Tuesday, September 2, 2008.
Meditations and Odd Mannequins.
There are certain times of day that I as a college student most definitely have the God-ordained right to NOT have to witness. Seven o'clock A.M, for example. Unfortunately the evil forces that reside over the University of Memphis do not respect my rights as a college citizen and insist on my presence to eight A.M classes. It is just downright
wrong.
The fact that I have to attend Foundations Studio I so bright and early does nothing to ease the pain of a sleep-deprived, perpetually groggy mind. I'm serious - going toi class to see "Cedar" just doesn't do much to get your blood pumping. Not to mention the meditation.
Now, don't get me wrong - I'm a firm believer in the positive effects of meditation. I'm not talking about sitting on a rock and making a connection with your inner self - though if you can master this you'll probably be doing your outer-self a favor - I am quite simply referring to channeling all of your energy into closing down your thoughts one at a time, until all that is left within your mind is an acute attentiveness to your own existence. (Of course the same applies if you are meditating on a object or a religious thought or on a particular aspect of life.)
At any rate, my instructor, Cedar Nordbye, informed us we would start every class with ten minutes of meditation, to weed out the "other thoughts" and focus ourselves solely on our opinions and minds and views on art and the creative process. It was a nice, quiet, relaxing ten minutes - but refraining from falling back to sleep became increasingly difficult after the forty-five second mark.
After Foundations Studio comes math. Hooray for mathematics! My instructor is from Africa. Learning math from an African man with a very heavy African accent is...interesting. Still, the class is very easy, because I totally failed at getting a reasonable score on my ACT. Oh well.
I rushed to the book store have math, to see if my darned Japanese books had come in yet. Hoorah, they were in stock! But not the ones under my name. Oh no! The very kind and incredibly sneaky bookstore girl told me if I brought a receipt, she would pull them from the shelf! How wonderful is she! It was just too bad that my receipt was half-a-mile away in my dorm room. Still, that was perfectly fine - I was going there anyway for lunch!
I did a horrible thing and bought a chicken sandwich. I know right?! I guess I got what I deserved - I have horrible heartburn right now. Tomorrow's mission include buying chocolate syrup to go with my organic milk that probably came from a faux organic farm. Looks like I'm going to have to settle for plant guts - err, soy milk.
While I was eating my lunch, I turned on the television to watch CourtTV. There was this idiotic woman - a dog breeder, at that - who borrowed some horse dewormer from a friend and gave it to her...chihuahuas. Now, I do not own a horse, but I do know perfectly well that horse dewormer is fatal to dogs just like dog dewormer is fatal to cats. You don't mix medications designed for certain species of animals unless your VETERINARIAN tells you it is okay. Apparently Friend had said that it would be okay. Of course Friend denied this, but even if she did say it was okay, there is NO WAY the death of Lady's dogs was her fault. She was not even present when the puppies were given medication.
Friend was able to provide boxes from all three different medications she shared with Lady. The boxes - all three - said that the medication was fatal to dogs. Hello? Lady with the dead dogs said "her eyes were getting bad" because she was getting "older", and yet, she says her teenage daughter helped her give the medicine. How do you give horse medication to a dog if you don't even read the box to determine how much to give them?
At any rate, this woman killed three of her own dogs because of her own ignorance. Because Friend had used one of Lady's now-deceased dogs as a "stud" before, she apparently owed Lady a puppy. Of course, Friend absolutely refused to give a puppy to Lady, because she felt as if Lady was not responsible enough to provide proper care for the dogs. I agree with Friend. (Lady had better hope that PETA never finds out about this one.) Friend had tried to remain proper, however, and had offered to pay a stud fee of one hundred dollars as well as the value of the puppy she had initially agreed to give Lady - four hundred and fifty dollars. Of course, Lady was desperate for a puppy because Friend had "killed all of her babies". I wasn't able to watch the end of the show, but I desperately hope Lady did not get a dog. And I hope...that America starts requiring licenses to breed and sell animals. Backyard breeders are just "iffy".
In fact, we bought a puppy from a local breeder who died of parvo just a month after we purchased him. He almost definitely had the virus when we bought him, and if not, he certainly had not been vaccinated as claimed. And when you aren't dealing with backyard breeders who don't know sh*t about animals, you've got puppy millers who force their dogs to pop out puppies like gumball machines without so much as a congratulatory word for their hard work. It's just sad.
Anyway, it is officially time for me to go watch anime in the peace and quite of my dorm. So...I'm out.~