This whole “I’m so ugly worthless and stupid” shtick sucks. I mean I’m sick of it. Really really sick of it.
I’m charming, intelligent, and hot. And I’m not gonna waste time on some bitches that don’t recognize.

When you hang around positivity long enough—your outlook changes. The way you look at yourself changes.
Maybe I just need this rebirth. I had so much confidence years ago. Maybe because I didn’t have a shattered heart….it took 3 fucking years to regain from all the stress, drama, irritation. This is a new me.

All I can say is

I’m done with white girls.

One Tattoo for Every Casualty of Operation Iraqi Freedom

In a move that sees the human body used as a permanent canvas, the artist Wafaa Bilal is getting a massive tattoo that contains one dot for every casualty of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Bilal calls the project “…and Counting.”

From Information Aesthetics:

The full-back tattoo will be applied during a 24 hour performance on March 8th in conjunction with a fundraiser aimed at collecting $1 per death towards scholarships for Americans and Iraqis who lost their parents in the war. Kyle McDonald designed the visualization for this remarkable tattoo, which contains more than [4,000] US soldiers in red ink, and more than [100,000] “invisible” civilians depicted in ultraviolet ink.

As performance art goes, I’d say that the irreversibility of this action adds a lot. The layout and the red-versus-ultraviolet design also manages to be clever without being irreverent, which feels appropriate. On Bilal’s website, he notes that his brother was killed by a missile at a checkpoint in their home town of Kufa, Iraq, in 2004. Although he says he feels the pain of both the American and Iraqi families who have lost loved ones, he fears that deaths like his brother’s “are largely invisible to the American public.”

The performance takes place Wednesday, March 8, at 8 p.m. (lasting until 8 p.m. the following night) at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York City. Various people will read the names of the war dead. Bilal is asking each visitor to donate $1.

Read more: http://www.good.is/post/one-tattoo-for-every-casualty-of-operation-iraqi-freedom#ixzz0flJ2rpbH
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution”>

i applied to 6 schools for a phd in american studies.

one just denied my ass.  and i am super worried about the others.  i am still hoping…but i don’t know.  i hate uncertainty in my life, and i am constantly wondering about my future: will i move in 6 months?, if i don’t go to school will i still have a job?, will i ever get to the next level of academia? am i a fucking failure?

work is pretty slow right now too.  i have a lot of down time….time to think…but i’m really just watching bad tv.

i should be:

1. reading books

2. finish knitting my uncle’s scarf

3. writing….i guess blogging is a start

4. thinking of alternatives….in terms of employment

what i should NOT be doing is worrying about girls.  i can’t help but wonder if i will ever have a meaningful relationship….and if i will ever acheive my goals.

keep going.

This fucking military shit….keeps getting brought up at work…from having them “thank” us, to their evaluations coming in (one guy literally wrote “i didn’t know palestinian women could be so hot”) to it being brought to my attention that two evals that came in said “our tour guide wasn’t friendly enough/didn’t interact with us enough” its been a whole week and it keeps being brought to my fucking attention. i’m fucking sick of this. i’m physically ill. not trying to slander the __, but i told few very close coworkers and friends and they think this shit is fucked up. this shit is eating away at me. i kinda want to end my employment earlier than expected like april……but just found out it HAS to be june.

now I just saw a fucking news (my dad’s watching fox news UGH) broadcast about this guy getting deployed to afghanistan….and he is all “I want to do something big…I want to make a difference. My colleagues and I want to be the first their…on the front lines” and his wife says “he is fighting the fight there so it doesn’t have to come here” YES….KEEP THINKING THAT YOU DUMB BITCH. IT’S PEOPLE LIKE YOU THAT RUIN AMERICA. These fucking soldiers need to get a clue….you aren’t helping anyone!

The next thing is my worry/anxiety over getting accepted to school/my job/my romantic relationships/….my future really. Uncertainty is scary. I can take comfort in being comfortable right now living with parents and having a job… I just can’t keep living at home…I need to have my own life and grow up. I can’t keep working at the __ bc they don’t pay shit…and its getting fucking old.

. I think I will have to try and relax and keep busy….

Work out

Eat better

Do more fun things.

All very distracting from

So I have (yet again) been accused of being an elitist.  Haha…well I don’t disagree with being an elitist at times.  But I was accused of one for inaccurate reasons….here’s the back story:

A few nights ago I went out to a bar with a good friend.  We bumped into this girl from high school, and we had a long catching up convo with her.  My friend was filling her in on her life, such as possibly going to Korea to teach English.  The girl from our school started telling us about “juice girls” and prostitution in Korea and gave us this little nugget of opinion:

“I mean why are we fighting in I-RAQ when we should be there (Korea) helping”

so I let all the fucked-up-ness of that statement go at that moment…only glancing at my good friend.

A few days later, my friend and I were hanging out and chatting, and somehow we started talking about how some people are seemingly “liberal” but saw some pretty fucked up shit….such as our old school mate did….

And then I launched into “god can you believe ‘I-RAQ???’”

And my friend pointed out that I was being an elitist for proscribing a certain pronunciation of Iraq.

I always thought, that as Americans, we should always try to pronounce the name of a country the closest to the way people of that country say it.

I mean the real pronunciation is more of a glottal sound in the beginning and middle of the word.  But Americans are not typically able to make that sound.  The closest pronunciation would be “E-rock.”  Therefore, we (Arab Americans, Iraqi Americans) have let “E-rock” go.

Granted, my friend said when we both hear I-RACK, it conjures the image of some ignorant, conservative republican asshole, so I automatically get in hate mode.

I have heard educated professors refer to the country as “I-rack” and I gotta be honest, it does make me sad.  But my friend insists (linguist students….ugh) that in American dialect and accent that is how Iraq is pronounced….and to command someone to change the way they pronounce it, when they have been taught or learned that it is I-RACK is a show of my elitism.  “I know how to say it, and you are wrong, so I have to teach you”—is elitist.

A teacher at our high school told one day in class “actually you pronounce it “Iraq” (the actual Arabic way of saying it).  So according to my friend, our teacher, who was supposed to teach us…demonstrating the correct way of saying Iraq, is elitist.

Moronic.

I am not arguing correcting someone over “supposebly” or “Ax”

But when someone says “ch-aldean” instead of “kaldean” I will correct them.

i don’t think this elitist rule applies to proper nouns.

Reading at Arab, one can easily say “ay-rab.” There is no “air” for A R…..is there in English?

Damn straight I will correct someone saying ay-rab…..

do you think of yourself as  physically “beautiful”?

how are you beautiful? how do you express that…physically?

are there different levels of beauty?

do you think people pressure you to live up to their standards of beauty? or does it not affect you as much as it did in the past?

i struggle with physical “beauty”

i really feel like i am losing time…but this doesn’t push me as much. i just get overwhelmed and sleep the day away.

Projects i need to get started on:

–still working for a livin

–paper for publication

–grad school stuff

–creating a zine/publication

–other community work

too many things…too many distractions.