that it wasn't meant to be and that morning at like 6:45 she called and said she wasn't going. she has these emotional problems were she tries to keep joy out of her life, it's very complicated, but i was so tired and at that point my dad was freaking about terrorist attacks and i gave up and called the organizer and said we both weren't going. so there i was at 7 that morning crying in bed that all this time and energy had been wasted, when suddenly she calls an hour later and says she's on her way, she changed her mind all of a sudden for the 30th time that week, and we were going.. it unfortunately drained the trip of its initial excitement, i did actually expect something to go wrong, but i made it, and that's that. this is one of those things that people say "when you fight too hard for something you know it's not supposed to be", but this is just the opposite..i fought damn hard, everything that could've went wrong went wrong, i Made this trip happen, and it happened, and nothing catastrophic happened, and it goes down in history as one of the best times of my life. so that just goes to show, sometimes you have to force things.

so that was our group of nine, we lost kio and mike along the way before the protest and we became a much tighter group of seven. we got to the protest about an hour and a half late, tons of people with signs were everywhere, walking in the opposite direction of 1st avenue and 49th street, where the rally was supposed to be..they said the police were blocking off all connecting streets down there, we were at lexington and 54th at that point, lexington is 3 blocks west of 1st, so we were several blocks away and then having to walk in the opposite direction where we were told police were letting people through up by 58th..so everyone started that way. at 58th there was another blockade, so we kept going, street after street was blocked, at this point the crowd had amassed so much that we spilled out into the street down lexington. we hadn't been awarded a permit to march, but that's just what we did. cars were trailing behind us honking but there were so many of us they nor the police could do anything - i was so excited, i can't explain this rush, we had taken over, i had by that point been on my feet all day and was just complaining about the cold when the sun came out and we were walking and chanting and holding up peace signs and suddenly the cold was completely bearable and my feet were new again..it was adrenaline. we walked on, gathering more and more people, every time we'd hit a cross street we'd see hundreds more pouring in from our left, it was unreal. the police were off on the side in little groups of three or four just looking at each other wondering what to do. finally at 69th we crossed over and slowly slowly made it to 1st avenue, a huge feat. we were overjoyed, and could now see the sheer number of people ahead of us in this thing..the final group covered every inch of street on 1st avenue from 49th at the really site, all the way back to 72nd, and of course there were always thousands more on the side streets and blocks over trying to reach us..the papers say up to 500,000 showed, but organizers are estimating more like a million. it was fantastic. the most popular chant was "who's streets? our streets!" which we would put into conversation for the rest of the trip...on the bus "who's bus? our bus!", fighting over food "who's food? our food!', lol..we marched for about 3 hours then the mass got so congested we weren't really moving forward anymore and we ducked into a side grocery store for warmth and a bathroom, which is always in the basement down creepy stairs where you feel like people are waiting to hold you hostage and torture you, but they're always warm and welcoming instead. 99% of the new yorkers we talked to were completely kind and awesome, we found some great accents. the whole area we stayed in for the protest didn't see any action, no cops beating people up or arresting people, but we heard later that the very front at 49th was completely different, hundreds arrested, a kid on the bus getting hit in the ribs with a night stick, horses rearing cops off, trampling people..i'm ok with the crowd i was in though, they were all peaceful, all great. and it was so not just a teenage/20something crowd..i saw so many elderly people and middle aged parents with their kids, it was so great. and to see the papers the next day with pictures of the millions all over the world, literally every continent, even antarctica, protesting this fucking war.. wow, what a rush, i was a part of this huge thing, i can't believe it still. my first protest was maybe the biggest one in history so far, and they're not stopping. i hope to go to a D.C one maybe in a couple months when it gets warmer.

the cold really was a fucking bitch.. like you wouldn't believe. it felt nice during the protest in the heat of the day with the sun, which we found out later was only 24 degrees, but when the sun went down it got in the single digits and the wind was up and that was blinding, biting cold. we saw central park for a few minutes covered in snow, so beautiful, we walked quickly to time square to get joe his brochere's, stopping shortly in carnegie hall to warm up along the way. we got dinner at carnegie deli, which i can't believe we got into, the seven of us, on a saturday night, it's world-renowned. sure enough it was packed, there's a horrible lack of personal space in new york and this place embodied it, they crammed as many tables and chairs into the space as they could, 8x11 pictures of celebrities who's been there were everywhere on the wall, covering the whole place, i was so happy to have gotten in. little did i know. first we had no idea what we wanted, the food was crazy heavy stuff like corned beef and pastrami, and most were $20 entrees that we didn't want, this of course is mad cheap for new york, but still, we're a bunch of poor vegetarian hippies so it was hard.. the first waiter tried to take us through the menu to hurry us along, finally our main waiter came and rolled his eyes and sighed loudly as some of us changed our orders, it was hilarious, he hated us so much. then he comes back and says he's "sorry" but the manager told him we all had to order at least $12.50 worth of food or we couldn't stay.. !!!!!! right then we should've left, two of us did cuz they didn't have the money, but the rest of us were cornered and just decided to go with it, so we got excess sides that we didn't eat, it was ridiculous, and the final bill for the five of us, which included the 15% tip, so we wouldn't stiff him, which we really should've, and i don't do that, the final bill was 89 fucking dollars.. how insane is that? so kids, don't go to carnegie deli, just don't. lesson well learned. that waiter was the only new york stereotype we ran into. then it was back to grand central to meet the bus, which wasn't there. we waited for over an hour for it in this subway terminal, having a good time with these three drunk homeless guys, then one started preaching and one stupid kid in our group started calling christianity bullshit and the man freaked out and the police kicked all of us out onto the street right outside in the freezing cold.. well that wasn't acceptable. the cops eventually left and we filed back in, and thank god because we would've been standing out there for another half an hour for that damn bus. the homeless guys were eventually escorted away by a new police duo that came around and we were all pissed at the asshole in our group who yelled at them.

so we got back on the bus and the heating had not been fixed, as we could tell by the ice still coating the windows, and we were already freezing, so that was a long and extremely hard night. i didn't bring a blanket so i was fucked there, i put on every piece of clothing i brought and still was quite miserable, realistically fearing pnemonia on top of my cold, i couldn't feel my feet at all for hours, it was bizarre..we hit that snow storm coming through D.C. which made us go 20mph for about 3 hours, so that was a serious delay, all we wanted was to get down to warmer weather which, unlike the ride up, only happened once we got to georgia when suddenly temperatures skyrocketed and we were all incredibly hot. we went from numb feet to sweating feet, we pealed off every article of clothing we could and sweated our way back to orlando, getting in at 12:30 sunday night, about 4 hours later than expected. what a trip. so see there was some serious hell experienced there, and to have come out of it still so overjoyed to have gone, that must've been an incredible experience. jessica couldn't stop thanking me for making her go. we made some good friends, she got into the cause, we got to experience new york together. even without a hot dog from a street cart.

melody and jessica are going to new york. yes we are. and i'm sick suddenly, but i'm going to keep myself heavily medicated and i've bought an intense multivitamin so maybe i can kick this in a few days. oh man. this saturday, at 9 am, i will be in snowy freezing new york, with an enormous smile on my face. i'm going to see ground zero and greenwich village and strawberry fields (where john lennon was shot) and the rest of central park and maybe a really old movie theater. and i'm going to get a hot dog from a street cart..and pizza at one of the three best pizza places in new york. oh man. we have only 12 hours in the city, but it's going to be amazing. there's still room on the bus if anyone wants to come and pay $110..a lot, but i'm sure worth it. if i can make it there, i'll make it anywhere....

ok so here's the thing - i might be going to new york on valentines day weekend for the war protest. i've signed up for the bus that ucf is paying for. i have one and possibly a second slot reserved on that bus.. it costs me $25 because i'm a ucf student, then we found out it costs everyone else $110, and now jenn, who was my gung-ho girl, can not come. this is trouble. it's a bit of a grueling trip, leave 10am friday, drive 18 hrs through the night, arrive 9-10am saturday, run around the city for a couple of hours, protest at noon-5-6pm, dinner with the gang 6-7pm, leave 8-9pm, drive 18hrs straight back, arrive dinner time sunday.. that's a heavy trip. probably no chance for a shower, which is annoying but do-able. it would be a long ride, it would be hard to leave the city so soon, but it's also a trip to new york, albeit short, for under $100 altogether, for me. jenn is not in the correct position, i understand that, i just wish she would've thought logically from the beginning and didn't get my hopes up, because, my friends, they're up right now. i mean this is a serious set-back, but yesterday, as much as i kept telling myself that this still may not happen, i was pretty sure it was going to, and i was preparing for it. i was incredibly excited, even quietly. i told barbara i couldn't work that weekend and everything.. this is the closest i've come to doing anything huge like this and i just couldn't believe it might all work out..it still might, but there's this boulder in my way now. i am semi prepared to go alone, though that doesn't sound nearly as fun and i didn't really want to walk around new york alone..i'd probably hook up with people on the bus, though i feel like a traitor to the cause because it seems they're 70 for the protest and 30 for new york, and i'm more like the other way around...i'm not necessarily going to stay at the protest the whole 5-6 hours..i'd be in fucking new york. a dream for several years now and not one that i'd expect to achieve in the next few years, just because it's such a big trip and besides my gay uncle i don't have anyone to stay with..i don't really know my gay uncle..it's awkward. um. so hey, does anyone want to go to new york with me for 11 hours? the bus is $110 and everything else is extra, but it's not like we're staying overnight, you just have to pay for food and i guess subway fare (oh man)...the world is tilting a little for me right now..how can i pass up an opportunity like this? i get to see this city of my dreams for under $100...when does one get to do something like this? once in a lifetime maybe. dammit. i still haven't talked to jessica..she may just want to drive up there and not pay for bus fare, which i'd be more than willing to do..my dad was very worried for several days about me getting arrested or killed or something but now i think he's seen the light..but if someone doesn't go with me he'll be much less up for this whole thing. ok. this all sounds selfish -> see thru that crap and think of going to new york with melo. ok