...and so begins the media blitz. First of all, its hilarious to me that this nation can even get into these frenzies as they do over missing people. People go missing every single day, there are starving and homeless children in the streets. Women get beat up and raped every couple of minutes… but the news has been talking about Natalee Holloway for the past two months. Dammit, I know the child’s name without looking it up.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s sad when a person is missing and/or killed. I feel for the parents, families and friends of any person who’s gone missing. I’ve had to deal with that situation in my own family more than once and it’s horrible. BUT the dissapearance of my teenage cousin didn’t make national news. There have been a couple of articles in the national news in the past couple of weeks about this love affair that the American public has with these white damsel in distress stories, so I’m not going to rehash anything that’s already been said by others, and that I’ve been saying since this ridiculousness started several years ago. The bottom line is that the media latches onto a story and rides it as long as the public’s attention will hold, and the general caucasian public loves to fret over white women.

So there’s been little to no coverage of Latoiya Figueroa, the pregnant mother of a seven year old who went missing in Philly a couple of weeks ago. Instead, the soup du jour is a missing white guy (how’s that for variety?) named… get this… George Smith. Can there be a more boring story? I mean, how much mystery and drama can you create out of a man missing from a boat in the middle of the ocean?

But the news has been trying its damndest anyway. Oy vey.

etaHa! Arron McGruder is soooo my soulmate.

So I like clicking the “next blog” button at the top of the page to see where it takes me. I once ended up at the blog of the guy who would be my soul mate if we actually knew each other and he didn’t already have a gilfriend he was trying to marry. Anyway, I started putting in “randomwords”.blogspot.com, and just to check on who had taken the name I was going to use originally, I tried picaflor (means flirt in Spanish, like my AIM id.)

So the first thing I notice is that this person reads The Onion. What are the odds, right? And she writes kinda like I do, only younger and less polished… to make a long story short it took me a good minute and a half to realize that this was, in fact, my old blog from 2002, recounting the weekend of my high school graduation. It’s like opening a little time capsule, or how I would find candy and money from the year before in my coat pockets on the first day of winter. How special.

As far as I can remember, Erin and I did end the fight, the gift count didn’t increase over the summer but went way up after school started, and I didn’t do jack over the summer but hang out with Erin and enjoy myself.

Life hasn’t really changed that much, has it?

These funky children are leaving my home today (spectacular yessss!) and I’m foregoing my morning jog since I’m getting my excercise bike later today. To all who ever slept on The Great Effort, today I sneer. Later, when I am svelte once again, I will laugh in your general direction.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what this Effort is for. It’s definitely to lose this belly weight that I’ve built up over the summer. It’s definitely to have slimmer thighs. I’m not buying any more clothes, so I really need to fit COMFORTABLY into a size 10 by the time I start school and have to wear something other than pajamas and sweats all day. If my clothes were all 12/13’s, I’d probably just stand my ground at 180 and keep it (not) moving.

But I can’t shake the feeling that there is a much more sinister—well maybe not sinister, but at least obsured—reason that I’m so fixated on losing weight. I mean, why do I have the urge to jog at 5 in the morning? (Really, I’m forcing myself not to go out… i’ll have my bike back in just a few more hours) Why do I own an exercise bike? Why am I eating yogurt?? I’ve never had this kind of willpower before and it’s kind of shocking to me.

I definitely want to be more attractive by the time school starts. I know it’s superficial, but I’m starting over with completely new people. I don’t want to be “that girl”... you know, the chubby one with the great sense of humor? At the very least I turn into that girl over time, but I try not to start off that way. Because people do judge you by your looks. I don’t want to come off as sloppy at first bat (as my mother says, “not well groomed”) because that’s not who I am; that’s who I become when I feel like shit and I want to push people away. But that’s not my life anymore, so I don’t have to be that fat girl.

So being superficial is just going to have to do for now. It’s making me get up and move my butt, and meet some of my neighboors. It’s helping me to build a healthy heart and body so I won’t have old, tight muscles and a skippidy heart and I won’t get winded walking up a flight of stairs. I’ve found a skin care regimine that works and I’m sticking to it really well; no more spottiness and having to hide behind tons of makeup and glitter to feel pretty. No more “I can’t go out because I don’t have anything to wear.” And I can finally stop making excuses for not getting this surgery that I desperately need. (Stick a pin in that. I’ll address it later) I just feel kinda close to splendid and I like the direction of progress I’m moving in.

The only thing better than high speed internet is FREE WIRELESS HIGH SPEED INTERNET.

Olde Georgetowne is that jumpoff for real.

Thanks to the unintentional generosity of one of my neighbors, I now have high-speed wireless internet in my mom’s bedroom. I thought I wouldn’t be able to jump this off until August, but the audioblogging commences… NOW! First up: I’m getting conflicting info on Kanye’s Late Registration. First of all, let me tell you that I bought College Dropout the day it dropped and I was highly dissapointed. I mean, by that time I’d downloaded most everything ye had put out up to that point, including his early mixtape stuff. He definitely sold his best beats. I just wasn’t feeling a lot of the tracks and I knew it could have been better—mostly because I’d heard better from him.

After hearing the Diamonds are Forever remix and seeing the video (which is, in fact for the original song, which is completely different) I was kind of getting excited about Late Registration. On a downloading binge last night, I tried to preview it, but what I ended up getting was a bunch of wiggledy wash. Half the tracks labeled as from the album were actually old mixtape tracks. I thought maybe they would be updated and polished, because those are some of my favorites (Home, Half Price), but they were the same old tracks. I think someone just heard something new to them and labeled wrong, and the wrong labels spread. That being said, I think I may be dissapointed again. Nevertheless, there are some gems.

“Soulful” – Ye ft. John Legend “Home” – an old fave

It’s a celebration, bitches.

And I don’t mean cool-funky. I mean stank-funky. Like, don’t warsh yo’ ass funky. WTH is the issue with children that they can’t stand to bathe? I remember being that age and being so worried that I might smell. I carried deoderant in my bookbag and gave myself a little wipedown after outdoor lunch. My cousins—let’s let them remain nameless—are 11, 13, and 14 and they have no problem smelling like a package of spoiled meat. How can they stand to be alone with themselves, much less all holed up with each other?

Now, I’ve been known to skip a shower or two over the weekend… when I’m in my house, by myself, not going anywhere. I surely will not cross the threshold of my home smelling like a wet dog. These kids really feel like it’s alright to take a 45-second shower and roll the f%@# out!! I’m not one to tell somebody else’s kid they stank… BUT you can be sure that if I were the one driving them hither and thither, they would sit their stinking selves in this house—actually, outside this house—until they could wash and meet some kind of standard of cleanliness.

Damn!