Roads and Google Maps are Trying to Kill Me

So I was setting forth in the bitter winter cold to go to a concert.

According to Google maps, this trip was supposed to take 18 minutes. According to actual experience, it took about forty.

See, this great state has stupid stupid roads. For some unfathomable reason, there is no reflective paint. Anywhere. This is a state that routinely has snow, sleet, ice, rain, fog, and any number of other horrible weather conditions. So whenever there is bad weather, you can't see anything. And when I'm driving in the dark, half the time I find myself guessing about where the lanes are.

In addition to all this nonsense, the road signs are so small that it is impossible to tell what road the cross-street is until you have passed it. When you're on the freaking highway, you can't slow down at every intersection! And the signs are green. GREEN with WHITE letters. Guess what else? They are barely more reflective than the roads.

So, I had a fun* adventure finding my turn off from the highway. An adventure that involved passing the right street, swearing, turning around, passing the street again, swearing, somehow ending up in a funeral parlor parking lot, and finally taking the right turn.

This is bad at the best of times. It is worse when you are rather ill and your sinuses are threatening to revolt against you, taking your vestibular sense (that's your ability to balance) and your ability to process simple information with them.

It got worse when I tried to find a  road which, apparently, only existed in google map's imagination. So then I found myself on a side road screaming horrible horrible swears at my steering wheel whilst shaking my head like a mad dog. Some of these swears had not passed my lips since the times when I had to do chemistry lab reports. Ashley knows what I am talking about!

Eventually I decided just to wing it and take the road that was 37 NOT 38 (which stinky Google maps said I was supposed to take) and hope that I had not wasted over half an hour and a few dollars worth of gas. Then, as I was warily traversing this suspicious road I saw a sign that said: PAVEMENT ENDS. And I was like, what does that mean? Then the pavement ended! I found myself bouncing along a dirt track with no pavement and no road lines at all. Another sign appeared. It was a bizarre corkscrew shaped arrow. Than was when the road got really twisty and I began to think that I was going to die.

But behold! A light shone forth from a nearby subdivision and I found myself on pavement once more. And then, by magic, I found the other streets I was supposed to find! Google maps had not been a completely despicable evil machine.

It was a Christmas miracle. It wasn't much of one, but I'll take what I can get in these dark economic times.

ModernHelen

ps: One the way home I learned a valuable lesson: if it is below freezing and your windshield ices over DO NOT USE WIPER FLUID. Because then it freezes and you can't see. Duh!

* This is 'fun' used in the sarcastic sense. Other examples include: "Gee! Chemistry Lab at eight in the morning is so 'fun!'" and "The most 'fun' I had this weekend was listening to a bunch of fifth-graders play violin!"**

** I understand that they have to start playing somewhere. But that somewhere should be a closet for at least four years.

If He/She Hadn't Been a Dumbass...

So, I was trying to fall asleep last night (Falling asleep is becoming progressively harder the closer I get to the end of finals week. This is probably because I am turning in EVERY SINGLE ONE of my finals assignments on Monday. It's not that I'm not on top of my work; I am. It's just that papers are to my brain as sugar is to a small child. I can't stop being all HYPER and EXCITED and CAN-DO about them. Even when it is three in the morning). As I was trying to fall asleep, I suddenly remembered a long frustration I have with one of the most tragic tragedies of the Greek Tradition: Oedipus Rex.

For those of you who were not classically educated/aren't ridiculous Greek myth freaks, here is the basic plot of the Oedipus myth:

Once upon a time in Greece, there was a Theban royal couple named to Laius and Jocasta. Due to lots of royal sexy time, they eventually had a son named Oedipus. The occasion was marred by the fact that the Oracle of Delphi foretold that littl' Oedipus would KILL his father and MARRY his mother. Laius and Jocasta did what any well-adjusted couple would do: they abandoned the baby on a mountain and high-tailed it back to Thebes.

(Un)fortunately, a shepherd found littl' Oedipus and brought him to the king and queen of Corinth who adopted him as their child. Apparently, they had same leery feelings about adoption as parents sometimes do today, because they decided that not telling Oedipus ANYTHING about his infancy was the best plan ever.

Years later, the grown Oedipus discovered the prophecy from the Oracle and was horrified. Because his adoptive parents were big fat liars, he assumed that they were his birth parents, and he ran away to avoid the prophecy. He ran away to Thebes. Yep. Right to his REAL parents. On his way there, he and this old guy got into a fight over who got to...cross a road first. That's right. They fought over WHO GOT TO GO FIRST! (I knew better by the end of first grade). Oedipus killed the old guy who turned out to be his father.

Prophecy: 1 Oedipus: 0

He then was confronted by the Sphinx who had decided that Thebes was the "it" city to terrorize with riddles. He solved her riddle (What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night? A confused robot? A lizard that lost two legs and then grew one back? A mutated Hollywood monster? No to all of the above! The answer is "Man") and she killed herself in rage.

Because it was a myth, the people of Thebes decided that Oedipus and Jocasta should get together. Oedipus married her. And they had four children/grandchildren. Hence the Freudian "Oedipus Complex" As in: "You think YOUR MOM'S SO HOT! Oh wait... you do? ... Um... That's kind of awkward...."

Prophecy: 2 Oedipus: 0

The moral of the story is that you cannot avoid your fate because do to a tragic flaw or a missing of the mark ("hamartia") that is inevitable and unavoidable.

MY moral to the story is:

Oedipus was a Dumbass!

Here are how things could have played out if he hadn't been a dumbass:



1) Adopted Family Discussion Group

The Oracle: You shall kill your father and marry your mother!

Oedipus: OH NOES!!!! (runs back to Corinth) Hey you guys! I just heard the most horrible prophecy that I'm going to kill my father and marry my mother!! What do I do??

Queen of Corinth: Sweetie, I guess this is a good time to tell you: We aren't your parents.

Oedipus: Oh that's great! I was worried I'd have to run far away to Thebes or something!

King of Corinth: No son. You'll stay right here. And we'll find a nice girl for you to marry. Someone young. Younger than you are.

And they Lived Happily Ever After



2) I'm not Going to Thebes

The Oracle: You shall kill your father and marry your mother.

Oedipus: Oh no!!! I shall have to run away to Thebes!

The Oracle: Um... why don't you not go there?

Oedipus: Why?

The Oracle: I'm the Oracle Fool! Trust me on this.

Oedipus: Okay...


And so Oedipus went to Athens instead, became a famous sculptor, and lived happily ever after.




3) Wait... How old are you?

(Oedipus is on his way to Thebes)

Laius: Hey!! I wanna go first!

Oedipus: NO! I wanna go first!

Laius: I'll fight you!

Oedipus: So will I...wait a second... How old are you?

Laius: Old enough to be your father you young whippersnapper!

Oedipus: Hmm... Better not risk it... Go ahead!

Laius: Humph!! (Leaves)

(A Short While Later... Oedipus Triumphantly Enters Thebes)

Oedipus: Praise me Thebes! I have killed the Sphinx and delivered you! Praise me! PRAISE ME!!

Jocasta: Hello you stud-muffin! What do you say I ditch the old guy and make YOU king!

Oedipus: Well, that's tempting and all, but you're old enough to be my mother. And I've got this prophecy that I'm going to kill my father and marry my mother, and I'd rather not take any chances...

Jocasta: OMG! My son, who I abandoned on a mountain, totally had that prophecy!

Oedipus: You know, I really don't look anything like my "parents" in Corinth. Do you think that maybe...

Jocasta: OMG! You know, it's really good we didn't get married... That could have been really awkward...

Oedipus: Think of the Children!

And they lived happily (and not incestuously) ever after!


So there you have it!

Modern Helen

ps: I may have to keep mocking epic tragedies for funnsies now...

I WILL be Back!!

Hey Everyone who is still checking this blog (by which I mean the two deluded optimists I know)! I know that I have been a bad person and abandoned this blog. It is unforgivable. But, I'm asking you to forgive me anyway. You know why? Because I'm adorable. Granted, unless you are a close friend or a ninja stalker, you do not have empirical knowledge of this fact. So you will just have to trust me.

I am in the midst of a crazy crazy CRAZY!!! (I like repeating things three times...) week with finals. I have thus far typed about 40 pages, and I have about 12 pages left to go, so I am not promising anything big for updates YET.

However, I am excited to announce that my craziness, that beautiful and mad muse that inspires so many overly-caffeinated people, has not gone away. If anything, it has gotten worse! Which is good for you guys because it leads to more fun times in your reading. And bad for me because it helps undermine my ability to have normal-time. At all.

Of course, I'm not convinced normal-time is a good thing. It seems to consist of getting drunk and being a dumb-ass. So, I think I'll keep the crazy!

Anyways, I am still having brain thoughts that are crazy, hilarious, and occasionally insightful. Face it: if you write enough, you are bound by the laws of probability to come up with SOMETHING meaningful at SOME point in your life!

Additionally, I have decided that I am officially an adult. I have a license that proves it. So, I am going to start saying more grown-up things. There may even be swears and skankiness!

Here are some of the exciting new categories of thought that you have to look forward to:

1) Thoughts just before I fall asleep

2) It takes nine-million times as long to do anything as it ought to

3) I hate my stupid body

4) Why I would not be a  heroine or a villainess in a fantasy epic but would, instead, be one of those mysterious, powerful, and often ambivalent secondary characters, as illustrated by examples from the greatest tv series ever made, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Here is a sneak peak at Number 1!:

Thoughts just before I fall asleep:

1) Can-Can can you do that Can-Can! Can you... You shouldn't do a Can-Can... in midair... 'cause then you twist your ankle like that one time...

2) I'm the queen of the velociraptors

3) Can you have a posteriori knowledge of a priori knowledge? (If you don't know what this is google it and you are half-way to sounding like a pretentious old man!!)

4) I'm Helen the Christmas Elf! On a Shelf! Oh good brain! Why do you hate me?

ModernHelen

Ps: If you don't like it, you can kiss my ass because I am DONE with being a cutesy little girl-woman just so people like me.

PPs: PLEASE LIKE IT!!!

Job Applications

THE JOB APPLICATIONS ARE ATTACKING MY FACE!!!

Like any other poor college student home from the summer I am beginning to realize the horrible horribleness of the economy and of the entire process of getting a job in this day and age.

Here are my marketable skills:

1) Can write awesomely

2) Can type 55 words per minute

3) Can sing... oh wait... that's not marketable...

4) Ummmm......

You see the issue? I am virtually useless until I get my PHD(s)!!

I have no idea what is happening. THERE ARE SO MANY JOB APPLICATIONS!! This is worse than college applications because with college I KNEW I was getting in somewhere but now I have no idea if anyone will give me a job and I am a very very scared person.

Can't I just write papers showcasing my brilliance? That would be a Job Applications that I could win at.
There are just so many places and so many applications...

And so many people will soon have my social security number so that will probably be stolen or something.

So then I will need a job to pay back the debt that identity theft has given me...

BUT I WON'T BE ABLE TO GET ONE BECAUSE MY IDENTITY WILL BE ALL TARNISHED!!!!!!!!!!

I am really really really not happy right now. Tomorrow I have to make a resume appear like magic (I have never written a non-music essay before) and pick up MORE applications and drop the OTHER applications off and then fill out MORE online applications.


And then probably cry.

Also I am pretty sure that I failed one of the personality tests. I just kept coming up with better answers than the ones given and contingency situations and stuff... If they monitor the number of times that you change your answers then I am probably in serious trouble. But my stupid philosopher brain kept coming up with different scenarios and hypothesizing better solutions and my snarky English professor brain was commenting on how to phrase everything better so I kept changing my mind...

ModernHelen

ps: The Olive Garden does not hire over the summer. This is because it probably thinks that it is much more awesome than it actually is. The Olive Garden is NOT awesome; it is overpriced and as European as Kraft Mac n Cheese.

Summer FINALLY arrives

Well I have finally made it back home for the summer after a trip that seemed to last forever and ever and ever.

I wish we had teleportation. Driving home from college was an exhausting experience.

I have always wondered about that. Road trips. You sit in the car for a million hours and do nothing accept bob your head to music, attempt to read, and reapply sunscreen to your arms because you are so white that you can apparently get sunburned through tinted car windows. Yet it's exhausting. My theory is that the human mind can only process so much change in scenery at a time. If you travel hundreds of miles in a few days your mind decides that you MUST be tired because you worked SO HARD to travel that far.

It doesn't make sense but it is psychology so you will all just have to deal with it.

This is not going to be a long post. I'm on a different time zone and I'm exhausted. But never fear. I have lots of craziness coming including a spectacular post consisting of some of the zany things that my teachers have been saying this year. I may even draw awesome pictures.

A shout out to my poor friends who are staying at school to do research (nerds) or to have jobs. You are the wise ones. I begin the frantic quest to get someone to hire me tomorrow. Too bad that I can't have an anagram rearranging challenge or something like that as part of the job interview process. I would win.

Good luck to everyone this summer! And if anyone knows about any people who desire to hire English/Philosophy undergrads for the summer then that would be just smashing.

ModernHelen

Its all Ashley's Fault

Okay. I am REALLY booked with finals week. This is an old draft that isn't really complete or very good. I hope you bask in its sub-par glory.



When you spend a lot of time around people, you tend to pick up their habits. It is a human evolutionary thing that goes back thousands of years and allows them to be somewhat social and agreeable. Except for when there are wars...

Anyways, I have picked up a few habits from my friends at college. Especially my roommate, Ashley, because I am stuck around her a lot.

Lets face it. She knows where I sleep.

It is Ashley's fault that I have started doing a few strange things, because it have been picking up her habits.

1) Now, I bounce up and down when I am really excited.
-Admittedly, I always did this a little. But Ashley made it worse.

2) I make high pitched shrieking sounds when startled or angry.
-Okay, I did do this before too. But Ashley made it worse!


We are stuck in positive feedback loops that overlap and lead to social-evolutionary mandated madness.

But I still say that it is ALL ASHLEY'S FAULT.

ModernHelen

ps: I bet you wished this post was longer but that's too damn bad. I have 500 pages of honors and 600 pages of philosophy to review and you must deal with it.

Helen's Catholic Adventure

So, I decided to go with Raye, Bethany, Clare, and Emily to Catholic Easter Vigil on this, the day before Easter. A few things that I did not know about Catholic Easter Vigil:

1) It is over three hours long
2) Incense is not a happy thing for your throat

So, things started going strangely wrong from the very beginning. First we got into an argument about whether unbaptized babies can ever get out of limbo, and what kind of place limbo is anyway. We got to Church early and within the first few minutes I had idly remarked about how your hands can supposedly tell you how many children you are going to have (1 for me).

Me: You're going to have three children!
Raye: Dammit!
Emily: Swearing in Church!
Bethany: Swearing and witchcraft! You're going to hell!

Meanwhile, Bethany was drilling Clare (the only one of us who was actually Catholic) on all things Catholic. She began to come up with some increasingly complex and interesting hypothetical situations centering around the concept in the Catholic Church that only men can be priests.

Finally we reached this zenith:

Bethany: If I marry a bi man and then I have a sex change surgery and become a man can I still be a priest in the Catholic Church?
Clare: I don't think so...
All: *semi crazy laughter*

Following that I proceeded to be a very clumsy person. I almost dropped my hymn book thing (we had these programs and these bulletins but half of the stuff that was happening was not really in either because most of these people were Catholic and had been Catholic for a long period of time and they had everything memorized). Then I dropped my candle (it was a quasi-candlelight vigil) on the ground and Bethany was all like: "You're going to hell!" and I started giggling a little hysterically because her face was scary and serious for about two seconds.

Then ninety million people were baptized, confirmed, or re-baptized or something... I don't really know. It took at least an hour for everything to happen. Meanwhile, Raye is starting to suffer from allergies and hives because of the incense (which reminded me of pine trees after a while... I'm not sure exactly what was in the incense). There was the most adorable Asian boy ever in front of us who kept grabbing his mother's face and staring at us and generally being a nuisance. I would have been SO MUCH WORSE than that boy at his age in a mass that lasted for three hours.

Okay, before I continue please let me stress that I am not in any way demonic.

Right. So, the priests were coming down the aisle and sprinkling holy water...

Helen's Body: Holy Something!! What was that?!? I'm under attack!! Better shake like a horse trying to dislodge a pesky fly!! *proceeds to shudder violently*
Bethany: Calm down!
Me: *chagrined and sad face because she has vague feelings that the people behind her probably think that she is some kind of demon*

I have sensory integration issues! That's all!

Then we knelt for the first time and my pantyhose apparently had little to no surface friction against the weird plastic stuff that the kneeling thing was made of so I slipped and fell to the floor. And Raye and Bethany laughed at me (quietly) and Raye patted me on the shoulder.

If that wasn't bad enough, I wasn't really thinking about appropriate things while I was kneeling. I kept drawing mythological analysis of what was happening in the Church (the chanting, the incense, etc.) and thinking about Freud. And what Freud would say. And Freud doesn't really say very much that is appropriate...

I did not take the Eucharist because I am not Catholic and the Bishop was giving it and I did not want to be a liar to the Bishop.

We left really really quickly after the service because Emily had to pee. But, as I was quickly sidling out the door and hoping that the people behind me weren't glaring at me and thinking that I was demon spawn, Bethany grabbed me:

Bethany: (in a hissed whisper) It's the Bishop!
Helen: *cautiously approaches Bishop and shakes his hand*
Bishop: Bless you.
Helen: *mumbles incoherently*
*All walk outside*
Bethany: We just shook the Bishop's hand! We're not going to purgatory! We're going straight to heaven!
Helen: Hey! He knows the Pope right?
Clare: Probably...
Helen: WERE ONE DEGREE OF SEPARATION FROM THE POPE
Bethany: And the Pope is one degree from St. Peter...
Helen: Because degrees of separation can go backwards in time... and Peter is one degree from Jesus...
Bethany: THREE DEGREES FROM JESUS!!


And that my friends is my Catholic Adventure...

ModernHelen