Mary Jane's Last Dance

Four papers due all on the same day? FUCK ME.

You are trying to kill my liver AND my sanity at the same time. Well, try and catch me, coppers, you ain't gonna stop me!

I want to go do cool stuff. Please let hell week be over!

Guess who's back? Back again...

You finish the rest.

(sidenote: i redid everything in my userinfo. y'all gotta be shitting me, i can't possibly be the only one here who likes gordon ramsay and fallout.)

Love and appreciate your parents, because you'll never know when one of them will depart from this world.

Love you, Mama, always will. October 5, 1954 - September 25, 2009

Eh, I'm not sure I'm going to use this thing anymore. I just can't be arsed anymore, and well, it's easier to keep up with my facebook. If you want to keep up with me, feel free to add me over there as a friend. I'll still keep this thing for past posterity though.

Ganked the animation meme because I have a penchant for journal filler. :)

ANIMATION MEME
- X what you saw
- O what you haven't finished or saw sizable portions
- Bold what you loved
- Strike what you disliked/hated
- Leave unchanged if neutral


( here's the list )

I came back from my trip to Richmond to visit my family a week ago. Every time I go up there, I see that so much is changing. The West End of Richmond's suburbs has grown massive (practically a city in itself now). Two of my little cousins have had babies. My baby sister (baby, hell, she's nearly fifteen god i feel so old) is so tall now.

And my mom looked a lot worse than when I saw her last year.

For those that don't know, my mom has cancer. She has an aggressive strain of cancer that started as breast cancer and has now spread to her bones in her ribs. She's now out of work on disability because she can't get out of bed a lot of days. Her bag of drugs is about as large as a small carry-on bag. She's lost all of her hair again. She has a tumor growing out of her chest that they can't operate on because she's too weak to go through surgery again.

Through all of this, she's a fucking soldier. I don't know if I could keep my head as high as she does were I placed in her situation.

It's nice to see my middle sister has grown up quite a bit. She's the biggest rebel out of the three of us and I think she's taking Mom's illness the hardest. She hides behind a tough-girl image but she's real fragile on the inside. I can relate; I don't like showing my weaknesses, either. She poured her heart out to me the final day I took her out shopping (technically, she took ME out, but I say that because she has her learner's permit and needed an adult to accompany her). She's scared as hell and I believe it. I'm scared, too.

I also hung out with my friends quite a bit as well, including meeting up with a friend that I haven't seen in years. We did that meetup at Capital Ale House (they have THE best burgers omg) with seven of us. Brittany and I hung out quite a bit, including going to Carytown and seeing what our mall looked like now (it's coming back thank goodness). Josh and I hung out at his pub with a couple of our friends and we had a blast.

I can't wait to go back later this year :)

Haha, I don't know if this is ancient news or not, but remember GJ?

Yeah, uh, it's gone now.

Like anyone cares now, but those were some good times.

Ahahaha I have just realized it's been two months since I updated this thing. Good grief, that's about as often as I go on Myspace. Neglect much?

I've decided that I am now a historian of failure.

Let's make it a title. sexandpolitics, Historian of Failure.

Going in-depth into the history of the Titanic was my first foray into historical fail, in 1998. Then I dived into the history of Yugoslavia and the Balkan Peninsula a year later. Nowadays, I've taken an interest in decaying cities, dead malls and the intricacies of why things become as fucked-up as they do. The set-up for failure, so to speak.

Dunno why failure has always been interesting to me. Maybe it's to make sure we don't repeat it. Maybe I just like knowing the whys and hows of why something so great could fall so far.



Since I don't use this journal all that much (it often gets overlooked in favor of facebook), I might as well put it to good use! I'm going to start writing miniature essays on examples of modern (post-'60s) failure, if only for my own amusement.

The first one will be about the colossal botch of downtown St. Petersburg's "premier" shopping center that's now in foreclosure, Baywalk.
The second one will be about the forgotten Pinellas Square Mall in Pinellas Park, FL.

Eventually I'll get around to Dubai, which is currently setting itself up for a humongous bust.

If I was a musician, I'd be a genius. But I don't know how to play a note.

Rules: It's harder than it looks! Copy to your own note, erase my answers, enter yours, and tag 10 people whoever wants to do this can do this. Use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real . . . nothing made up! If the person before you had the same first initial, you must use different answers. You cannot use any word twice and you can't use your name for the boy/girl name question.

1. What is your name: Sarah
2. A four letter word: shot
3. A boy's name: Scott
4. A girl's name: Samantha
5. An occupation: social worker
6. A color: sepia
7. Something you wear: shirt (don't we all?)
9. A food: smoked ham
10. Something found in the bathroom: shampoo
11. A place: St. Petersburg
12. A reason for being late: Skateboarding kids were in my way *shakes cane*
13. Something you shout: SHIT!
14. A movie title: Superbad
15. Something you drink: St. Bernardus Abt. 12 (it's one of the most delicious beers ever)
16. A musical group: Smashing Pumpkins
17. An animal: Squirrel
18. A street name: South Howard Ave.
19. A type of car: Saturn
20. The title of a song: "Shut Up And Drive" - Deftones

Our economy sucks.

Goodbye, Circuit City. God bless the awesome TV sales you guys had, it's how we got our sweet HDTV. I also remember getting my super-special edition Clerks boxset from you (I think it's out of print now I think) and you guys were the only ones that had it at a reasonable price (or had it at all). It'll be sad to see you go, especially since you were based in my hometown of Richmond. :(

Also, sayonara Steve and Barry's. With your closing, you have made University Mall look a lot more creepier now, and it was kinda dank (and creepy in some spots of the mall) to begin with.

Other things that are in their death throes (keep on the lookout):

FYE -- the FYE in University Mall in Tampa is closing and had everything in their store at half-off. It was pretty picked through, but we managed to leave with six movies: The Blues Brothers, The Simpsons Movie, The Orphanage, the special-edition Dogma, Goldmember and Knocked Up. I thought it was closing because it's in University Mall (it's kinda ghetto), but apparently FYE is closing a bunch of their stores and is on its last legs.

Borders -- yes, Borders too. I'm hearing that Borders' profitability is terrible. I'm also hearing that benefits for their employees have been cut dramatically and are next to nil at this point.

Sears -- It ain't doing so hot right now. I'm pretty sure they'll rebound eventually, even with the inevitable losses and store closures. Because it's Sears. But things aren't the way they used to be. However KMart (which is owned by Sears) may be another story. They are in great risk of disappearing completely.


I think I need to go to sleep now. :(

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3057573

Woohoo for abortion, then, Krispy Kreme rules. Especially their hot donuts. If you have never had a hot glazed *snicker* Krispy Kreme donut, you may not have fully experienced life yet.

Go get your free donut on the 20th.

Perks from the last couple of days --

Yesterday: I had a lady compliment me, saying I looked just like one of the models from fashion magazines, and that she loved my delicate Southern accent :)

Day before yesterday: It was around closing time, and it was time for me to start hustling people out of the store. There was a lady with her husband, and they needed help with cough medicine. Instead, we all started chit-chatting. The lady said that when she was reincarnated, she would be young and beautiful like me. I told her she was already good-looking. The husband asked me to guess her age. I guessed in the low-to-mid thirties. Turns out she was 47. Shit, when I'm 47, I want to look like that.

This is posted to remind myself that not all people are shitheels.

THIS. This was a mall in one of Chicago's many blighted suburbs that the infamous chase scene for The Blues Brothers was filmed in. Wasn't that wild? (And if you haven't seen it, shame on you. Go to Blockbuster or rent it on Netflix or something). The mall recently shuttered its doors when the production company for the movie leased it in 1979.

It's 2009, and it's still rotting there, 30 years later. Dixie never knew hair metal, it did not know that Ronald Reagan was to be the succeeding president, it never witnessed the horrors of the Challenger explosion (or the Columbia, for that matter). Chernobyl was just a funny-sounding thing to it. It did not know who Madonna was. It didn't even know who Van Halen was. "It's the economy, stupid" helped this place not one bit -- that happened 13 years later.

I can't believe that a city would allow something large like this to decay for 25-30 years. It's incredible, really. Take a look at the pictures in the first link, taken by brave, brave urbexers. They're creepy as fuck. Very Silent Hill-esque. (Silent Hill 3. It was the scariest.)

I need to go look at pictures of kittens and puppies before I go to sleep.

Hey guys? You're safer staying here. Defecting to LiveJournal may not be an option for much longer.

Thoughts?

Welp, happy new year to you all! I'm currently in preparation for a chillax New Years' Eve at a friend's house -- lots of drinking, good flicks, good times and delicious food (made by all of us!) ahoy! I'm bringing pico de gallo for chips :D

I'm stoked at one bargain I got during those after-Christmas sales -- I got a hot pink silk dress at Express that was originally $168 for $12. The planets really aligned for that one. :)

Today's my hubby's birthday so we're going out to PF Chang's later. Nom nom nom.