Its 3:30 am. I just finished my last real paper and "response" that was supposed to be due last week but I just kept putting it off.

I love when the basis of a paper is completely disagreeing with another writer's interpretation of a work of literature. Its especially enjoyable when that article was published in 1958. I'm pretty sure if the author is still kickin' she wouldn't be able to put up much of a fight.

Remember when you were in 6th grade and writing 350 words seemed like an insurmountable task? My blood pressure was hovering at normal when after my final this morning I had the task ahead of me of writing a 4 page paper (roughly 1500 words) I hadn't yet picked a topic for. If you combine all the time spread out from about 12:30pm-2:00am in which I ACTUALLY worked on the paper, it probably took me 2 hours. Well, 2 1/4 if you count the 15 minutes it took me to find a decent and short article to use. I didn't initially intend the paper to just be a vehicle to rip someone's writing apart, but it was a nice change of pace rather than spending 4 pages writing about the symbolism of the sound of a string breaking in Act 2 of The Cherry Orchard. Excuse me a second, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

Anyway, I cannot WAIT for Saturday. I plan to sleep for about 2 days.

So roughly every couple of months or so I develop a "lets find something to occupy my day dreams" crush on someone. I'd say 95% of the time this crush is based on nothing but someone I pass on campus every day or have a class with or someone who sells me coffee and there is no indication it will go anywhere past my head. Sometimes its more than that, but not frequently. However, I'm fresh out of candidates. The former love of my life, the aforementioned Canadian dreamboat hockey player named Jesse is a total bust. Not only is he a moron, he didn't even read the book we were supposed to read for a final presentation and his contribution reflected that. He never flat out said he didn't read it, but if he did read it, he has a funny way of showing it. He was really non communicative leading up to our presentation causing me more stress than was necessary. Boo. So the "imaginary Canadian dreamboat hockey playing English teacher Jesse" I created is way better than "real kind of dumb, doesn't contribute to projects or communicate with his partners Jesse" and now that I officially know that, its over. Sad times. Our imaginary break-up was very difficult for us both.

54-31 Bills over Chiefs.

Ahhhhhhhhhh.... that was just what I neeed to end this "OMG BUFFALO SPORTS TEAMS SUCK" slide of sadness.

WOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Trent Edwards was AMAZING!!! Such good times.

6-5. Keep it rollin'!!!!

Ok, so its not a sad place as in its depressing, its a sad place in that the music on it is awful. I have awful taste in music. This morning I've had an awesome rotation of Mariah, the pussycat dolls, the beatles and Lady Gaga.

I just don't put very much stock in the quality of the music I listen to. If its fun, I listen to it, if its not, I don't. Simple as that. That's why it drives me crazy when I meet people who are like music snobs and only listen to independent label artists who perform on "found" instruments from the war-torn regions of the Gaza strip.

One of my favorite bands of the moment is a pop group from Denmark called Alphabeat. The fact that I like such a random band is completely foreign to me. I'm used to being such a Top 40 lover, that actually liking a band that isn't regularly featured on Kiss 98.5 is weird for me. I think this delving into other music phase comes from the fact that my car stereo doesn't work very well and I really can only listen to 103.3, 97 rock and 92.9 and sometimes 102.5 and 104.1. Whoopdedoo.

I also tend to listen to songs they play at the Arena a lot, like City of Blinding Lights by U2 and I Don't Wanna Be in Love by Good Charlotte. I might be the only person in the world who thinks of Jason Pominville taking shots on net when I hear Joel Madden sing "If you've got nothing left, say I don't wanna be in love..."

Anyway, hopefully Jesse, the new love of my life will be in my next class and I can inappropriately ogle him while my professor talks about Young Adult Literature and I name our beautiful future half-Canadian children.

Hey guys!!

So I'm always reading journals but never post my own. Whoops.

Stuff is going well. School is going well.

I have a car, I named him Jarome. Its a 2003 Kia Spectra, its basically the least sexy car you can imagine. It has totally PIMP tinted windows and a stress buffalo in the front windshield.

Not much else is new.

I write a Buffalo sports blog and the other night we had a get together at Fat Bob's and it was lots of fun. The weird part that was in spite of the fact that there are many Buffalo sports blogs written by females, there were only 3 of us there, and 1 of us came super late after the BPO concert. It was a little weird, but all in all a good time.

How weird (yet awesome) is it (for those of us in school or working on a school schedule) to have class on Monday, then no class on Tuesday. I can totally handle 1 day work/class weeks. WOO!!

Good times all around.

Yo why do I keep wanting to write about music? Maybe its because I just got a new (old) iPod and I'm so happy to have music to listen to that isn't one of my 3 CDs I currently own. Getting your hard drive wiped and then iPod stolen is NOT sweet.

I currently need a regular part time job. I work at HSBC Arena but that's only like a few times a month. Of course after the 10 or 15 applications I've filled out, the only one that responds is another job that seems even less consistent than the Arena. Its teaching SAT prep to students. Good for the resume as I'm working towards teaching high school English. Bad because I only got a 540 on math when I took the test in, uhhh, 2002? And my math skills have seriously plummeted since then. Hopefully they're only looking for someone to teach the language arts category and someone else can cover math.

My "oh lord, please don't talk, because when you talk I see how stupid you are" crush, Jesse, WAS in class yesterday but, alas, we were unable to discuss our future together because 1. we did not meet to discuss our presentation and 2. we have no future together.

I like literature (duh), I like talking about it, I enjoy teaching it, I enjoy seeing how different people from different lives react personally to the same text. Even if you have 20 white jewish girls from the 'burbs reading the same book, they have different reactions. In spite of their similar superficial background, they're all different. However, at some point personal reaction can go too far.

In my Contemporary Lit class we're reading a graphic novel called Persepolis by Iranian born writer Marjane Satrapi. I HIGHLY recommend this book, its a super easy read and really gives great insight while striking a balance between "life in Iran" and "life as a woman". There's not a lot of plot to unpack, its straight up, but really interesting.

ANYWAY, the book centers around the Islamic revolution and the instituting of veils and fundamental principles on Iran. Therefore, religion is a strong and powerful overriding theme in the book, its unavoidable and a natural jumping off point for discussion of the book.

This guy in my class who's kind of a toolshed immediately drew a parallel between Islamic fundamentalists and Evangelical Christians. In the United States, the closest thing we have to the dominating outspoken radical religious thinking of Islamic Fundamentalists is Evangelical Christianity. I understand there are others, but at this moment in our history, they're pretty much in our faces all the time. Them and Mormons.

So the toolshed with 2 nose piercings, a really awful lisp and an overall vibe of "I haven't showered lately" starts talking about Evangelical Christianity and basically gets about 2 words out before the girl sitting next to him goes on the attack about how she's an Evangelical Christian and she doesn't like the comparison and basically told him to stop talking about it. The only other time this girl talked in class was to talk about how she voted for McCain and she wanted us to all know that not EVERYONE there voted for Obama. No one assumed that was the truth, btw, but, for the recordm the majority of the class, including the professor, was pro-Obama.

The reason I bring this up is, should the guy have stopped? Was it appropriate for her to ask him to stop because she felt that he was going to generalize? The guy honestly didn't get a whole sentence out, he said basically "In this country, the Evangelical Christians are-" before she cut him off. Should he have continued his comparison? He stopped on his own, the professor did not intervene. Was the girl within her rights to cut him off? Was she being too sensitive? I feel she should've waited to hear what he had to say before just freaking out at those first few words that said nothing of substance about her religion.

What do y'all think. Should she have cut him off the way she did? Was it her right? Should he not have made the connection?