An open letter to college recruiting people that send out what may be best described as junk mail

Posted in Sunday, February 20, 2011
Dear college recruiting people that send out what may be best described as junk mail,
I am sick and tired of you sending me letters that only contain links to awful quizzes and unnecessary facts about when your were established. This tells me nothing about the type of student that goes there. Every single letter I get talks about how your students are challenged, hard-working, and oh-so-successful. Well I’m calling bull.
I want a letter that grabs my attention, and drags me out of this pit of cookie-cutter college honors and campus-describing adjectives. Want my attention? Tell me something worthwhile. Catch my eye with some humor for God’s sake! You have been so far removed from the mentality of a college-seeking teenager for such a long time, that you no longer remember how tedious and strenuous the search can be! Make me laugh, and you automatically have my interest.
I want to go somewhere that focuses on helping me develop as a person just as much as it focuses on helping me develop intellectually, and none of what you are sending me is helping me in the least. You are dehumanizing yourselves with the quizzes and honors and rhetorical questions that no student actually wants to answer “yes” to. It’s going to cost you.
So don’t send us what our parents want to hear, because (for most of us), we’re the ones who make the decision. Tell us who you are as a college, because that’s one thing none of you have done, and that’s the most important thing to consider.
Sincerely,
Nobody
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Eh.

Posted in Wednesday, November 24, 2010
I now have a Tumblr
chroniclesofateenagenobody.tumblr.com
That's probably where I'll be posting most of my stuff now.
-N
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Israel- A Personal Essay

Posted in Tuesday, November 09, 2010
******************Essay I needed to write for Governor's School. I actually ended up quite liking it. Lemme know what you think!************************


                The idea of a homeland for the Jewish people has influenced me profoundly. Israel came about in a macabre way, taking the blood of six million Jews to sign its declaration, and 20,093 more to keep it alive. Yet the nation still stands. What it has had to do to survive is more drastic than any nation still in existence today and Israel is a mere 62 years old. But its existence has forced me to think. It has created a dynamic tension within me, being Jewish, as I try to reconcile my views of what a Jewish nation should do and the facts of what it has done.
                Over the span of its existence, Israel has been involved in seven wars and is constantly in the news for its skirmishes with Palestine. When I hear nothing but bad things about Israel from all sides; TV newscasters, newspapers, acquaintances and opponents of my homeland, it forces me to research. As Israel is my homeland, it is an extension of me, and I have a knee-jerk reaction to defend it, no matter what they’ve done. But when I hear that the Israeli army bulldozed an entire refugee camp, I begin to wonder. I have to think, “Do I still support what they’re doing? Can I defend a country when I don’t agree with their military policies?” and I have to search for both sides of the story, and I have to search for objectivity within myself.
                I cannot afford, as a modern Jewish teenager, to look at Israel through an emotion-tinted glass, and yet, as a modern Jewish teenager, I cannot help but to be emotionally involved. I am grilled more than any other person that I know about my views on Israel, simply because it as seen as an extension of the Jewish people, and in a way they are right. I feel that our homeland should create policies and employ military tactics and engage in foreign relations all in line with Jewish principles. When it seems to me that they do not do so, I get conflicted. Why have a Jewish homeland when it will not act in accordance with what is best for its people and the people around it? What should Judaism say on the matter? Are they in the right or wrong? Is there a gray area? All these questions swirl around my mind, and when I dig deeper, all I find are harder questions. In questioning Israel’s policies, I am questioning my faith. In one breath, the Torah says “Thou shall not kill”, and in the very next it instructs us to wipe out every inhabitant of the land that opposes us. As I wrestle with these questions, I realize that my faith is just as conflicted as I am, and that there are no answers; only better questions.
                The idea of a Jewish homeland has affected me on many levels, from my daily conversations, to my thoughts before I go to bed, to a continuing inner monologue pondering the facets of right and wrong and self defense and slaughter. It has taught me to think critically, even when my heart screams to do otherwise. But most of all, the idea of a Jewish homeland has forced me to question, and I think that is the best thing that we can ever hope to ask of an idea.
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A Model

Posted in Sunday, October 24, 2010
 Katrina stepped out of the shower with a towel wound tightly around her form. She took her time drying each and every droplet from her flawless skin. She surveyed herself in the mirror, and took in each detail with beautiful amber eyes. Her skin was the color of freshly made coffee, with just a dollop of milk mixed in. Her high cheekbones and wide-set, large eyes cast an aura of mystique around her willowy figure. With onyx hair hanging to just below her chin, she was beautiful.
                With cat-like grace, she turned from the mirror to sit on the edge of her bathtub, her long legs folding into her body with ease. She rested her cheek on her knees, her arms hugging her legs into a tight bundle.
                Katrina sat this way for a while, staring at the skylight that cut a hole in her vaulted ceiling, watching light flood the luxurious bathroom as the shadows crept further and further away from her curled body.
                Her phone buzzed on the vanity, and she was startled back to reality. She slowly uncurled and stood up, allowing the towel to drop as she walked over to check her phone. A text message from her agent. Of course. Today’s a big day! Don’t forget, you need to be at the plaza by eleven. Bring those gold shoes of yours, the strappy ones, not the heels. –Samantha.
                Katrina closed her eyes and delicately trailed her fingertips across her face. She snapped her phone shut and leaned against the vanity, staring at her feet.    
                Her hand shot out and closed around the bottle of vanilla scented lotion to her left, and she delicately unscrewed the top and dribbled the lotion into her palm. She turned her attention to her right leg first. Slowly she ran her lithe fingers down her perfectly sculpted thigh, rubbing in the balm as she went. “I hate you” she whispered. Her fingers trailed down to trace her calf. “I hate you, too.” 
                Her hand moved over to her left thigh, and repeated the process. “Why can’t you be thinner?” she said to her flawless skin as it absorbed the last of the lotion. She poured some more into her hands, and slowly worked her way up her stomach. “I hate you”. Katrina reached her left shoulder and paused, her hand cupped gently around her smooth skin. She closed her eyes and tilted her head until it rested lightly on her cupped hand. She envisioned herself shrinking smaller and smaller until she could run on nothing but air and the sunlight streaming in from the skylight in her vaulted bathroom ceiling.  She curled in on herself further, and continued her hand’s journey down her sapling arm.  “Be smaller” she whispered to her shoulder.
                Katrina finished applying the lotion and stepped into her carefully pressed clothes, tightening her artfully crafted belt to the last hole. As she walked out the door, she glanced once again at the full-length mirror glinting in the sunlight from the skylight in her vaulted bathroom ceiling.
                Without a word, she smashed it and stepped out the door.



-N
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Interesting.

Posted in Sunday, October 17, 2010
This may offend you.

http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/study-gay-parents-more-likely-to-have-gay-kids/19668089?ncid=webmail

Personally, I find it interesting.

A lot of people violently oppose gay marriage, stating in their arguments that gay parents will turn out gay kids. Before now, this statement has been shot down almost as soon as the words exited their mouth. But with this study (and yes, it has been extensively researched, read the article), that may no longer be a lie.

Personally, I'm fine with the idea that gay parents can produce more gay kids. It makes sense if you think about it; the idea isn't condemned in their household, and they are inherently more open-minded. You would have NO trouble coming out to gay parents, whereas if you live in a household where you're not sure how your parents would take it, or if they would vehemently object, you may never come out.

I don't think that gay and lesbian couples produce more homosexual children, only that they allow their kids to be who they are without fear.

Leave your comments and opinions below, I'd love to discuss this more.

-N
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Poetry Post #3 Seeing is a Lost Art Form

Posted in Labels: Monday, October 04, 2010
We are all blind.

You can watch
the lovers at the park
on an unusually chill
winter's day
from noon until sunset,
and never see them at all.

I observe;

They walk side by side
his footprints unusually deep
in the ever-present snow,
hers barely there,
begging a breeze
blow me away

She turns,
and seems to search his eyes.

I think to myself
I have seen this.
She will  tell him
'I love you'

Her mouth opens,
the truth clings 
to the safety of her lips,
even as her tongue 
harshly throws them out into
the swirling abyss.

Her eyes are as cold as the snow in her hair
as she spins on her heel.

He grabs her retreating arm,
sweeps her back into his pleading stare
as words tumble 
meaninglessly 
never reaching her ears.
I love you
they say
I can change

But she is already gone.

Her arm, 
clad in a black wool,
jerks out of his pleading grip.

She runs.
Past the bench,
past the pond,
past hope,
past sight.

He merely stands,
another tree in the landscape
eaten from the inside out
by some awful blight
that has left merely a shell.

...

I watch this with a knowing eye
and a calm demeanor.
I know what he will do next;
I have been the boy
I have been the girl

He will walk home
find solace at the bottom of a box of cheap wine
and move on.

She will throw herself into work.
Sleep won't cross her mind for several days.
She will tell herself it was for the best

...
....
...

I am awakened from my delusion
as I see him calmly turn
and put a foot on the unstable ice
caking the small pond
directly alongside his love's sole set of footprints

I begin to say something
when there is a crack
as sure as a gunshot
and just as deadly

He falls

...

The next day in the paper
their obituaries are side by side.
Lovers reunited.
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Short Stuff

Posted in Sunday, September 19, 2010
Validation- Why is that so important in out society?


School days- Why are they so early and so common?


Fruity Pebbles- Why are they not in my pantry right now?

-N
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