Obama is now President-Elect

Last time I wrote, it was the midst of all the campaign fluff. Now, this country has spoken and voted for Sen. Barack Obama. And I'm so excited!

Today, there is talk that Sen. Hillary Clinton is being suggested for Secretary of State. On The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, Ms. Maddow was talking to Adrienne Mitchell and they were talking about how it would be awkward for Sen. Clinton to take this position because of all the bashing that was made by her and her campaign against Sen. Obama.

We'll see!!

2008 Democratic National Convention

I can not wait until November, when I will able to cast my vote for Sen. Barack Obama as the new President of the United States of America.

From the convention, here's Sen. Teddy Kennedy:



Here's Michelle Obama's speech:



Her speech was impeccable, flawless and it made me cry through out. Watching these two speeches that I've posted above, it makes me proud to be from America. That these people have dedicated their lives for the greater good, for their country. And it makes me feel as though this country has so much more to offer, and with Barack Obama as the new President of the United States, this country will turn a new corner and really come out even better.

This country doesn't need another 4-8 years of the same Bush policies.

$46 or $11

I went to school today with dad to buy books for class. Total cost for everything was nearly $200, but I didn't buy all the books I needed yet.

One of the books I needed, Euripides Bacchae, cost me $46!!!!! And the book is like a 1/4 inch thick!! So then I went to Borders.com and I found it for $11!!!! That's an incredible difference! And I also got 30% off the book, because I had a coupon. So I have ordered the book for under $8 with free shipping to the store.

It's unbelievable that this book was going for $46.

Insane.

Anyways, my sunburn still hurts, and my face is yucky because I put aloe on it.

I'm excited for the Democratic Convention this week. It's going to be crazy!

McCain is trying to be fierce and tear the Democrats apart because of previous things that were said. And they weren't only said because the candidates were trying to make themselves look good.

BLAH! Politics are nuts...

Ok, that's al I have for now..

-Suzy

P.S. AND HOPEFULLY THE BOOK DOESN'T LOOK LIKE CRAP!!!! But for $8, I don't care lol.

Borders.com and their books.

I'm reposting this from my other blog.

Ok-- Borders is doing what Wal-Mart is doing, which is you order something online and you can have it shipped to the store.

Normally and usually, I just go to the store to pick up the book, but I had a 40% off coupon and you could ship it to the store for free...

I ordered the book Saturday night and I got it today, so the timing was great.

However, the condition of the book was not. the side of the, where the pages are (not the binding) is dirty. The bottom of the cover is a bit creased and the edging is frayed a little.

It doesn't look like a brand new book.

And I would return, but I can't for the simple fact that I won't get it for what I paid for it.

Here are pictures of the book. I just picked it up an hour ago.








I don't think I'm over-reacting. The book came in this crap little cardboard box. They could have at least protected the book somehow. My book looks like a reject copy. I'm just upset. I've already contacted them. I saved $9 by ordering it online, next time I'll just get it at the store. At least I know what I'm getting.



I looked it up online and turns out the $9 that I saved is going to go towards sending the book back... Ugh...



-----------------------------

Here's my entry responding to the things above...

I will have to send the book I ordered back, via USPS... which is going to cost around $9-10, which is what I saved by ordering it online. The book cost me $19 with tax to order it online. I had to pay $23 and change when I went to the store just now. Yeap... But here.. look at the book I got at the store... the previous entry shows the one I ordered. See the difference?




Ta da! I'm a little happier now. I hate going to the same store more than once a day... I feel stupid. Lol...

juggernauts

I don't even remember what that word means, but it came to mind.

Oh... I just "Wikied" it... it means:

is a term used to describe a force regarded as unstoppable, that will crush all in its path.

Woot!!

Anyways, I've been trying to find my drafts of my story, and I just remembered where it may be... In my room...

I want to try to finish it this summer. I also want to fix up my story that I wrote for class. We'll see how that goes..

Later, Suzy

Edit: 7:50p.m.

My story wasn't in my room... But its okay for now.

I'm outside at the moment. I decided I needed some fresh air. So I turned on iTunes, put on shuffle and out comes Britney (Spears). I like her old stuff. It's very poppy. And I don't see any bugs flying, so that's good news too.

I think I will write a couple flash fiction stories tonight and then edit them later on. Or at least put some ideas down.

Newsweek's flubs...

I'm currently reading this week's Newsweek Magazine (July 7/July 14, 2008 issue) and I'm finding some interesting things.

First, on Page 37 in the right column titled "The Don't Bother States," the magazine lists Obama's and McCain's chances of winning a specific state. Under Obama, Newsweek lists Washington D.C. at 100%.

Except, Washington D.C. isn't a state.

Then on the next page, page 38, under "scorecard" they specify different physical characteristics that past president's have had and comparing them to the current candidates.

Under "Melanin," Newsweek writes:

An exclusive NEWSWEEK analysis has determined that 100 percent of our presidents have been white.

Well, no duh.

Bush leaves office in...

Since the last posting...

I've read The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult and then watched the LifeTime version of the book. It was decent. It stayed, for the most part, true to the book... Somethings were taken and put in different places and some things were changed for "TV" but sometimes, I think that if they kept what was in the book, the movie may have been a little better, but it was good.

I also watched The Plain Truth. I haven't read the book yet, but I'll wait until I forget about the movie so my mind is clear and I can separate the film and the book.

Lifetime also aired The Pact, but I missed it. I tried to download it on iTunes, but it didn't want to work. Which made me upset, because Megan Mullally (Karen on Will & Grace) is in it.

I'm happy now. iTunes finally fixed the problem, if there was one.. because no one could download the darn movie. It's downloading now. So, yay... $4 is going to be added to my credit card.. and that means I have $25 on it right now, and I can't use it anymore, because my dad is getting mad. So.. that's the last time. Besides, it's cheaper than paying $15 at the store for it, because they put it on a disc and shipped it.

Now I can just stick it on my iPod nano :o)...

Alrighty, I need to go read or sleep or something.

G'night.

-Suzy

scrabulously bad

I'm currently playing Scrabble via scrabulous.com, and I totally suck.

I love the game, but I'm always terrible online.

Here's what the game looked like. We just finished playing, of course I lost.




Well, Jess is on, I'm going to go to talk to her now.

Maybe I'll write more later.

My Book List

Just click on the photo for a larger view. These are 98% of my books. I didn't add a couple, I will soon though.

Useful links for writers

In my $100 editing book that I never used for class, there were sections at the end of chapters that were reviews and useful websites were given... Here are those websites...

American Copy Editors Society: www.copydesk.org
American Society of Newspaper Editors: www.asne.org
Dow Jones Newspaper Fund: djnewspaperfund.dowjones.com
Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Association: newsletters.org
American Press Institute: www.americanpressinstitute.org
The Poynter Institute: www.poynter.org
The Slot: A Spot for Copy Editors: www.theslot.com
www.bartleby.com
www.biography.com
www.infoplease.com
My Reference Desk: www.refdesk.com
TotalNews, for search of news sites: www.totalnews.com
First Amendment Center: www.firstamendmentcenter.org
Media Law Resource Center: www.ldrc.com/index2.html
Society of Professional Journalists, ethics page: www.spj.org/ethics.asp
United States Copyright Office of the Library of Congress: www.copyright.gov
Grammar Now!: www.grammarnow.com
Linguist List: www.linguistlist.org
The Online English Grammar: www.edufind.com/english/grammar
Bureau of Labor Statistics: www.bls.gov
My Reference Desk: www.refdesk.com
Folio: www.foliomag.com
Ezine Universe: ezine-universe.com
Magazine Publishers of America: www.magazine.org
Newsletter Access: www.newsletteraccress.com
Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Association: www.newsletter.org
Advertising Age: www.adage.com
The Editorial Eye: www.eeicommunications.com/eye
New York Review of Books: www.nybooks.com
Publisher’s Weekly: publishersweekly.com

Editorial type thing---DRAFT

I still need to do further research to make sure everything is accurate. This is just a rough opinionated draft.... I will come back to it and had references... -S.



It’s 2008 and it’s one of the most important years in U.S. history and we are all in the middle of it.

As a student body, we have the most powerful tool that people in most other countries long for; the power to vote.

At probably one of the most crucial times in U.S. History, this country is need for a new president who will have to work twice as hard with the help of the government to turn this country around.

Since 2000, President George W. Bush has done nothing but deface the name of America across the country has war hungry-oil guzzling country.

It’s time for a change. Whether it be Senators Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, or John McCain (okay, maybe not McCain).

This country which had a surplus of money when President Clinton left office is not in trillions of dollars in debt. It’s despicable to have the most powerful country in the war, a country considered to be a leader on most fronts-is being torn down by this administration and for what?

When the tragic events of September 11th occurred, the country bonded together like never before. We rallied together to help though who were hurt, killed and effected by attacks by Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

As a country, we all agreed that we needed to go into Afghanistan and take down Osama bin Laden, but then we got derailed. We somehow ended up in Iraq. A country where we neutral with at the moment.

But there were “weapons of mass destruction” former secretary of defense Donald Rumesfeld repeated over and over and over again.

But there were none. So why did we stay there? Oh, now Saddam Hussein was a threat. Of course, Hussein was an evil man, but he was of no threat to the United States. There was no need to invade a country that had been of no use to the fight against terrorism.

Now, more than 3,000 of our troops have died for this unjust war. A war of no reason, no justice, no conclusion. This is a war of oil, which consequently is making the price of gas all over the world rise to incredible never-before-seen prices.

If anyone where to ask the President of the United States why this country is in Iraq, what would he say? He would probably say that it’s to help spread democracy around the world. Which we all know is a bunch of crap.

First it was for weapons of mass destruction.

Then it was to take down Saddam Hussein.

Then it was to create a democratic society.

Well, which is it?

The Bush administration has done nothing but disgrace this country for the past 8 years.

He has wasted money that could have funded social security (an issue he was “passionate” about during the 2004 election) for the next 80 years. Giving enough time to find a way to help social security last longer.

It’s 2008, and most of this country thinks that kids 13-26 are the dumb-generation. A generation overtaken by technology.

We need to all come together and vote for the next president who will do the job right. Someone who will unify this country with other unlike how we have been divided by our neo-conservative jackass.

On Election Day 2008, we need to put all our differences aside and vote. Don’t say that politics are stupid, or they don’t matter, because it does matter.

Politics is part of everything you do. It’s part of your life, so why not make the best of it? Why not have a say in it?

Politics is part of your schooling, your tuition, your job, your taxes, gas prices, grocery prices, clothing prices, your environment.

Politics doesn’t matter, it’s not stupid, it’s important. So deal with it. Don’t act like a whiney 10 year old, and do something right for a change.

Educate yourself, look up the candidates and see if you find one with similar beliefs as yours.

It sounds corny, but we have the power to change the face of this country. Maybe the 2008 election will have a higher voter turnout than of the season finale of American Idol.

This 2008 Election will make history. We will have the first bi-racial president, or the first female president, or another Bush as president. It’s up to us to decide.

We can effect the count. So get out there, go register and vote this November!

i'm a bad planner + i'm lame

1. I haven't done anything about my writing in days, other than I've been writing in my blogs.
2. I'm at home when I could be at my church's festival thing.

I think I might go. It's 10 pm, but whatever. I've watched 2 movies today. License to Wed and 27 Dresses.

I wanted to watch the one about Sarah Marshall, but the thing didn't work.

Ugh, I'm retarded. I kind of look like shit though.


I'm just pathetic. I say to myself that I don't have a social life, and it's because I choose not to have one.

BLAH!


Edit.... okay, for a second I decided to go. but i gave up. I'm just going to watch another movie. I'll watch another movie and stare at my paper that needs editing.

I'll also bitch to myself on how I hate my freakin neighbors.. And their dog that won't shut the hell up. For crying out loud!!!!

UGH! I hate small stupid dogs. Yap, yap, yap.. and all I hear are "Luca! Luca! Luca!" (the dog's name)....

Okay, I'm done being a pathetic almost 22-year-old with no life. I'll just sit here and imagine what it could be one day.

i love my mac

(not my MacBook Pro-- it's just A MacBook Pro)



It's all better :o). It only took 3 hours to replace the bluetooth card.. not 36-48 hours or 3-5 days... Hehehe. YAY!

It was never broken in the first place. It just had a bruise.

I'm watching Grey's Anatomy, and there's a 19-year-old guy stuck in a vat of cement.

This is going to be interesting.

Alrighty.... this post was semi-useless..

Later, Suzy

my poor mac

I'm on my younger brother's crap Vista-fied computer, because mine is at the Apple store getting its Bluetooth card replaced. I know that it has something to do with wi-fi. And I wouldn't have noticed that it would need to be replaced if I didn't bring my laptop to Apple to fix the thinkpad area that was sticking up. I just didn't realize that it would take 36-48 hours to fix it. But at least they fix it there and I don't have to ship it anywhere.

So now I have to wait for their call to go pick it up. I can't cancel it, or else I'll have to pay $100, and that's insane.

Alrighty, I'm going to go. Bye.

Update: David Cook the new American Idol

I'm so excited!!!! Here are some photos... via Associated Press...

Unplanned American Idol

Ok, I didn't do anything that I planned on doing yesterday. I planned to edit my story, and I fixed one page. And I probably will try to do another page tonight before American Idol.

I hope David Cook Wins. The show is on in a half hour. Yay... Here are 2 more pictures of him I found...

I'll write more after the show. I got interrupted before by my younger brother.

Edit this.

Not literally. I hate to edit. Maybe because I don't feel confident in it. I don't know everything that comes to editing. I have taken an editing course. I have reference text books. I ought to brush up on it. It's not that I'm terrible, it's just that it's time consuming. I'd rather have someone else to it for me.

However, I understand that it is something that I need to do. I have to edit and revise my story for class. It's my interpretation and revision of Ernest Hemingway's "Soldier's Home". And I did a terrible job proofreading. Also because I finished writing the story at 4:45 a.m. and the story was due at 9 a.m. Some of my classmates didn't hand it in by then, but I had to.

That's another problem with me. I can't sit down and write for a half hour straight. I did have this one idea, that I want to try to go further on with. I had this idea for a great story, and hopefully I'll get it up and going soon.

I really want to get a couple stories written this summer. And hopefully I'll find a place that will publish them.

I'm a slow writer. In the sense that it'll take me 2 days to write a story. I take long breaks in between sentences or paragraphs. It's insane. I wonder if there are any cures for this?

Well, I guess I should go edit this story. It's 15 pages long, with lots of mistakes. I did manage to get a B on it though.

My professor/advisor gave me some good advise, so I'm going to go fix this thing, at 10:30 p.m. why are writer's such night owls?

Anyways, good night.

- Suzy

Self-realization "Hollywood is not America"

I'm going on this journey to self-discovery. It's a little corny, oh well. I've come to a conclusion, or a realization maybe, that I need to really try to understand who I am this summer. It's a little my fault. Ok, I have to admit this, I'm obsessed with the Hollywood culture. I don't want to be any of those women, I don't want to be an actress or a singer. I just want to write. But I'm fascinated and constant on these gossip blogs catching up on the latest news. And I've done this so much over the past few years, that I've been forgetting who I am and concentrating on myself, that I've been living through these people I don't know.

And that's sad. It's really pathetic. I need to stop. I'm majoring in freelance/journalism, but I want to dabble in creative writing. I'd like to publish a book of short stories, only because I'm not sure how I'd be able to write a novel. I learned about flash fiction in school, and I'd like to write more of those types of stories.

I'd like to get back to writing poetry. Something I've done since I was 12 years old. And it's going to be a challenge to try to start over, and I know that my addiction to pop culture will continue to linger a little bit longer, but I'm going to start to stop. For a while I wanted to be an entertainment writer, which I could still see myself doing. Not so much the gossiping and making fun of them, that's not my thing, but I think that the whole entertainment frenzy of following celebrities 24/7 has gotten to far, and everything needs to cool down.

I may write more later, but I have to pick up my younger brother from school. He wants to write with me. Well, according to him, he wants to come up with the ideas, and I write them down. He's cute, maybe we'll try something out.

By the way, there's this song "Hollywood's Not America" it's by Ferras. It's a great song, you guys should buy it on iTunes.

-Suzy

Poof, text.

Alright. I've decided that I needed a place to write about my daily ideas, thoughts, complaints on writing. I currently am majoring in Professional Writing: Freelance/Journalism and I really have to get my head in the game in order to do this professionally.

I'm almost 22 years old, and it's summer break. I've bought a copy of Writer's Digest and I found a ton of websites that are geared towards writers, and it's pretty awesome. I wouldn't have found these websites on my own.

I hope that some people visit this blog and critique/comment on some of my work.

I hope to write some more this summer and build a portfolio for school and for potential employers.

I also have to fix my resume.

That's all I have to write about right now. I need to go to bed.

G'night, Suzy