Home | Join! | Help | Browse | Forums | NuWorld | NWF | PoPo   

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
The Year of Our Triumph
Wednesday. 1.3.07 11:36 pm
So it is 2007. Or, as I have decided to call it: The Year of Our Triumph. The "our" refers generally to me and Ranor, but I will generously extend it to all those who intend to make it so.

I believe the New Year was placed where it is mostly to break the winter in half, so that it doesn't seem like a full 3-4 months of cold and dark, but rather a cold fall lasting til Thanksgiving, the Holiday season. Then you start anew! The New Year! So full of new promises!! then there's the Playoffs, Groundhog's Day and President's Day, and before you know it, it's my favorite holiday (St. Patrick's Day) and Spring has come. So basically, it is a ploy.

That is why the world becomes a colder and darker place when the Broncos are tragically denied a spot in the playoffs.

But just because the New Year is a clever ploy to get us through the depths of winter doesn't mean it shouldn't mark the beginning of something wonderful.

Why, you may ask, is 2007 to be The Year of Our Triumph? Good question. The last two years have been stellar years for me- I acheived many of my life goals. But to this year I bring a new attitude. It is one of relentless self improvement. It is one of dedication and hard work. But I will also attempt to remove the blind drive for meaningless acheivement that have motivated me in years past and concentrate on the joy of the pursuit. TO THIS YEAR I BRING DEDICATION TO TRIUMPH!!

And once acheived, I will likely spend all of 2008 basking in said triumph.

The object and general course toward this eventual triumph is yet to be determined, but it will happen, oh yes.

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

A Christmas Rant
Wednesday. 1.3.07 11:15 am
This holiday season, I have been looking for Jesus. And I don't just mean that spiritually, I have been physically searching for Jesus. It all began at the local Target. I was looking to by a roll of wrapping paper, and I noticed that there was not a single roll of paper that had anything remotely religious upon it. I'm talking- there was no "Joy to the World" there was no "Noel!" there was no "O Holy Night"... nothing! The closest I came was "Merry Christmas" which only appeared on two rolls during my entire multi-store search, and is, in itself, not really religious at all. What did I find instead? Well, there were a lot of reindeer, Santa Claus, snowmen, stockings, sleighs, and every other thing you could imagine which is associated with Christmas but which contains none of those nasty little reminders that a big fat man in a red suit is not actually the reason that Christmas is around.

And so here I lodge a protest. I understand, ye atheists, that you wish to take religion out of everything. That you wish you strip religion out of public places, events and consciousness. That you, content (though in an agitated, restless way)without a God yourself, wish to take God away from those who need Him. That you wish for "Merry Christmas", long an expression of joy in the depths of winter's darkness, long an expression of the common bonds of Mankind through a roughly 5 day span in the middle of December, and turn it into "Happy Holidays", an expression reminding all that religion is made to die before us, and that the holidays of all- the Jews, the Christians, everyone- must be stripped of their individual names so that they go unacknowledged and unappreciated. For calling the holidays by their names would inject religion into the Mall, and religion should have no place except in the derision of those who don't know why it exists.

But to all of this I cannot formally protest. For those who wish to remove religion from the hearts and minds of all who hold it dear, fine. You are working valiantly to that end. HOWEVER, what I do logde a complaint against is the fact that these very same people protest Christmas in another way. They are the same people who enjoy spending their time Raging against the Capitalist Machine. They say that Christmas is only a commercial venture, kept alive by stores and greeting card companies to make money- about only buying buying buying and nothing else.

Well, in case you haven't noticed... when you take the religion out of the holiday, when you take out the "good will toward men" (They didn't mention women, those patriarchal pigs!) THEN YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING LEFT IN CHRISTMAS BUT COMMERCIALISM.

You don't have anything left in Christmas besides people shoving each other out of the way to buy things at an over-crowded mall. You don't have anything besides angry shoppers putting themselves into debt and cursing their fellow man. You don't have anything besides the cold realization that there are those more fortunate than you, and that all of the Christmas songs on the radio are about romantic love, which not everyone has... (that's what Christmas is all about, being in love under a Christmas tree, isn't it?!) instead of being about the gift that God gave to the Earth (which EVERYONE gets to share in- young and old, poor and rich, the cold and destitute and the warm contented alike!)



That said, however, I had a great Christmas this year. Just had 4 years of So-Cal Christmas in my blood that I had to get out all at once.

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

Skiing
Wednesday. 12.27.06 3:03 am
I'm going skiing!!

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

Failure Envelopes
Saturday. 12.23.06 12:28 am
In structural geology, we spend a great deal of time calculating the failure envelope for various angles and strengths of rocks, deciding with great care when we suppose they might break.

Structural geology is right, you know.

Failure often comes in envelopes.

And many times it isn't the force with which you push, but the precise spot at which you apply the force >>along faults<< that causes something ordinarily strong to finally break.

Comment! (3) | Recommend! (1)

Monday. 12.18.06 11:44 pm
Today I had lunch with one of the grad students I'd met at the grad student lunch and a guy from her department (cog sci). We ate at the Meeting Street Cafe and I had the best sandwich EVER. Incidentally, while I was waiting for my friends to show up, who should walk in but Ben. BEN! From Semester at Sea! You have to imagine, I hadn't really hung out with this dude since this one time, when we were flying from Honolulu to Shanghai, and we had to go through San Francisco (doesn't make any sense, does it...). We had a 9 hour layover starting at like 4 in the morning, so we chilled for two hours and then hit the town with this other random guy Charlie, taking the BART all over and walking blocks and blocks and through these fish warehouses to get to a place where we could see the Golden Gate bridge. Then we went to see Lombard street, (aka the crookedest street in America), and got yelled at by a crazy man. We were back in time for our 11 o'clock flight to Shanghai. That was the "day" that I was awake for more than 40 hours straight.

So here he is, right in the middle of the Meeting Street Cafe, chilling with his mom, who moved to Providence since the last time we'd seen each other. Weird. I got the digits.

Funny enough, that's happened to me no fewer than THREE times in the last TWO WEEKS!

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Wednesday. 12.20.06 12:59 am
I have as much rage as you have

And I've kept mine bubbling under for you

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

Monday. 12.18.06 11:40 pm
HALLELUJAH!

HALLELUJAH!
HALLELUJAH
HALLELUJAH

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Life
Sunday. 12.17.06 1:42 am
I don't know what it is about this place.

You know those kind of people who only hang around with people who are "cool"?
Well, to be perfectly honest, I spent most of my life being considered "uncool" by those kinds of people. I wasn't usually mocked, or tortured, usually just completely ignored. This arrangement suited me just fine, but it also meant that I was never particularly choosy with my friends, because I needed all of them. Sometimes I just needed *a* friend, especially in middle school. All anyone needs in middle school is *a* friend.

But for a long time, I didn't have one. I knocked around from table to table- they had the dreaded "only 8-person per lunch table" rule... which was the worst rule a middle school could impose, as you were immediately ejected from your seat with your "friends" if a cooler friend of theirs needed a place to sit. A one point I found a table. It was pretty secure, I was an old friend of one of the presiding members, Stacey. But she hated my friend Brenda. She thought she was so lame, uncool, talked about dumb things. She hated her, she didn't want to be seen sitting with her. Brenda was a free spirit, she liked unicorns and playing pretend and she had a rough home life and snored like a train.

But she was my friend. She was one of those friends of mine that had been my friend when I had nobody else. So, for once, I made a hard decision and I stood up for Brenda against Stacey, and when they ejected Brenda from the table, I took a stand... and as a result they ejected me too. She was unhappy. She was miserable. She transferred schools. I was on my own again.

Having once betrayed my old table, there was no going back, so I had to find someone new. I finally ended up sitting with the foreign kids, because even though the conversation was a little spare they didn't know how to tell me to go away. And if anyone needs a friend, it's a foreign kid, let me tell you. Being the foreign kid is one of the loneliest feelings in the world.

I guess the point of this conversation is that lately, whether due to me becoming a more confident and charming person or just because I hang out with all nerds now (probably the latter), I've started to become accepted as one of the "cool kids". It's a weird feeling. It started a little bit in college but I was still not quite there. I really felt like a cool kid one day when I gave a performance in acting class and at track the next day this football player that the track girls liked came up to me after practice and said, "I really liked your scene yesterday. It was great." and then he didn't say a word to anyone else and left. I didn't even "like" him but just to see the look on the other girls' face could have given me unsinkable confidence for a month. The scene was so cliche it was delicious. But the only reason that was so satisfying is because everyone on the track team thought of me as "barely passable cool", even the younger kids. A little bit awkward, don't drink much... hang out with people that nobody "knows"....

But now... now the "cool group" has been formed and by accident (and mostly by virtue of keeping my mouth shut) I'm in it. But I don't get it! They're so content to be their little group of cool, and they don't see those people who aren't in it. They don't see the people who fade into the shadows. They don't see the foreign kid and they never talk to him unless I talk to him first. It's like he's invisible. Everyone's invisible except the people they choose to see.

But me... me. I AM one of those people. I LIVE in the shadows I LIVED on the sidelines I scraped the bottom of the barrel for a friend... JUST ONE friend. So I see them. And now my friends see it as some interesting trivialty about me that I go out of my way to include them in things we do. Because it never occurs to anyone except me.

And it's so weird, because it's not like "the group" has so many people in it. It's not like they're so much more popular than everyone else. It's the difference between three friends and no friends at all.

But that makes ALL the difference, doesn't it?

I feel like I'm living in that movie, the 6th Sense. I see these people, I feel their pain, I see when they're upset and how they feel when they're not invited, when they're ignored, when people laugh and they think they're all laughing at them. They are me.

And I know that the other people don't exclude them on purpose. They forget to invite them. They don't realize that they're talking. They are laughing at their own inside joke and they don't see how it looks to anyone else. They just don't notice that they exist, it's as simple as that. They see no further than their comfortable sphere, filled with people who are good enough for them, and they don't need anybody else.

Well let me tell you: you ALWAYS need EVERYONE. You can't afford to turn down the chance to have a friend.

Or at least, I can't. I'm not that rich. I'll never be that rich.

Even though I might mean I leave the table. It's worth it, even eventually my friend leaves me. I know how to fend for myself. I've been on my own before.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Zanzibar's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

NuTang is the first web site to implement PPGY Technology. This page was generated in 0.042seconds.

  Send to a friend on AIM | Set as Homepage | Bookmark Home | NuTang Collage | Terms of Service & Privacy Policy | Link to Us | Monthly Top 10s
All content � Copyright 2003-2047 NuTang.com and respective members. Contact us at NuTang[AT]gmail.com.