All in Life Notes

All I Want for Christmas is a Lifeline.

f you’ve ever held a conversation with an elderly person who is EXTREMELY hard of hearing, you’ll know it’s less of a conversation and more of a yelling match. This is what I get paid to do for eight hours at a time. Yes, I am the person on the other end of: “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up?” By the end of the shift, I’m usually tired of my own voice and ready to rip my hair out. Can you blame me for wanting to get out of there as fast as possible?

So when the clock ticks over from 22:59 to 23:00, I am ready to kick down doors and run for the hills. Seven minutes: that’s how long I’ve got to get from the office to the bus stop. This is no seven minutes in heaven. It’s seven minutes of hellish anticipation and nervous jitters because missing that golden first bus means standing on a practically deserted street with darkened houses behind me and some horror movie bush ahead.

Burning Bras and Throwing Rocks

Of the five trillion megabytes of data on the Internet, Twitter is one of the little corners of the World Wide Web capable of raising my blood pressure in 2.2 seconds.  The ignorant and the stupid congregate to spout nonsense and have it co-signed by followers who are equally as vapid as themselves. Twitter, quite frankly, is a concentrated display of this generation’s idiocy. I had to make a conscious decision to stay the hell off Twitter between 7-10AM because I couldn’t handle being so frustrated before I’d even left the house. In a few keystrokes, a person I’d never met, halfway across the country, could have me downright furious. (Perhaps, I ought to choose who I follow more wisely or stay off Twitter altogether, but that’s another topic for another time.) It seems ignorance reigns at all hours of the day, because at 10:22 PM yesterday I scrolled past this:

“It's not that girls ain't shit, but being a girl ain't shit.You're the shit when you find out WHO you are, not use WHAT you are to get ahead.”

The Spirit of the Games: Two Failures of Olympic Proportions at the 2012 Games

Ever since I saw the Sydney Opera House lit up on my mother’s analog TV in 2000, and saw the Olympic rings splashed everywhere, I’ve spent the four years between the games, waiting in fidgety anticipation for the summer when it’d all happen again. From the showboating of the opening and closing ceremonies, to the passion, dedication and pure athleticism displayed throughout the games themselves, I was riveted to the TV for as many events as possible.

A a nine year old island girl whose geography lessons had yet to reveal how many countries there were in the world, what amazed me most was the parade of the participating nations. So many flags waved all in one place. I am still awed now, because the Olympic Games bring together nations of all economic standing and languages, races and cultures, religions and government. It creates a unity that is rarely produced by any other medium. No matter how different the people, the athletes, and the proud supporters back home, we’re all cheering about the same thing.